Frequently Asked Questions: Your Involvement

2017 Support So Far

  • 3 people donated 3 albums
  • 12 people gave $299 directly
  • Shoppers who started at links directed $76 to .
  • 1 album and 0 tunebooks purchased
  • Current available balance for expanding coverage, after subtracting basic operating costs: +$148.

How can I show my support for this site?

is an educational project that has bills to pay but has neither funding nor institutional support. Please help!

Go Shopping

Just start your purchase of any CDs or tunebooks by using any of the "Available" links throughout this site. Or simply start any sort of shopping trip right here, and these companies will donate around 5% of the price to , all at no extra cost to you:

Amazon UK

Get it on iTunes

By helping you find out where you can get recordings of traditional Irish music, I hope to also be rendering a service not only to the musicians who made the recordings but also to the tradition at large, which can only benefit when more people find out about great music.

Follow the News

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Annual Newsletter

Consider subscribing to the free Newsletter. You will receive at most 1 or 2 e-mails per year with updates about


Give Directly

If you would like to make a direct donation to , you may send items or checks to:

irishtune.info c/o Alan Ng
1214 Colby St.
Madison WI 53715
USA

Please also indicate whether (and in what manner) I may list you among the contributors to (see below). Please make checks payable to "Alan Ng."

To date your shopping trips and donations have paid a much-appreciated portion of the Web server fees I pay. In recent years there has even been enough left over to acquire a few CDs to fill coverage gaps, and those are legally the property of irishtune.info (which may someday get non-profit tax status). I have filed US tax forms for irishtune.info since tax year 2003 in order to show that I do not personally profit or get paid from any of the income to irishtune.info. If you would like a copy before you make a donation, just let me know. In case you wonder how on earth I find time to do all this unpaid work: I support my family with a less-than-full-time day job so that I have time for music and irishtune.info.

More ways you can support irishtune.info are listed further below on this page.

is a participant in:

Who has supported this site?

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the following individuals for making donations directly to . Any unexplained codes are albums detailed in the Discography.

2017

2016

2016 Support Summary

2015

2015 Support Summary

2014

2014 Support Summary

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

Earlier

Would you be interested in help from other musicians?

Sure, that would be wonderful! Here's my wish list:

  1. Support financially or by donating Irish CDs and tunebooks that are missing in the index.
  2. "Marketing" assistance, of this sort:
    1. Making clever, clear YouTube videos demonstrating cool features of my.irishtune.info.
    2. Writing reviews, blog posts, tweeting about irishtune.info qualities and features.
    3. Talking up irishtune.info (and proposing partnership ideas) to relevant organisations such as ITMA, CCE, TunePal, Journal of Irish Music, etc.
    4. Proposing research projects to musicology graduate students that would make use of irishtune.info data.
  3. New or used CD issues of the following (which are not available for listing on the Amazon wishlist above):
    • Music from Sliabh Luachra, RTE CD183, 1995
    • Humours of Lisheen
    • Paul O'Shaughnessy, Harry Bradley, Born for Sport
    • Carberry/Quinn, Memories from the Holla
    • Kitty Hayes, A Touch of Clare
    • DeDannan, Anthem
    • Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection
  4. Full abc transcriptions, with permission for me to publish them (credited to you), of tunes in the index for which I currently list zero sources in the Bibliography section for that tune. The transcriptions should preferably be an exact transcription of one of recordings that I list in the Discography section for that tune.
  5. spreadsheet with abc versions of all tunes in any one of these books (see Bibliography): CRE 1, CRE 2, MM, and R. A smaller but still very useful project would be to type up only the incipits (first 2 bars) from these books. I don't need the tune titles typed, just the book's tune number that goes with each bit of abc. Here's an example incipit for a jig (this is the first double jig in O'Neill's 1850, his #701):
    K:D A|~d3 AFD|E2F G2A|
    A good example of how to organize a spreadsheet like this is here: O'Neill's.
  6. A copy of these books:
    • Ceol Rince na hÉireann volumes 4 and/or 5.
    • The Waltz Book III by Bill Matthiesen
  7. Get some company to issue a commercial remastering on CD of Bobby Casey's Casey in the Cowhouse.
  8. Do the organizational and legal work necessary to get registered as (or included under) an IRS-recognized non-profit educational organization.
  9. Help me write a grant application so that I can spend more time working on the Tunography.

If you want to check out my employment situation (or lack thereof), see my personal homepage.

Why do you need to have and keep an original physical CD package?

It's necessary for me to have permanent access to the original physical objects because for every new item I later work on (such as a tune on a CD, or a tune in a tunebook), I compare it against all other items that are already in the database. That's not possible to do - and to absolutely verify - if I no longer have all the objects at hand. This is an established practice in quality bibliographical work generally, called the "autopsy" method.

Another reason is that occasions arise later when I wonder if I made a data-entry error or a tune-identification error, so I need to pull out the original item again to make sure. Also sometimes sharp-eyed visitors such as yourself challenge my work and I need to have the original object at hand so I can reply with confidence, either confirming my work or confirming that the challenger is in fact right on. For a list of the cases when the challenger has been correct, see the next question!

So, in short, I really could not continue doing quality, "mercilessly accurate" work like this if I no longer had all of my original sources at hand.

Who has helped find errors in my data?

Out of the hundreds of thousands of readers of irishtune.info over the years, and out of the hundreds who have written me for various reasons, there have been a handful of alert and careful musicians who have found the following real errors in my work. I was able to independently confirm their discoveries and then corrected my data accordingly. Here I would like to gratefully acknowledge their assistance:

Please cite your source when you share information from this document. The most recent date I changed something on this page was 3 September, 2017 . © 2000–2015 Alan Ng. Questions? Comments? Please use the easy Feedback Form. Thank you!
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