irishtune.info Newsletter

irishtune.info Newsletter 2012

2012-11-14T20:22:07Z

Sent on 14 November 2012

Dear irishtune.info Newsletter subscribers,

Here's issue #3, finally. It has been two years since issue #2, mainly because last year a generous donor took care of fundraising needs for 2011. But this year irishtune.info is facing a $159 shortfall! Please do show your support.

In this issue:

Irishtune.info Growth
Growing my.irishtune.info Membership and Data
Invitation to the Facebook Page
What Your Donation Will Do for irishtune.info

1. Irishtune.info Growth Report

Playable Audio Clips

The biggest accomplishment was the introduction of instantly playable audio snippets of each tune recording, on Nov. 11, 2011. This represented the culmination of years of scheming and preparatory work. The manual work of precisely locating the clips for each tune within each track was, however, only mostly done by then, and it continues to this day; so far you can hear the opening bars from about 13,000 of the 16,000 tune recordings in the database.

Once that work is closer to 100% completion, you will see the playable audio feature appear more thoroughly throughout irishtune.info.

Expanded Coverage

Since Nov. 2010 (Newsletter #2), irishtune.info has expanded its coverage by:

76 albums (for a current total of 572)
4 tunebooks (for a current total of 56)
540 distinct tunes and songs (for a current total of 5,451)

You can browse exactly which albums and tunebooks were added to the database and when, by browsing our Facebook page (even if you do not have a Facebook account), at https://www.facebook.com/irishtune

Many of the added albums were either directly donated or funded by donors. Let me point out the detailed list of donors which I publish at:

http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html#donors

2. Growing my.irishtune.info Membership and Data

More and more people are using the personalized my.irishtune.info features. So far 760 people have created accounts, although only 209 have logged in this year. As you can see in “Top Session Tunes,” so far 304 people have entered at least some of their repertoire, and 25 individuals have entered repertoires of 100 or more tunes. This is giving us a better and better picture of global tune popularity.

A sample of where irishtune.info members are.

Go ahead and create yourself an account! It's very easy:

http://www.irishtune.info/my/register.php

3. Invitation to the Facebook Page

Even if you do not use Facebook, you can follow updates, news, and user comments about irishtune.info on this public Web page:

https://www.facebook.com/irishtune

If you are a Facebook user, please "like" this page, an action which helps promote the visibility of irishtune.info and occasionally inserts our updates into your newsfeed.

4. What Your Donation Will Do for irishtune.info

The main reason for this Newsletter going dormant last year was the impact of a huge, anonymous donation of US$500, which meant there was no need last year for a fundraising drive. Thank you, o Anonymous!

But only 6 weeks remain before the fiscal end of 2012, and your support is definitely needed this time, to cover what currently stands as a $159 shortfall.

The major expense this year was to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity generously offered to irishtune.info just last month by Paul Kinder, a concertina player in Indiana who decided to retire from the music and let irishtune.info purchase some of his CD collection at a very favorable price. I took a risk and carefully selected 38 CDs that filled some musicologically significant gaps for irishtune.info. Now we need to pay for those …

How to donate:

http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html

Here are some more reasons why irishtune.info needs your donations:

$60 / year: Basic fees I pay to keep the Web site alive.
$130 / year: Amortized costs of the tech stuff I use exclusively for building irishtune.info
$110 (this year): other CDs and tunebooks (before the Kinder acquisition) purchased exclusively for inclusion in irishtune.info - $40 of which comes from debts carried over from previous years.
Wish-list item: $75 / year to maintain a secure (SSL) Web server to keep your data private and keep irishtune.info from getting "blacklisted." Currently we have to share a Web server with other customers whose bad behavior has gotten the entire server blacklisted several times in recent years, preventing entire countries (such as the UK) from being able to reach irishtune.info at all.
Wish-list item ("thinking big!"): $300 / year to upgrade to a private server where I would be allowed to customize the database and build much more powerful and superior tune-search features.

Please consider becoming a “Patron” for $5 / month, or a “Supporter” for $2 / month, or even just a “Fan” for $6 per year, or showing your support in some other way:

http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html

Finally, as you go holiday shopping in the next month, please remember that a very easy way to support irishtune.info is to use the "Go Shopping" links (to Amazon, CD Baby, etc.) from the above page as you do your holiday shopping this year ... At no cost to you, while you send a cut of those corporate profits towards a good cause ...

Thank you and best wishes,

Alan Ng

irishtune.info Newsletter 2010

2010-11-25T01:28:24Z

Dear irishtune.info Newsletter subscribers,

Here's issue #2 - a year later! Maybe this will be just an annual newsletter after all, not 2 or 3 times a year. This seems like a good time of year because: 'tis the season to support your favorite good causes.

