Irish Music Digital Library A collection of traditional Irish tunes

Katie Harris ~ Mary Malone ~ Kallie NordengrenVillanova University December 5, 2006

Introduction

• In the Ireland, dance music was an aural tradition – it was learned “by ear”

• There are literally thousands of tunes.

• Only a few published collections of transcribed tunes exist and over the past 15 years several web sites have been developed that attempt to transcribe and save the tunes in a written form.

Project Goals

• The goal of this digital library is to collect and preserve some of the tunes – mostly ones played in sessions in the Philadelphia, PA area.

Photo courtesy of http://www.irishphiladelphia.com

Project GoalsMany tunes in this collection are ones that are played in local sessions by Kevin McGillian, a musician from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, who has lived in this area since the early 1950’s.

Photo courtesy of http://www.irishphiladelphia.com

Space model

Society model Scenariomodel

Structuremodel

Streammodel

DL ManagerGeneral public

TaxonomiesMetadata

Content ProviderRepository building

Value added

Domain specific

Format

Attributes

User interface Metric space

Traditional Irish Music DL *Tune type Graphics/Audio/abc file

Text-txt, doc Audio- mp3 Sheet Music-gif Other- abc

5S Diagram

Streams

• Text– What is Irish Music?

• Audio– Mp3 format– Midi format

• Abc– Language used to notate and store tunes in ASCII

format

• Graphic– Gif’s-sheet music

abc Music Notation

• abc is a language designed in 1991 by Chris Walshaw from University of Greenwich in London, England.

• It was developed primarily for notating folk and traditional tunes which can be written in one stave in standard classical notation.

• Many software tools now exist to read .abc files and process them.

abc exampleT:Paddy O'Rafferty C:Trad. M:6/8 K:D dff cee|def gfe|dff cee|dfe dBA|dff cee|def gfe|faf gfe|1 dfe dBA:|2 dfe dcB|] ~A3 B3|gfe fdB|AFA B2c|dfe dcB|~A3 ~B3|efe efg|faf gfe|1 dfe dcB:|2 dfe dBA|]fAA eAA|def gfe|fAA eAA|dfe dBA|fAA eAA|def gfe|faf gfe|dfe dBA:|

example from: http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/

Structures

• Metadata– Irish music DL

• Tune type– Graphics– Audio midi (mp3 if recording was available)– abc formatted files– Citations are included for each notated tune, and a

separate citation was included if a recording was available.

Spaces

• User interface

• Metric space

Scenarios

• Add items

• Build repository

• Searching – title, composer and other subject keywords

• Selecting and viewing/listening/saving musical notation, audio files or .abc files

Societies

• General public– People interested in traditional Irish tunes

played in Philadelphia– Anyone interested in Irish tunes

• Content providers– Katie, Mary, and Kallie (for now)

• DL manager– Katie, Mary, and Kallie (administrators)

Quality Indicators

• Consistency

• Reliability

• Efficiency

• Accuracy

• Completeness

Rights Management Issues

• All data was acquired from sources that are in the public domain.

• Citations were provided as requested by sources that made data freely available.

• Due to copyrights, not many recent recordings were available.

Contents of the Collection

For every tune in the collection, this DL contains:

1. An .abc file

2. The graphical musical notation or sheet music

3. A midi audio file – so the user can quickly hear how the tune sounds

4. And if available in the public domain, a recording of Irish musicians playing the tune

Resources

Resources from which the data was collected:• The session traditional Irish music exchange on

http://www.thesession.org• JC's ABC Tune Match [tunefind] on

http://www.trillian.mit.edu• The O’Neill’s Project on

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/book/oneills/1850/• Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project on

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/overview.php • The Roots Music Listening Room Irish Dance Music

from the 1920’s – 1970’s on http://juneberry78s.com/sounds/ListenToIrishDance.htm

• An Maindilin – Irish tunes on mandolin on http://www.paythereckoning.com/thepage.htm

Organization

• The collection is organized by tune type – which is associated with a type of dance.

• A user can search for tunes through title, composer or keyword, such as key signature.

Issues

Loading the Data:– The files that were uploaded to the DL were

collected from several different websites. Loading the data and creating citations was laborious – as the websites have no standards for harvesting data.

– Need for Dspace backup is crucial - during the process of reorganizing the collection following semester break, all of the data entered was accidentally deleted and had to be reentered.

Behind the Scenes

• Dspace:– Created a digital library using Dspace– Learned to submit items to collections in a digital

library– Learned how to utilize functions available by Dspace

(Browse, Search, etc.)

• Manakin:– Created a theme and modified XML/JSP code to

change various aspects of layout.– Learned how to install Manakin alongside Dspace to

create a more unique front-end for user.

Dspace

• Install/Configure Dspace to create a digital library– Relationship between Dspace/Tomcat

• Created collections under community for different types of Irish tunes

• Then started submitting tunes in different collections

• Set up different key words in tunes to enable the search feature

Manakin• Install/Configure Manakin

– patch Dspace– place edited config files in Dspace directory (xmlui.xml,

context.xml, server.xml)– create theme for site (using CSS style sheet, JSPs, and

XML files)– apply theme to site (aspect.xml)

• Less documentation for Manakin– had to utilize the dspace-manakin mailing list at

SourceForge• Themes in Manakin provide a more unique look and feel

while maintaining a separation of concerns.

General demo

• Demo on how to utilize the Irish Music Digital Library

• A user needs to download and pay for the software to process tunes in abc format

• http://www.abc2win.com

• http://www.norbeck.nu/abcmus/

• Many packages available…

Project Upgrades

• Added Manakin Interface• Database backup• Reorganized into 12 separate collections by tune

type.• Added descriptions for each type.• Added “What is Traditional Irish Music?”• Added 62 additional tunes• Additional metadata

– Citations and Publishers for each tune– Keywords added for search – recording,

performers, instruments, sources– Citations for each recording

What’s to come?

• For the future…– Links to media players and abc packages– Enlarge collection items– Enable harvesting– Enhance Manakin in order to stylize all major

aspects of DL.

Conclusion

• Now have a working digital library enabling users to search a collection of Irish tunes that are regularly played in the Philadelphia area.

• examples of sheet music, listen to a tune with a media player or use .abc software

ANY QUESTIONS?