 Words | · Example: enter kitty milking to find all tunes whose titles include the words "Kitty" or "Milking", such as "Kitty's Gone a Milking", etc. · Enter one or more complete words in any order. Note: common words such as first or over will be ignored, and all words less than 4 letters long. · Include various ways to spell words. Example: McLeod MacLeod McCloud or Peoples People's etc. |
Fragment | · Example: enter wom to quickly find titles containing "Women" and "Washerwoman", or p to sl to find "Trip to Sligo". · Enter only one exact sequence of a few letters and spaces. You should use this method because of the amazing variety of human spelling habits throughout the history of Irish music. Tip 1: Shorter is better. See more tips below. |
| Rhythm |
I recommend starting with "any", because your idea of the rhythm of the tune may be different than mine. If, however, your first search turns up too many tunes, it helps sometimes to then narrow your search by using the rhythm feature. |
Hot keys | You can use keyboard shortcuts to move around: Alt-B - search Blank; Alt-W - Words; Alt-F - Fragment; Alt-S - Search. Use Ctrl key on Macintosh. |
Fragments | (Fragment search) Looking for a little piece of a word is strongly recommended! To find both "Bonny" and "Bonnie", search for bonn. Use only a reliable piece of a word. What you think is "Lad O'Beirne" might have only been published as "Ladd O Beirne's", "O'Byrne's", "OBeirnes", or maybe even "Laddo Burns". So keep trying! I include all published misspellings in the database, but I can't know how others may (mis)spell things. |
Punctuation | (Fragment search) You will not find "Mason's" if you ask for Masons. |
Spaces | (Fragment search) Use spaces carefully. Useful example: If you include the first space in a fragment search for " mcf" you can eliminate tunes which don't match "McF" at the beginning of a word. |
Untitled | If you are looking for information about an untitled tune in a book, you must use the Untitled / Gan Ainm Tunes in Books report, not this search form. If you are looking for information about an untitled tune on a recording, simply enter a piece of the track title as given by the recording. |
ID number |
You can enter just a tune ID number in the "Words" search mode to go directly to the Tune Info page for that tune. |
