Tunebooks Created with Michael Eskin's ABC Transcription Tools


Michael Eskin, headshot photo

Here you will find many free PDF tunebooks created with my ABC Transcription Tools.

Most of the tunebooks have both a standard notation version as well as tablature versions for many instruments including Mandolin, Ukulele, Fiddle Fingerings, Irish Bouzouki (GDAD), Guitar, Mountain Dulcimer, Tin Whistle, B/C and C#/D Box, and Anglo Concertina.

Click on any tune name in the tunebook's Table of Contents or Index to jump to the tune.

The tune pages in the books are interactive, clicking on the tune's title will open the tune for playback in my ABC Transcription Tools player.

From the Player, click "Start Tune Trainer" to practice the tune looped with increasing speed each time or several times through.

I'm frequently adding new tunebooks, or updating older ones with new content and features, so be sure to bookmark this page and check back every few weeks!


Table of Contents

Click the links below to jump to the selected tunebook section


My Tip Jars


How to Use the Interactive Tunebooks


Changing the Instruments Used for Playing Tunes from the Tunebooks


Comhaltas San Diego Tune Learning Session Tunebook
100+ tunes taught at the weekly Comhaltas San Diego Tune Learning Session


"The King Street Sessions Tunebook"
Over 1000 Tunes With Both Notation and Tablature for Various Instruments


CCE Dublin 2001 Tunebook
116 Popular Tunes With Both Notation and Tablature for Various Instruments


O'Flaherty's Irish Retreat Tunes Played Slowly 2024
2024 Retreat Tunes With Both Notation and Tablature for Various Instruments


Tune Settings Transcribed and Tunes Composed by Mike McHale
Mike Hale's tune settings from approximately 20 years of teaching workshops,
classes and lessons collected by Colleen O’Sullivan and Neal Warshaw


O'Carolan Tunes Transcribed by Brennan / Black / Gilb


A Dozen Lovely Waltzes With Tablature for Box and Anglo Concertina


Anglo Concertina / Button Accordion "Party Piece" Hornpipes


A Collection of 28 Renaissance Lute Pieces


Shape Note Hymns from The Open Hymnal Project


How to Read the B/C and C#/D Box Tablature


How to Read the Anglo Concertina Tablature


Using the PDF Tunebooks on iOS and Android Devices


Contact Me



My Tip Jars
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These tunebooks as well as my ABC Transcription Tools are completely free.

If you find these tunebooks useful, please support my ongoing development
of my ABC tools by tossing a few bucks into one of my virtual tip jars:

PayPal
https://paypal.me/MichaelEskin

Venmo
@MichaelEskin


Comhaltas San Diego Tune Learning Session Tunebook
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Comhaltas San Diego Tune Learning Session Tunebook

100+ tunes taught at the weekly tune learning session in Balboa Park

Updated periodically with additional tunes


Standard Notation

Click to Download

Standard Notation - First Line Incipits

Click to Download


Mandolin Tablature

Click to Download


Tenor Banjo Tablature

Click to Download


Standard Guitar Tablature

Click to Download


Whistle Tablature

Click to Download



"The King Street Sessions Tunebook"
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King Street Sessions Incipits Tunebook

Over 1000 Tunes With Both Notation and Tablature for Various Instruments

Created with the permission of the original author, Michael D. Long

Click the title of any tune to play

Click the >> next to any tune to jump to the Index

Click any tune name in the Index to jump to the tune


Michael Long's Original PDF Tunebook

Click to Download"

Standard Notation Full Tune Version

Click to Download

Notation Incipits Version

Click to Download

Text Incipits Version

Click to Download
(Smallest PDF file available with full interactivity)


Mandolin Tab

Click to Download


Tenor Banjo Tab

Click to Download


Ukulele Tab (for Flatpicking)

Click to Download


Fiddle Fingering Tab

Click to Download


Irish Bouzouki (GDAD) Tab

Click to Download


Standard Guitar Tab

Click to Download


DADGAD Guitar Tab

Click to Download


DAD-Tuned Mountain Dulcimer

Tablature for a DAD tuned instrument with a 6 1/2 fret
(836 tunes from the original collection).

High D String Linear Style

Click to Download

Cross-String Style

Click to Download


Tin Whistle / Irish Flute (D) Tab

Click to Download


Walkthough of the B/C and C#/D Box Interactive Tablature PDF Editions


B/C Box Tab

Click to Download

How to Read the B/C Box Tablature


C#/D Box Tab

Click to Download

How to Read the C#/D Box Tablature


Jeffries-style Anglo Concertina Cross-Row Tab

Click to Download

Favors playing D5 and E5 on the left-side G-row.

