What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
I'm looking to expand my playing a bit, especially across genres. For the most part I play bluegrass or old time and do a lot of it by ear, but I play with sheet music too.
I'm curious what sheet music or books you have in your collection that you're particularly fond of. Any genre is okay, though bonus points for genres outside of bluegrass and old time (or even better if you can share some good stuff within those genres that most of us haven't heard about!).
Both tablature or standard music notation are good!
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
I have been loving August Watters' Exploring Classical Mandolin. Super good book for learning classical. Pieces at all different levels, etudes for each technique/skillset taught throughout the book, mp3 and video files of August playing to accompany and help your learning. It's really been an asset for me and a great way to get into classical. Plus, August is a forum member and has been very kind and personable via messages.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Thanks! I picked that one up recently and that's part of what's inspired me to explore even more!
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Check out anything by Allan Alexander.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Wow. Tough. I have most of the common stuff. Current favorites are Dwight Lamb's Danish Tunes, The Music of Elmo Wick: Fiddle Tunes of Crow River Country, and Traditional Scandinavian Folk Tunes by the Berntsons. None are mandolin specific. Just have good tunes.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Eric Platt
Wow. Tough. I have most of the common stuff. Current favorites are Dwight Lamb's Danish Tunes, The Music of Elmo Wick: Fiddle Tunes of Crow River Country, and Traditional Scandinavian Folk Tunes by the Berntsons. None are mandolin specific. Just have good tunes.
Ohh, I would love to hear or see something out of Dwight Lamb's Danish Tunes. Do you know of any recordings of the pieces? My mom's side of the family is Danish and I'm always looking for Danish stuff to play.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Ryan's Mammoth Collection. O'Neill's Music of Ireland-- the unedited version. To me, the Miles Krassen edition is only good for starting fires. The Old Time Fiddler's Repertory [out of print, I think].
Then there were those Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart guys, but they didn't write much for the mandolin.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Oh my goodness. I have shelf after shelf of tune books. Covering so much good stuff. OK staying out of old time, and the huge Milliner-Koken Collection, Bayard's collections, R.P. Christeson's two volume collection, Bolick and Austin's collection of Mississippi fiddle music, and staying out of classical, like Carlo Aonzos book of Classical Mandolin Solos, and ignoring traditional Irish, (which is a huge collection of books) and ignoring Scottish (no small collection either) and ignoring Nordic fiddle music, Klezmer and Eastern European fiddle music, New England and French Canadian and Cape Breton fiddle tunes and the contra dance repertory, thing like the Fiddler's Fakebook, The Portland Collection in three volumes, The Phillips Collection in two volumes, Kerr's Merry Melodies in several volumes, Peter Kennedy's Fiddler's Tune-Books in five volumes, Ryan's mentioned above, The Waltz Book I, II, III, and IV by Bill Matthiesen ... and limiting my recommendation to two, I would strongly recommend:
Ragtime for Fiddle and Mandolin by Stephen Parker.
Pete Loud's Collection of Northumbrian, Tyneside and Other Traditional Fiddle Tunes
I have to admit I don't have many Bluegrass specific books, and nothing all that original there.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
rcc56
The Old Time Fiddler's Repertory [out of print, I think].
Nope.
The Old Time Fiddler's Repertory Volume 1
The Old Time Fiddler's Repertory Volume 2
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MoreThanQuinn
Ohh, I would love to hear or see something out of Dwight Lamb's Danish Tunes. Do you know of any recordings of the pieces? My mom's side of the family is Danish and I'm always looking for Danish stuff to play.
Here's a YouTube video of Dwight playing some of these tunes https://youtu.be/u2wjPvWMMn8
There was a CD entitled Danish & American Melodies, but it may be out of print right now. At least I couldn't find it in a quick on line search.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
JeffD and I have a similar tune book library.
I'll add that there are earmarks in my copies of Aaron Weinstein's Chord Melody and Dan Sellman's Back Cello Suites books.
Also a half dozen jazz Fake Books.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Playing for English Country Dance sessions I was introduced to the Barnes Collection (two volumes) of old English and modern tunes for that type of dancing. These tend to be more stately or gentle than the reels and jigs the contra dancers want.
Contra dancers here use the Portland collection of dance tunes, which includes reels and jigs from various ethnic sources, in 3 volumes by Susan Songer. We also used the New England Fiddler's Repertoire, by Randy Miller and Jack Perron, from Fiddlecase books.
The Portland Collection is being completed in searchable PDF for displaying selected medleys on tablet computers. I will probably get one of these eventually---the jazz crowd uses them for Real Book and other collections of tunes.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tom Wright
Playing for English Country Dance sessions I was introduced to the Barnes Collection (two volumes) of old English and modern tunes for that type of dancing. These tend to be more stately or gentle than the reels and jigs the contra dancers want.
