I discovered JC’s abc tune finder, and at first I was wondering why it returned a zillion results for each song, but now I’m wondering why none of the links work. When I click on the PDFs or GIFs, I’m lucky if I find one that works after clicking on about twenty. On some songs, I can’t find any that work.
Has anyone else had problems with this site? I hope the problems are temporary.
I was just there and it is working fine. I tried five tunes in all formats and they worked.
MarkB
Well, I tried a different browser, and most of the links seem to work now. Sorry, should have tried that in the first place.
So back to my first question, why are there so many results for each song? I know there are slight variations for any particular song, but a lot of the results seem to be duplicates.
Jen, that has always been a mystery to me also. Maybe someone else can explain the mystery to us.
MarkB
It’s because JC’s tune finder is not a repository of tunes, but a search engine. The tunes it finds are actually stored in many different sites scattered over the web. JC’s robot regularly checks the contents of these various sites and indexes them.
When you type in a search, it merely lists every match in its indexes. When you click on a link, the tune is retrieved from the place where it is stored and displayed in the format you request.
Usually some of the results listed are identical, because people store copies of other people’s transcriptions on their own sites. You can usually (but not always) spot this by looking at the index number, key and header fields.
But then there are different transcriptions by different people, taken from different books, recordings or whatever.
I find it a very good thing that there are multiple transcriptions to choose from. That’s because I usually have a version of the tune I’m looking for in my head and I can choose the one that is closest to what I want, and then edit it for my own purposes. Not everything that JC finds is a good transcription…
If you’re looking for an authoritative, definitive, single version of a tune, of course, I can see that multiple versions might be frustrating. But that’s not how Irish music works!
Thanks Steve, I kind of thought that but wasn’t sure and didn’t want to put my foot to deeply into my mouth. I to search the list for versions of the same tune.
MarkB
I love comparing different versions of the same tune. I’ve learned a lot by doing it.
It’s also nice to know that there are others out there who do the same!
Different versions also mean that if you have difficulty with one set of fingerings,
then you may be able to find a slightly different way to play the tune that sounds authentic,
and you are able to play.
Not that I ever adopt the easiest fingering for a tune!
No!
Not me
Has anyone gotten the advanced search to work? In particular, searching for the ABC for the beginning of a tune? E.g., “G2G AB” It never seems to work for me – on JC’s machines it returns all tunes, and on the others it returns none!?
– Scott