Favors playing C5 on the left-side G-row draw.

Favors playing B4 on the right-side C-row draw.

Favors 2nd button on right-side top-row for C#5 and D#5.

How to Read the Anglo Concertina Tablature


Wheatstone-style Anglo Concertina Cross-Row Tab

Click to Download

Favors playing D5 and E5 on the left-side G-row.

Favors playing C5 on the left-side G-row draw.

Favors playing B4 on the right-side C-row draw.

How to Read the Anglo Concertina Tablature


Great Highland Bagpipe Chanter and Drones
Tuning at A=454Hz for Practice Chanters

This version has the tunes all transposed to the key of A, folded
to the range of the chanter, and plays with both the chanter and drones

Click to Download



CCE Dublin 2001 Tunebook
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116 Popular Tunes With Both Notation and Tablature for Various Instruments

CCE Dublin 2001 Tunebook

Click any tune name in Table of Contents and Index to go to the tune's page.

On the tune's page, click the title to open it in my ABC Transcription Tool's Player.

From the Player, click "Start Tune Trainer" to practice the tune looped with
increasing speed each time or several times through.

Click the  <<  and  >>  arrows to return to the Table of Contents or Index.


Standard Notation

Click to Download


Standard Notation First Line Incipits

Click to Download


Scottish Bagpipes

These versions have all the tunes in the tunebook transposed to the key of A
folded to the range of the chanter, and plays with both the chanter and drones

Click to Download the Great Highland Bagpipe A=480Hz (Pipe band high tuning)
(Chanter + drones) Version

Click to Download the Great Highland Bagpipe A=466Hz (Bb)
(Chanter + drones) Version

Click to Download the Great Highland Bagpipe A=454Hz
(Practice chanter + drones) Version

Click to Download the Great Highland Bagpipe A=440Hz
(Chanter + drones) Version


Mandolin Tab

Click to Download


Ukulele Tab (for Flatpicking)

Click to Download


Fiddle Fingerings

Click to Download


Irish Bouzouki (GDAD) Tab

Click to Download


Cittern (Open-A DAEAC#) Tab

Click to Download


Guitar (Standard Tuning) Tab

Click to Download


Guitar (Open-A DAEAC#E) Tab

Click to Download


Tin Whistle (D) Tab

Click to Download


B/C and C#/D Box Tab

Click to Download the B/C Version

Click to Download the C#/D Version

How to Read the B/C and C#/D Box Tablature


Anglo Concertina Tab

Click to Download the Jeffries-style Version

Click to Download the Wheatstone-style Version

How to Read the Anglo Concertina Tablature



O'Flaherty's Irish Retreat Tunes Played Slowly 2024
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O'Flaherty's Irish Retreat Tunes 2024

Click any tune name in Table of Contents and Index to go to the tune's page.

On the tune's page, click the title to open it in my ABC Transcription Tool's Player.

From the Player, click "Start Tune Trainer" to practice the tune looped with
increasing speed each time or several times through.

The instrument-specific tab versions play with the instrument's sound.

Click the  <<  and  >>  arrows to return to the Table of Contents or Index.


Click any of the links below to download the Interactive PDF tunebook:


Standard Notation

Click to Download


Standard Notation Incipits

Click to Download


Mandolin Tab

Click to Download


First Position Fiddle Fingerings

Click to Download


Irish Bouzouki (GDAD) Tab

Click to Download


Tenor Banjo Tab

Click to Download


Guitar (Standard Tuning) Tab

Click to Download


Tin Whistle (D) Tab

Click to Download


B/C Box Tab

Click to Download


C#/D Box Tab

Click to Download


How to Read the B/C and C#/D Box Tablature


Scottish Bagpipe Versions

These versions have had all tunes transposed to the key of A
(no change to the modes) and also have drones injected.


Great Highland Bagpipe (A:480Hz - Pipe band high tuning)

Click to Download


Great Highland Bagpipe (A:466Hz - Standard Bb)

Click to Download


Great Highland Bagpipe (A:454Hz - Practice chanter)

Click to Download


Great Highland Bagpipe (A:440Hz)

Click to Download


Scottish Smallpipes in A

Click to Download


Scottish Smallpipes in D

Click to Download



Tune Settings Transcribed and Tunes Composed by Mike McHale
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Mike McHale Tunebooks

Introduction by Neal Warshaw

"These tunebooks contain all of the settings for the tunes which Mike McHale transcribed over approximately 20 years of teaching workshops, classes and lessons which were collected by Colleen O’Sullivan and Neal Warshaw.

