Scottish Music & Song Books
Four volumes of Scotch and Irish reels and jigs, Highland schottisches, country dances, hornpipes, clog dances, waltzes polkas etc.
A republication of the 1884 edition. Contains 870 tunes retaining the original grouping of the tunes in the same key. Foreword by Alasdair Fraser.
While one of a kind is a hard rating to achieve at Mel Bay Publications, Kevin Allison has done it with The Ceilidh Dance Book. A ceilidh is a traditional Scottish gathering where people share songs, stories, music, and dancing that is very much alive today. In Scotland, there are hundreds of ceilidh bands, each of which has their own trademark tune sets, making it possible for a man in a kilt to make a living as a performing musician. This book not only provides 85 Scottish tunes in sets as they might be used in a ceilidh event ”it also offers detailed, beat-by-beat descriptions of the dance steps for twenty-four dances! From The Highland Scottish to The Mooncoin Jig, with this book in hand, you'll be able to both play in the band and step to the music with the locals. The kilt is optional. Arranged for mandolin or fiddle with suggested chord backup, in standard notation only.
Volumes three and four of the Ceol na Fidhle - 'Highland Tunes for the Fiddle' series.
These are very popular tunes for fiddle taken for the bagipe repertoire. The books contain suggested bowings for fiddlers and chords for guitar or other accompanists and a great selection of 2/4 Pipe Marches, 6/8 Pipe Marches, Jigs, Reels, Slow airs, Hornpipes, Polkas, Strathspeys etc.
Many of these tunes are not available in fiddle settings in many other publication.
HIghland Tunes for the Fiddle. Another great selection of Highland fiddle and pipe tunes both old and new. It contains a wealth of tunes musicians have been looking for and couldn’t find!
This volume was issued ten years after finishing the original four volumes. After finding that I had collected a great many more pipe tunes over the intervening years and, as they were such good tunes, a further book was warranted to make these available to all the fiddlers and others out there looking for more good Highland tunes to play.
These represent some of the best Scottish pipe tunes being played today in Scotland.