Old Time Music Resources

Streaming Audio available through the Allen Music Library

• Smithsonian Global Sound
  • Old Time Music
  • Notable performers:
    • Dock Boggs
    • Roscoe Holcomb
    • Wade Ward
    • Doc Watson

Sound recordings

• subject search for Old Time Music, limited to recordings
• subject search for Bluegrass, limited to recordings

Video/film

• subject search for subject search for Bluegrass or Old Time, limited to video/film

DO also search for favorite performers or particular instruments (e.g. banjo, mandolin) to find what else is available in or through the Allen Music Library. You may be surprised! 

Photo on the right is the late great Bill Monroe with a young bluegrass fan (your librarian) in the late 1960s. 

Everyone knows about the joys of YouTube, but here are a few other fun resources, including sites with notation (including tab, ABC, etc.):

• 1963 Festival Jam named to commemorate the first festival in Mountain View and playing tunes that were already old in 1963!)
  • videos, leadsheets, tab notation!
• ABC notation
  • You'll see a reference to ABC notation on a number of sites such as The Session. It's yet another way to share and present musical notation.
• Black Stringband Resources - Jake Blount
  • Great resource to explore old time and black stringband musicians. More research is needed to feature this musical tradition!
• Digital Library of Appalachia, music section (and it's pronounced apple-at-cha by the natives of the southern region)
  • Great resource for field recordings. 
  • When you listen to recordings made prior to the late-1980s, remember people didn't have battery operated tuners! "A" was relative unless you had a good tuning fork or kept your piano in tune (assuming you had one!).
• Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection (Library of Congress, Alan Jabbour)
  • Transcriptions and audio. Whoa.
  • Want to learn more about collecting fiddle tunes? Get to know Alan Jabbour's work!
• Folkstreams.net
  • A wealth of video resources with more being added every week. A few gems linked below:
    • Appalachian Journey
    • Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music 
    • Fiddler's Grove
    • Talking Feet
• Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM)
  • Low cost songbook available for purchase. Great videos (although some are no longer available).
• Nashville Old-Time Stringband Association Jukebox
• National Fiddler Hall of Fame 
  • notation and a jukebox to play along!
• PBS Learning Media
  • GREAT free resources!!!
• New Hampshire Country Dance (includes Fiddle information)
  • Old-Time here includes a number of styles and influences -- New England, Acadian and more. A bit overwhelming because of the wealth of information.
• Old Time Fiddle Tunes
  • Tunes include chords (YAY!), clear transcriptions and links to a variety of resources. Regularly updated!
• The Old Time Jam
  • Hat tip to Aisha Ivey for this one. Sometimes you need help keeping the rhythm, or getting a sense of the tune. Can't get a jam together? Then play along here. You can choose your instrumentation, pick one of their tunes, and hit play.
• The Session
  • Says it's devoted to Irish Trad, but...
• Pete Showman's Old Time Tunes
  • Tunes, notation, regularly updated. Transcriptions include background info as well.
• Slippery Hill
  • of particular interest are the recordings gathered to go with the Milliner-Koken Collection of Fiddle Tunes (Allen Music Library Research Collection, M40 .M55 2011)
• Slowplayers.org
  • Great site for learning tunes -- slow players is a way of saying this is for folks who are learning a tune and not ready for a fast jam.
• StrumMachine
  • Backing tracks app. 14-day free trial. Pretty nifty app!
• Vi "The Fiddler" Wickham playlist on YouTube
  • What's notable? His "A Fiddle Tune A Day" series. No kidding.
  • Also his own website.
• Tater Joe's Old-Time Musical Mercantile
  • Awesome site with notation (usually with CHORDS!) and tabs.