Old-Time Music Links

RECORDINGS: There are some great sites for listening to old time music on the web. For streaming web radio audio, I would recommend subscribing to John Salmon's Live365 Sugar in the Gourd. John has excellent taste, and offers a variety of contemporary and classic recordings. James Reidy's webpage, The Honking Duck, has Jim Bollman's old collection of classic 78s. Also, check out the Banjo Newsletter's MP3 page, which is packed with recordings of some great tune picking. Lately, I've been hanging around a lot of evenings in the threads and listening to some great MP3 files on the Jukebox and members homepages on the Banjo Hangout, where I have picked up lots of new tunes over the last couple of years. There are a growing number of fiddle MP3s being posted by members of the Fiddle Hangout, sister site to the Banjo Hangout, where you can hear a wide variety of styles and regions. Recently, I ran across this terrific webpage from some folks in Seattle, originally posted for an old time stringband class, featuring the playing of Greg Canote and Candy Goldman. They play fiddle and banjo duets- lots of great old-time tunes- at a pace fast enough to enjoy but slow enough to hear all the notes! The accompanying banjo tabs are for clawhammer, but they will give you a starting point.

For some great field recordings of old-time fiddlers check out the Henry Reed webpage, Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier, which is part of the Library of Congress American Memory project. The Digital Library of Appalachia, a project sponsored by a dozen Kentucky college and university libraries, contains dozens of field recordings of old-time fiddlers and banjo pickers. Morehead State University, Appalachian Development Center in Kentucky offers its excellent Vintage Fiddlers Oral History Project webpage, with field recordings of seven old-time Kentucky fiddlers.

TAB & MIDI: There are some great sites with MIDI files, which can be a great help when trying to remember a tune, or figure out the notes in a particularly difficult phrase. My favorite is Hetzler's Fakebook. All Tab's Old-Time Music collection has over 300 tabs and MIDI, many in Tabledit. There is also a bluegrass collection. Two great sources for banjo tabs is the tablature site at the Banjo Hangout, and Jack Baker's Fretted Instruments School webpage. For excellent background notes for a whole slew of tunes, many with the melodies in abc format, check out the Fiddler's Companion page, on the Ceolas website. If you are a clawhammer player, and you have stumbled upon this site, I strongly recommend Rob Quinlan's webpage, which has with an exhaustive list of clawhammer tab site links.

CHAT: Sometimes I like to sneak over to the Banjo Lounge, the original internet banjo chatroom. If you want to talk about all things banjo, ask questions, and hear all sorts of picking, check it out. The Banjo Hangout now has a live banjo chatroom, where pickers sit around and swap tunes.

TAB SOFTWARE: Again, I would also like to recommend the Tabledit software for tablature creation and editing. This is a great program, with excellent editing tools, clear printer output, and tremendous MIDI dynamic control and effects.