John «Rowan» Littell
playing the fiddle

Notes from my village

When not busy with computers or cameras, I take up violin. Sometimes, though, I find when I open the case that it's transformed, magically, into some fearsome beast - a fiddle lies wrapped in velvet, and my fingers are drawn to it as to fire, and a spark leaps from my blood to the strings as I'm lost again in the music that speaks my heart. They say the devil went down to Plovdiv, and he was lookin' for a soul to steal...

I play fiddle music from the periphery of Europe - the British Isles, Scandinavia, a touch from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, some from the Gypsies and some Klezmer, who are everywhere. There's a wealth of music out on the web, if you know where to find it. Rather than going to Google each time I forget where some bit of music is, I'm putting all the links here. Most of the music you'll find is in ABC format. At some point, I may put some of my own transcriptions up.

General

The ABC Home Page Everything you wanted to know about ABC notation...
John Chambers' ABC Music Collection Lots of tunes from all over Europe. [ABC]
Bert's Music A variety of folk music (and other music, and don't worry, there's an English version as well as Dutch). [ABC, MIDI, PNG, GIF]
Mickey Koth's List List of links to other sources of sheet music, notated for graphics files and ABC format.

Celtic

The Session Web community dedicated to sharing and discussing Irish traditional music. [ABC, GIF]
Henrik Norbeck Over 1600 Irish tunes. [ABC]
Richmond Contradance Ed Delany's information (and tune list) for the Richmond, IN contra dance scene.
LeSession A variety of music, primarily Celtic, but some French and Scandinavian thrown in for good measure. Look for the woodenflute mailing list archives. [ABC]
Edinburgh Shetland Fiddler's Association Information and music from the Shetlands Islands. [GIF, MIDI]

Scandinavian

Henrik Norbeck He's got a lot of Swedish music as well as Irish... [ABC]
Folkets Hus Spillefolk Around 1200 tunes, primarily from Scandinavia. [MIDI, PDF]
Mellan Ljungan och Ljusnan Lennart Sohlman's Swedish fiddle tunes. [ABC]
Spelmanslaget Strängar och Rör A student spelmanslag (music group) in Linköping. Click on Reportoar for the music. [JPG, MP3]
Östergötlands Spelmansförbund Traditional music association in Östergötland, with references to a number of performers. Music can be found under the section Låtar och viser. [GIF, MP3, MIDI]
Folkmusikhuset i Stockholm The Stockholm Folk Music House Association, holding singing, dancing, and instrumental events at Skeppsholmsgården, an old boat construction house. RealAudio streams are located under Låtar på Skeppis, and the second half of the page is a cornucopia of links to other places with sample music. [Real]
Blue Rose Karen Myers has a tremendous archive of Scandinavian folk music and information. The archive is fully searchable. [GIF of incipit, PDF, MP3]

Klezmer

Svenska Klezmerföreningen A Swedish Klezmer society. (It's all in Swedish, which is fine with me, but be warned...)
The Cincinnati Klezmer Project A midwest Klezmer group, with a few bits of sheet music. [GIF]