Tunes and Tips
Here are the sets of tunes we commonly play at pub and house sessions. Left click a link to view in browser, right click and "save as" to download a file.
If you're just starting out, start learning in this order: 17, 1,2,3,4,7,18,21,6....
Christmas Collection: tunes we often play during the Christmas season. Many thanks to Prairie Mountain Fiddlers for sharing many of their arrangements!
Download a midi player: The VanBasco Karaoke Midi Player is a great tool to play midis at your own speed for learning. PC only. For a similar software for Mac try QMidi.
Cape Breton Fiddlers Association Tunes
The Cape Breton Fiddlers Association also maintains a list of sets they play for concerts and events. It's a good place to look for new tunes to learn. Check it out here. If you join the association you'll also be supporting fiddling in Cape Breton, be able to play with CBFA at concerts, and have access to extra practice resources.
Tune Search
To really capture the Cape Breton flavour of a tune, it is best to hear it played by a Cape Breton fiddler. Use Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recording Index to locate publicly available recordings containing the tune you are interested in. The index also returns the first few bars of the tune in notation and midi, it is very helpful when you know a tune but can't quite get it started (it happens to us all!)
Index | Full Downloads |History
The Tune Index page contains a full index of all tunes in all sets. They are sorted by tune name, key, set and tune type.
Here is one great big file that contains all tunes from 1 to 52: Full Book .This file is set up to print two-sided, blank pages are included so that two page sets open facing each other. The full set list is included as a Table of Contents.
To see what has changed since the last time you downloaded tunes from the website you can use the Tune Page Change History. It contains a detailed list of what changed and when.