Irish traditional music is a community. irishtune.info aims to support that community. Likewise, it needs *your* support. It is yours to use, and as such, it is "ours." Noone else but you is supporting it, and my work is always absolutely unpaid. This year we are on track for our worst-ever year of financial support -- in fact, we are currently going into debt! On the other hand, we can be grateful for the record number of people who donated a record number of traditional CDs that were missing in the database. (Thank you!)

So the main message is: please show your support!

Topics covered in this issue:

my.irishtune.info Growth
News Summary
Invitation to the Facebook Page
Reasons to Donate to irishtune.info

1. my.irishtune.info Growth

A year ago, we first saw the personalization features begin appearing for public use. For example: track your own repertoire, practice it efficiently, track your own album collection and see, for any tune, which sources you happen to have in your collection. Also, a raft of social-networking features let you track you and your musician friends easily track each other's activity regarding your newest tunes and music acquisitions. I have put a fair amount of work this year into improving and adding features.

Slowly but surely, the number of musicians around the world who are using these features is not just growing, but accelerating. To date, 357 people have created free accounts, about half of whom have at least started entering their repertoires. 108 of them have indicated their geographic location, which gives us a fascinating map:

A sample of where irishtune.info members are.

Go ahead and create yourself an account! It's very easy:
http://www.irishtune.info/my/register.php

2. News Summary

Yes, I did get some actual musicological work done, too, especially thanks to the seventeen generous donations of one or more CDs to irishtune.info over the course of this year. (See who gave what.)

Some overall stats: irishtune.info now covers 494 albums and 52 books of Irish traditional music, i.e., 22,645 separate tune recordings and transcriptions. I have determined that those 494 albums contain just 4,911 musically distinct tunes. And (only) 2,178 of those tunes can be found at all in any of those books. We are rapidly approaching the milestone of documenting 5,000 distinct tunes! (N.b.: Generally about 13% of the total tunes are actually songs, an area of research which is only superficially addressed in irishtune.info.)

You can browse exactly which albums were added to the database, and when, by visiting our Facebook page.

3. Invitation to the Facebook Page

Even if you do not use Facebook, you can follow updates, news, and user comments about irishtune.info on this public Web page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/irishtuneinfo/19001127892

If you are a Facebook user, please "like" this page, an action which helps promote the visibility of irishtune.info, and which inserts our updates into your newsfeed.

4. Reasons to Donate to irishtune.info

How to donate:

http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html

Here are some reasons why irishtune.info needs your donations:

$75 / year: Basic fees I pay to keep the existing Website alive.
$150 / year: Amortized costs of the tech stuff I use exclusively for maintaining irishtune.info:
Wishlist: $24 / year to improve global access to irishtune.info by renting a dedicated IP address, so that rogue or hijacked sites who also live on our low-budget shared server won't cause irishtune.info to get "blacklisted." (We got blacklisted at least twice in the past year, according to reports from two different customers of UK Internet service providers).
Wishlist ("dream on!"): $500 / year to upgrade to a "private" server where we would be allowed to install powerful and fine-tuned tune-search features, and build many other exciting technology upgrades.
A budget to buy CDs and tunebooks that you think should be added to irishtune.info. If you donate, let me know which CDs or books you want to see added!
Used or new CDs that are not yet covered in irishtune.info.

Please consider subscribing for just US $6.00 per year, or showing your support in some other way:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html

Finally, as you go holiday shopping in the next month, please remember that a very easy way to support irishtune.info is to use the "Go Shopping" links (to Amazon, CD Baby, etc.) from the above page as you do your holiday shopping this year ... At no cost to you, while you send a cut of those corporate profits towards a good cause ...

Thank you and best wishes,
Alan Ng

irishtune.info Newsletter 2009 News and Future

2009-11-28T11:55:59Z

Dear irishtune.info Newsletter subscribers,

This newsletter, re-emerging now after a full year of silence, will be approximately a twice-a-year affair. If you are no longer interested in irishtune.info, or need to change your e-mail address, there is an instant, self-unsubscribe link for you to use at the very end of this e-mail.

Topics covered in this issue:

What Happened to the Newsletter since October 2008?
Biggest Headline of the Past Year: my.irishtune.info
Invitation to the Facebook Page
News Summary
Help Upgrade irishtune.info

1. What Happened to the Newsletter since October 2008?

The company that was providing the server for irishtune.info apparently went out of business silently in early November 2008. We were left high and dry for a few days until I set things up at what is now the current hosting company. The only thing that was lost in the process was this Newsletter's online archives, going back to the year 2002, and any individual subscriber settings you may have had, such as digest options, etc. Fortunately I was able to extract your e-mail addresses, and that is exactly who is getting this first new Newsletter. Now that you original subscribers have received this, I will now open the new Newsletter to new subscribers. The archives will have to start from scratch right here!

