Nigel Gatherer's ABC Tune Collection

In the early days of internet people used "dial-up" and bandwidth was pecious and expensive. Sharing files was not easy and not desirable, but text ruled: text files were the best way to disseminate information over the web.

ABC notation was devised, based on older systems, but specifically adapted to the computer age. Tunes were typed with keyboards, adhering to a few simple rules, and took up very few bytes.

I used ABC notation for a few years to share tunes and to generate staff notation for hand-out sheets for my classes. I ended up with more than a thousand tunes, and I packaged them in nine digital books called Nigel's Notebooks, each consisting of 100 tunes.

Now all of these tunes can be accessed in a new way; you can view the tunes in staff notation, or add tablature. You can also hear the tunes, and slow them down, and there's even a "learning mode" in which you may isolate parts of the tune and loop them. Use the links below to open the nine volumes of Nigel's Notebooks.

Finally, email me with any comments or of you spot any mistakes.

This resource was made possible by Michael Eskin's remarkable ABC Transcription Tools. If you wish to try out these tools yourself, visit Michael's website.