There are approximately 600 tunes, of which, about 200 were included in the 2 tunebooks published with the help of Hilari Farrington Koehler and Benedict Koehler.

Tunes transcribed the first few years were hand written and some of the tunes are a bit faint but after a while Mike got the hang of a computer app.

Mike was a big fan of Paddy O’Brien and his cousin, Sean Ryan. Their compositions are included and acknowledged.

In the last few years of his life Mike composed a number of tunes himself and these are in a separate tunebook."


Gary Martin generated the PDF tunebooks from the transcriptions.


Here is an article on Mike McHale published by the CCE Mid-Atlantic Region:

Click to View


Reels

Click to Download


Jigs

Click to Download


Hornpipes

Click to Download


Miscellaneous Tunes

Click to Download


Original Compositions

Click to Download


Click the title of any tune to immediately play the tune using my
ABC Transcription Tools.



O'Carolan Tunes Transcribed by Brennan / Black / Gilb
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Over 200 O'Carolan tunes, click the title of any tune to play it.

O'Carolan Tunes

There are several versions of the interactive PDF tunebook:


Harp + Drones in the Key of the Tune

Click to Download


Notation Incipits Version - First Stave Notation of Each Tune

Click to Download


Text Incipits Version - First Three Bars of Each Tune, Sorted by Name

Click to Download


Irish Bouzouki with GDAE Tablature

Click to Download


Irish Bouzouki with GDAD Tablature

Click to Download



A Dozen Lovely Waltzes With Tablature for Box and Anglo Concertina
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A Dozen Lovely Waltzes

Click the title of any tune to immediately play the tune using my
ABC Transcription Tools with my high-quality Accordion and Concertina samples.

How to Read the B/C and C#/D Box Tablature

How to Read the Anglo Concertina Tablature


B/C Box

Click to Download


C#/D Box

Click to Download


Anglo Concertina (Jeffries)

Click to Download


Anglo Concertina (Wheatstone)

Click to Download



Anglo Concertina / Button Accordion "Party Piece" Hornpipes
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Six of my favorite arpeggio-heavy hornpipes to play on
Anglo Concertina and Button Accordion.

Hornpipes for Anglo Concertina/Box

Anglo Concertina

Click to Download


Button Accordion

Click to Download



A Collection of 28 Renaissance Lute Pieces
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Renaissance Lute Pieces

Arranged for Guitar

Click to Download


Arranged for Harp

Click to Download


Arranged for Chorused Guitar (nylon)

Click to Download



Shape Note Hymns from The Open Hymnal Project
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Over 200 hymns with shape notes from the 2014 Open Hymnal Project collection.

Shape Note Hymns from The Open Hymnal Project

There are two versions of the interactive PDF tunebook.

The Full Version has the complete hymns.

The Incipits Version has only the first stave of each hymn.


Full Version

Click to Download


Incipits Version

Click to Download


In both versions, you can click on any hymn name in the Table of Contents
or Index to go to the page for the hymn.

Once on the page for the hymn, click the hymn title to play the hymn
in my ABC Transcriptions Tools.

These are both fairly large files, please be sure to save them to your system after downloading from your browser.

Note: Because of the words in the hymns, the tunebook playback links (which contain the entire hymn notes and words encoded in them) are very long.

Most will not work properly if the PDF is opened with Adobe Acrobat, which has a small URL length limit for opening hyperlinks in the PDF.

Virtually all other PDF readers, including those built into the popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have no problem with the tunebook playback links.

Your best bet is to just drop the PDF tunebook file on a browser window to view it, or open it in a mobile app like GoodReader for iOS.



How to Use the Interactive Tunebooks
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Click the << arrows on the left side of the tune pages to jump to the Table of Contents.

Click the >> arrows on the right side of the tune pages to jump to the Index.

Click on any tune name in the Table of Contents or Index to jump to that tune in the tunebook.

Playing the tunes:

Click the title of any tune to immediately play the tune using my ABC Transcription Tools.

The player control bar has mouse hover tooltips on all the controls explaining what they do.

To change the play speed, use the speed control highlighted here in the playback controls:

Setting the playback speed

Value is a percentage, set a value of 60 or 70 to slow a tune down for learning.

Click the Start Tune Trainer button to open up a "step-up" tune player with the tune where you can practice playing along with the tune looped with increasing tempos.

Click Export Audio or Image to save the tune either as a .WAV or .MP3 file, or export an image of the tune in PNG, JPG, or SVG formats.

Click the Settings button to set the playback instruments.

Editing your own version of the tunes:

If you click "Close" in the the player, you will be in the ABC Transcription Tools full screen tune view.