This new Newsletter does not have a digest option, but it does have a number of advantages:
* Less frequent and with less details. If you want more frequent updates and conversation, see the "Invitation to the Facebook Page" below.
* Online archive - easy to browse and search the archives even if you don't subscribe.
* RSS feed - you can get notified of new issues even if you don't subscribe.
* Portable - I can easily move this newsletter to a different server or to an entirely different mailing-list program for any reason.

2. Biggest Headline of the Past Year

... was the the public release of "my.irishtune.info" (My Irish Tune Info)

As you may have noticed while using irishtune.info this year, I finally turned "on" for public use the "my.irishtune.info" personalization features I had been building for myself and a small, private group of fellow musicians over the past several years.

In short, you can now use irishtune.info to track and maintain your personal repertoire, as well as keep track of your friends' repertoires. Think of it as combination of a slick playlist management and practice tool combined with a Facebook-like social network. Plus the data you contribute will form, in an entirely anonymous way, the basis for me to publish fascinating information about the global popularity of tunes and albums, the geographic distribution of the associated players, and trends over time.

I eat my own dog food. That is, all the personalization features I've added are things I find valuable and even crucial for my day-to-day life as a practicing traditional musician. I became addicted to the utility and power of the "Practice Machine" back when it was a primitive for-Alan's-use-only tool on my personal computer back in 2000, and I have been gradually refining it ever since then while I use it every day. You can depend on its reliability as much as I have for the past 9 years. I am positive that it has increased the quality of my playing and repertoire in many ways.

And the newer social-networking features are things I specifically designed to apply to one's local musical community. There is no ambition to "link up the world" here. This is about providing tools to strengthen the real-world musical community you live in, nothing broader. And nothing about you is shared with anyone other than with people you have manually, consciously identified as people with whom you play Irish music. Instead of silly "news" about what someone ate for breakfast, the news is highly focused on musically relevant events. For example, when a friend learns a new tune, you automatically get notified exactly what tune that was and where you could learn it, too.

Go ahead and create yourself an account. It's very easy:
http://www.irishtune.info/my/register.php

The only caveat is that you'll feel the meaning of the "beta" (meaning "not quite finished") label mainly in the lack of documentation and spit-and-polish. Everything works and is reliable, but it may not always be pretty or obvious. That will come ... along with many other planned features ... eventually.

3. Invitation to the Facebook Page

Even if you do not use Facebook, you can now follow updates, news, and user comments about irishtune.info here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/irishtuneinfo/19001127892

If you are a Facebook user, please "become a fan" of this page, an action which helps promote the visibility of irishtune.info.

4. News Summary

Yes, I did get some actual musicological work done, too. Since last November, I worked through 17 albums and 3 tunebooks:

Books:
Two more of the Vallely's classic tutor books, now back in print: Learn to Play the Fiddle and Learn to Play the Uilleann Pipes, both generously donated by Niall Vallely.
Sully's Irish Music Book, another classic that is still in print, donated by Tony Sullivan himself.

Albums (most recently added first):
The Chieftains 5
The Doon C�il� Band, Around the World for Sport
Andy McGann and Paul Brady, It's A Hard Road to Travel
Past Masters of Irish Fiddle Music
Bringing It All Back Home. Volume 3
The Chieftains, The Celtic Harp
Gerry O'Connor, Time to Time
Vinnie Kilduff, The Boys from the Blue Hill
Martin O'Connor, The Connachtman's Rambles
L�adan, Casadh na Taoide. Turning the Tide
Cillian Vallely and Kevin Crawford, On Common Ground
The Hammers, From Distant Shores
The Bridge C�il� Band, Sparks on Flags
M�irt�n O'Connor, Cathal Hayden, Seamie O'Dowd, Crossroads
Matt and Shannon Heaton, Lovers' Well
Brett Lipshutz and Randy Lee Gosa, Night and Day
Patrick Kelly, Patrick Kelly From Cree. Fiddle Music

Thanks to a number of people for donating some of the above CDs. Details on the Facebook page ...

5. Help Upgrade irishtune.info

This is not only the usual time of year for fundraising pleas, it also happens to be very timely for a server upgrade. Although I'm happy with the customer service and competence of the hosting company, you may have all noticed occasional brief outages throughout the year, which are primarily a consequence of living on a "budget" server shared with hundreds of other Web sites, whose owners are sometimes irresponsible or incompetent, causing outages for everyone else. The next level up in price would bring us a great reduction in the number of other Web sites burdening our server.

Please consider subscribing for US $6.00 per year, or showing your support in some other way:
http://www.irishtune.info/faq/support.html

A very easy way to support irishtune.info would be to remember to use the "Go Shopping" links (to Amazon, CD Baby, etc.) from the above page as you do your holiday shopping this year ... no cost to you, while you send a cut of those corporate profits towards a good cause ...

Thank you and best wishes,
Alan Ng
agng@facstaff.wisc.edu