Happy Birthday to Rare Tunes Scottish Archive!

rareTunes - an archive of Scottish sound, is celebrating ten years as an independent internet sound archive of Scottish traditional music.

Do take a look - the website describes itself like this: "A curated audio scrapbook of recordings that range from near-studio quality to crowded and noisy house sessions, from digital media to old bits of tape, vinyl and obscure 78s."  And there are even some videos amongst the audio!

Early Scottish, Irish and Welsh tunes for flute (or fiddle)

Karen's rather excited about this new acquisition for the library.  Published around 1730, the original book has been brought out in a new modern edition with great contextual notes by the editor, Andreas Habert.

Unaccompanied tunes - raw material for you to play however you think most fitting!

Aria di Camera

Find it in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland - here.

John Gunn - Forty Favorite Scotch Airs for Violin, Flute, or Violoncello

Did I mention this find?  There's good stuff hiding in the Internet Archive!  John Gunn also wrote a treatise about the Scottish harp - he's an early 19th century authority still cited today.

One day, I'll make a list of all the old Scottish fiddle collections I've found.  But for now, here's John Gunn's Forty Favorite Scotch Airs, for violin, flute or violoncello.

(Let's make this searchable: Forty, 40, Scotch, Scots, Scottish, Favorite, Favourite, Violoncello, Cello - once a librarian, always a librarian!)

Rare Tunes for Scots Musos

Two useful websites for Scottish traditional musicians:-

• http://www.RareTunes.org (audio)
• Did you know IMSLP (otherwise known as Petrucci) includes old Scottish sources?  Like this Bremner collection, A Collection of Scots Reels or Country Dances, dated 1751-1761

Charlie Gore online (Scottish Fiddle Index now Scottish Music Index)

From printed Scottish Fiddle Music Index

... To online Scottish Music Index

Charlie Gore published his Scottish Fiddle Music Index in 1994. The Whittaker Library has a copy of this invaluable resource in its reference section, here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  (Details here.)

You can find Scottish fiddle tunes, indexed by "intervals-going-up-and-down", and the book will tell you where to find the tune in hundreds of old fiddle books.  It was truly a labour of love, and worth every minute to people working with this repertoire.

Now, it's online.  (There should be a cyber drumroll and/or a fanfare to announce this.  It really is that important.)

The online version - note the new title!

Find Charlie's 21st-century new edition, The Scottish Music Index, here:-

• http://www.scottishmusicindex.org/