From the full screen view, you can open the player again by clicking the Play button in the lower right corner, or create a PDF of the tune by clicking the PDF button at the lower left corner.

Click the zoom arrows in the top right corner to close the full screen tune view and open the tune editor.

Once in the ABC Transcription Tools tune editor, you can view, edit, save, or create a PDF of the tune.

For complete information on editing the tunes, please check out the:

ABC Transcription Tools User Guide

Don't forget to save the PDF:

Be sure to save the PDF file to your system after downloading if your browser doesn't automatically save it for you.


Changing the Instruments Used for Playing Tunes from the Tunebooks
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It's easy to have your preferred instrument sounds used for the tune playback instead of the instrument sound that may be specified for a tune in the Interactive PDF tunebooks.

Here are the steps to follow:

1) Play a tune from the PDF tunebook by clicking on its title.

2) Click Settings at the bottom right of the Player. The Player Instrument Settings dialog will appear.

3) Set the Default abcjs soundfont selection to your preferred soundfont from the dropdown menu. The different soundfonts provide different sounding versions of each instrument.

4) Set the Melody and Bass/Chords MIDI instruments to your preferred instrument sounds from the dropdown menus.

5) Set the Bass and Chord volumes. Values are from 0-127. Generally values from 32-64 work best.

6) Important:  Click the checkbox labeled "Override all MIDI programs and volumes in the ABC when playing tunes"

This will force the Player to use your preferred instrument instead of whatever instrument might be selected by the tunebook.

7) Close the Player Instrument Settings dialog.

Now, going forward, all tunes you click in an Interactive PDF tunebook will use your preferred instrument sounds and volumes.

To turn off the instrument and volume overrides, repeat the process, and uncheck "Override all MIDI programs and volumes in the ABC when playing tunes" in the Player Instrument Settings dialog


How to Read the B/C and C#/D Box Tablature
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B/C - Shows standard notation and tablature for a standard 21-button B/C tuned box.

The button numbers and pitches used for the tablature match those on this chart:

B/C Box Button Map

Notes on the C-row are indicated by numbers: 1, 2, 3, ...

Notes on the B-row are indicated by numbers in circles: ①, ②, ③, ...

Push is indicated with a "↓" arrow.

Draw is indicated with an "↑" arrow.

Click here to download a PDF of the B/C tablature chart


C#/D - Shows standard notation and tablature for a standard 21-button C#/D tuned box.

The button numbers and pitches used for the tablature match those on this chart:

C#/D Box Button Map

Notes on the D-row are indicated by numbers: 1, 2, 3,...

Notes on the C#-row are indicated by numbers in circles: ①, ②, ③, ...

Push is indicated with a "↓" arrow.

Draw is indicated with an "↑" arrow.

Click here to download a PDF of the C#/D tablature chart


Assumptions about the B/C and C#/D Box tablature solutions:

The tablature solution assumes that the "magic" notes (E and B on a B/C, F# and C# on a C#/D) that are available on both rows, will be played on the C-row on a B/C box and on the D-row on a C#/D box.


Use of the B/C and C#/D Box tablatures on a 23-button instrument:

If you are playing a 23-button instrument, you will need to shift your start position one button higher when playing.

Consider your first button as "button zero".


How to Read the Anglo Concertina Tablature
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Tablature Button Names

Wheatstone Layout

Jeffries Layout

Click here to download a PDF of the Anglo Concertina tablature chart


Using the PDF Tunebooks on iOS and Android Devices
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While the PDF tunebooks are generally intended for desktop or laptop use, in most cases they can be used on mobile devices with some caveats.

Tune playback may not work in some iOS or Android app embedded web browser views, like the one in the iOS Facebook app.

If opening the PDF tunebook from Facebook on a mobile device, use the "Open in system browser" option (click the ... at the lower right of the web view) in the Facebook embedded web browser to re-open the file in Safari (iOS) or on Android on the device's main browser.

If using the tunebook on an iPad, be sure the PDF reader you are using is set to open web links in Safari, not an embedded browser.

On iOS, the tunebook has been tested and works with Safari, Books, Files, and GoodReader if you enable "Open web links in Safari" in the GoodReader app preferences.

Also make sure you haven't turned on the Mute control in the iPad control panel or the Mute switch on the side of an iPhone.

I have done limited testing on Android devices, unsure of the behavior on the various browsers on those devices.

Both the ABC Transcription Tools and Interactive PDF tunebook playback have been verified on an older Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge running Google Chrome as the default web browser and the "PDF Viewer" Android app:


Contact Me

Michael Eskin, headshot photo

If you have any questions, please email me at:

Michael Eskin

seisiuneer@gmail.com