February Tunes -2025
“Whaddya Mean Those are the Same Tune??”
or
What is the Tune Theme Code Index?
I expect that Paul and Sally Wells will have plenty of tales to tell about this month’s tunes, so I will share one way of finding families of tunes, or the alternate names of a tune that you have in sheet music form.
Way back before 2000, there was a website called The Fiddlers Companion run by Andrew Kuntz. By 2010 it had grown to a collection of tens of thousands of traditional melodies, cataloged alphabetically by title into separate entries that also included descriptive information about the tune, including form, key, structure, fiddle tuning, source information, where it could be found in print and on sound recording, as well as anecdotal information about the tune’s origins.
In collaboration with Valerio Pelliccioni, a new wiki was created called The Traditional Tune Index, a curated semantic index of traditional instrumental music of the past 300 years, mostly from Ireland, Great Britain, and North America.
Importantly, a new data field was added to each tune - Theme Code Index. This is a code of 2 groups of numbers reflecting the ‘beat notes’ of the tune.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Above is the data for Off the California its theme code is 1126L 1565
FlRST: establish the "Key Note" [G in this tune]
SECOND: establish the Time Signature to find the beat notes in the first bars
THIRD: build the Theme Code, based upon the Key and Time Signatures
Substitute numbers 1 2 3 for doh re mi etc., the L after 6 indicates that its pitch is lower than the tune keynote (1 or doh for G in this tune). Notes more than 1 octave higher have an H after the number.
For tunes with 2 or four beats per bar, there are 4 numbers. (For waltzes, with 3 beats per bar, there are 3 numbers in each group).
For a more detailed explanation go to the Theme Code Index page of the TuneArch site.
Looking at the theme codes of the February tunes we can quickly spot the similarities (and differences).
The Jigs The Hornpipes
1 5 3 3 1 5 2 2 Potatoe on a Stick 1 2 1 6L 1 5 6 5 Portsmouth Hornpipe
1 5 3 3 1 5 2 2 Campbells are Coming 1 2 1 6L 1 5 6 6 Off to California (the leading d note of the pickup is missing!)
1 5 2 5 1 5 2 3 Jackson’s Bottle of Brandy
In the TuneArch website you can now do a search for all tunes with the same Theme Code.
If you feel adventurous, visit Gore’s Scottish Music Index and test the Theme codes there.
Have fun with the music you find!
