Getting Started

Welcome to the Traditional Tunes Archive.

This site is a Wiki, a website that allows users to collaboratively edit it. If you've not used a wiki before, you may want to have a look at the What are Wikis, and Why Should You Use Them? and Wikipedia Wiki pages.

More specifically, this site is powered by the Mediawiki software (used on Wikipedia, the Traditional Tune Archive and many other sites). The rendering of About ABC Music Notation into a visible score is provided by the ABC Javascript (abcjs) package, without which this site would not be possible.

Please note the following naming conventions for tunes. The name (title) of the page should match that of the tune, with the following caveats. Do not duplicate a title that already exists: instead, use parenthesis after the page name to indicate a different version with the same name e.g. "Knotted Cord (3)". Place the articles "A", "An", "The" in parenthesis at the end of the title, and after any version number [e.g. "Knotted Cord (3) (The)]. Also note that only some punctuation characters are allowed in the name (title) of a page. If you stick to A-Za-z0-9"()',.-^_ you will be fine.

To add or modify content on a wiki, you Edit the relevant page. If it does not exist, it will be created, otherwise you can view and modify the current content. On this site, most pages contain details of a traditional tune, using ABC Music Notation, entered into the correct place in the supplied page template. Specifically, you should replace all the lines between the <pre> and </pre> tags at the top with the abc notation for your tune. Also follow the instructions for other changes needed on the page. You should then provide a brief summary of what you have done, and then select the Show preview button to review your changes. This will show you a rendered version of the page, including the sheet music. Fix any errors and repeat. When you are happy with the page, select the Save page button to save the page.

Hence you don't really need to know much about the wiki markup used in these pages, as you can just copy and paste in some abc code. If you do want to know more about the markup though, have a look at Lawrie's guide to Getting Started Editing Wiki Pages. There are other links on the Help:Contents page.

If you want to explore how some abc notation will be rendered using the abcjs package, have a play with our ABC Sandbox.

Enjoy!