I love playing ECD mandolin!
Here are a couple links:
https://www.larkcamp.com/EnglishTunes.pdf
3 part harmony version I helped with:
https://www.larkcamp.com/EnglishTunesHarmony.pdf
https://larkcamp.com/CecilSharp.html
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Tocando com Jacob. A collection of choro tunes from a couple of Jacob do Bandolim albums from 1961-62. What makes this great are the accompanying CDs, with the original recorded tune, and the rhythm backing track that Jacob played along with. Pretty high tech for the time.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gary Leonard
Tocando com Jacob. A collection of choro tunes from a couple of Jacob do Bandolim albums from 1961-62. What makes this great are the accompanying CDs, with the original recorded tune, and the rhythm backing track that Jacob played along with. Pretty high tech for the time.
Jacob do Bandolim - great player!
https://kupdf.com/queue/jacob-do-ban...Y2MjU6OWIxZQ==
http://musicishealing.com/Bateria/Pa...teSongbook.pdf
https://www.choromusic.com/catalogo/...l#.Wo2YEiMrLSw
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Jazz and chord-melody books:
Don Stiernberg
Aaron Weinstein
Dix Bruce (has a few, with corresponding books for violin and guitar
Ted Eschlimann
Todd Collins (2 books: Modes and Fretobard studies)
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
“A Variety of Mandolin Music” published by Clifford Essex with introduction by Hugo D’Alton. Don’t know about it’s current availability. It really does have a variety of Music including a few by the Italians, Francia & a batch of DePace’s. There some nice chordal solo pieces, sort of Italian-Jethro chord melody style. & Bach, Chopin etc...Solos, duos, trios.
Cheesy yellow cover, but good content inside.
Joe B
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
I went bananas a few years ago and bought all the "white" choro books. Originally the first volume was only available because the editor passed away in the middle of production. Then his publishing company put out the other two which probably covers a big part of the repertoire.
In the old time genre, I have both editions of the Old Time Repertory which covers old time fiddle tunes from Missouri. Nice that those were re-printed a few years ago because they are excellent. I was lucky to inherit a copy of Garry Harrison's "Dear Old Illinois" book. It is supposed to be re-printed but for some reason still is not available. I also have The Milliner-Koken collection of fiddle tunes.
All of the above (including the choro) are in standard notation (no tab) because they are intended for multiple instruments.
For Irish tunes I downloaded this free book, conveniently split into two parts for printing and binding:
Kingston Irish Tunebook, part 1
Kingston Irish Tunebook, part 2
I have Ryan's Mammoth Collection from mid-19th Century which I love to read through to find some oddball tunes that few play these days.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
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Originally Posted by
Jim Garber
I found it interesting that the first tune of book two of this Irish Tunebook is Ashoken Farewell
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mark Gunter
I found it interesting that the first tune of book two of this Irish Tunebook is Ashoken Farewell
The Kingston books are actually quite nice with medleys and historical info included. Definitely worth the price. I guess they play Ashokan Farewell in their sessions in Canada.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
I was going to tell this story, but I already did.
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
I cannot sight read music, the books did not help, missed getting into band as a child. now I'm OLD..
but I have several.. still have to learn by hearing stuff..
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
My favorite book now is actually an app. iRealpro
It's only chords though, if I don't know the melody, will have to dig through a fakebook, though sometimes it's a good exercise to improvise directly from the harmony.
This is working to find lead sheets right now. Searchable. http://therealbook.info/aboutthis
Re: What Are Some Favorites In Your Collection?
I'm not much for tune books, since most the Irish/Scottish repertoire I'm interested in is well served by the huge database at thesession.org. But there have been a few I've found useful over the years, or that my fiddler S.O. has picked up:
Smoke In Your Eyes -- A Compilation of Irish Tunes Played at Seattle Sessions, collected by Caoimhin Gaimh. It's a great tune collection with common session settings (for this area, at least). More useful than something like O'Neil's, for "modern" settings of the tunes. Not easy to find, here's one source.
The Portland Collection -- It's a valuable reference for OldTime and Contra Dance tunes. Not quite as useful for Irish/Scottish repertoire, due to settings that are often different from common session settings. Still, a ton of great fiddle tunes in these books, often with background info about the tunes.
Lunasa Notai - Music from the Recordings of Lunasa -- Great for some of the background stories.
Altan: The Tunes -- This was just released, and my copy is on the way. Looking forward to this one, for the stories as well as the tunes.
At this point, there is so much available on the Internet that if I'm paying for a printed tunebook, I want more than tunes. I want some good background about the printed sheet music.