My Celtic Links

This is my listing of links to other Celtic Internet sites. I have personally visited each of these sites and have found them useful, informative, and/or enjoyable in some way. Not all of these sites deal specifically with music, but most of them do have some information on Celtic music. I have also included links to places where I obtained some of the programs I use to put my music online. Enjoy!! (You can use the links below to go to the category that interests you.)

Yahoo Groups
General Sites
Radio/Media Sites
Software, Etc.

Yahoo Groups

Fiddle Crazy
This group was started to reclaim some of what was lost when FIDDLER closed, and it's done that quite well. You'll find a wonderful group of people there who have a lot of knowledge about fiddling and are genuinely willing to help out and share their knowledge and encouragement. Something else that makes this group special is the online workshops and "jam sessions" that are held from time to time. Although I haven't been able to attend them as often as I would like, they really are great and I would recommend this group to anyone out there who's interested in fiddling.

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General Sites

Ceolas Celtic Music Archive
This is one of the first Celtic music sites I ever found on the Internet. Although it doesn't appear to have been updated in quite some time, it's still a very useful site which is worth taking a look at.

Gladys' Celtic Corner
This is a great site which is devoted mainly to fiddling and "old time" music. There are quite a few MIDIs there (including several tunes I haven't been able to find elsewhere), as well as some good Cape Breton links. I highly recommend taking the time to stop by and see this site - it's well worth it.

Celticmusic.com
This is a nice site which has some information on various groups and musicians including Roger Landes, Zan McLeod, Connie Dover, and Open House. There's a lot of unique stuff on this site that you won't find elsewhere (like Frank Ferrel's story about the summer music festivals in Cape Breton.).

Cape Breton Showcase
This site showcases the culture and music of Cape Breton Island. There are a variety of links here which give you a fairly wide range of information about Cape Breton.

Locrian Records
Locrian Records is an independent label in Australia which features modern Celtic music performed by Australian artists. Modern Celtic music (and even the not-so-modern music) really seems to be enjoying quite a bit of popularity worldwide these days. I haven't actually heard any of their music, but I really like the concept of labels like this one which help to highlight the diversity of Celtic music.

Celtic Guitar (etc.)
Glenn Weiser has a site on Celtic guitar playing, among other things. Glenn has written books on Celtic guitar and harmonica playing (yes, Celtic harmonica playing!!) and his site is worth looking at if you're a Celtic guitar/harmonica fan.

The Fiddler's Companion
This is an online index containing historical information, discographies, and biblographies of over 20,000 fiddle tunes. Quite a few of the tunes in the index are also available in ABC format. I've been finding ABC's for hundreds of great fiddle tunes there. Some of those tunes are already making their way onto this site!!

Your Tunes
This is a site by Roy Powell which provides a place for you to share tunes you've composed with others. If you'd like to find a place to share your tunes, or if you'd just like to check out tunes that other people out there have written, this is the place to go!

Ric Blair
Ric Blair is a singer/songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee. Ric and his band have a very unique sound which combines Celtic, Christian and Southern music. You can find out more about the music on his site, and you can even download MP3 clips from some of his songs to listen to.

Everything Keltic on the Web (Ilionach Arts Online Galleries)
This is an extensive list of alphabetized links to sites about Celtic music. Not much else to say about this site - just enjoy all the links!! (You'll probably note that "Celtic" is spelled with a "K"...that's not a typo! It's spelled that way on the site...besides, I think most people tend to pronounce it that way anyway.)

Radio/Media Sites

Note: For some of the sites in this section, you may need to have the Real Audio player installed on your computer.

The Thistle and Shamrock
For those of you who aren't already familiar with it, it's an hour-long radio program devoted to Celtic music which is produced by Fiona Ritchie and is broadcast by National Public Radio (NPR) on hundreds of stations across the U.S. It's been on the air for about 20 years now and shows no signs of slowing down! At the "Thistle" web site, you can find more information on the program, including playlists from recent programs, an overview of upcoming programs, and a listing of stations which carry the program, among other things.

RTÉ (Radio Telefis Éireann)
RTÉ is Ireland's source for television and radio programming. Their home page has some information on the programming they offer, and if you have the Real Audio player, you can listen to their programming live from anywhere in the world.

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
CBC provides television and radio programming for Canada. Their site features live RealAudio feeds for their radio programming, as well as links to their regional sites which offer more specialized programs.

Cape Breton Live Radio
This is a brand new site which showcases the music of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Donnell Leahy and Natalie MacMaster started Cape Breton Live to help expose more people to the wonderful music from that part of the world, as well as to give Cape Bretoners who've left there another connection to home. The site features streaming audio from live performances by various musicians, with new shows being produced weekly. If you enjoy Cape Breton music, or would like to start enjoying it, this is the place to go.

Software, etc.

HTML-Kit
One of the best programs I've found for editing web pages, it's useful if you're at least fairly comfortable with HTML. It has a lot of useful features, including a "search and replace" function and code validation (i.e. checking your code for errors). It even allows you to preview your pages without having to load them in your browser. Best of all, it's totally free!

ABC Home Page
This site by Chris Walshaw (creator of the ABC format) is an excellent source for a variety of information on the ABC format. You can also find links to ABC software and links to lots of ABC tune files. All the music you've heard and/or seen on my site started out in ABC format.

ABCMUS
I use this software (created by Henrik Norbeck) for the majority of my work. You can typset tunes in ABC format with this program and save them to MIDI files, and, if you're willing to pay the $10 (US) to register the program, you can automatically add chords to your tunes and more. I've been using this program for a while now, and it's the single most important piece of software I've used for this site. Henrik's site also has a substantial collection of Celtic music in ABC format, which makes it a great place to go if you're looking for tunes in ABC.

ABC2Win
This software (created by Jim Vint) is very useful for sorting tunes in ABC files and producing sheet music. Like ABCMus, this program is shareware - the registered version allows you to print out the sheet music you create.

John Chambers' site
This site contains links to ABC tunes and an ABC tutorial. There's also an ABC tune finder there that I've found very, very useful. If you're looking for a tune in ABC format, his site is not a bad place to start.

Noteworthy Composer
I've found this program very handy for transcribing tunes in MIDI format to ABC. You can load a MIDI file and the program will display the sheet music for the entire file. You can also use the program to create new MIDI files from scratch, complete with a variety of options including dynamics, fermatas, breath marks, and more. Again, this is a shareware program - the unregistered version will only allow you to save a particular file ten times, and there are some limitations to printing files.

ABCM2PS
ABCM2PS is a free program that converts music in ABC format to a PostScript file, which can be printed or converted to a bitmap using another program which is listed below. The PostScript files it produces are very high quality, but you will have to be familiar with using DOS to use it.

Ghostscript & GSView
Ghostscript and GSView are programs that allow you to view, print, and convert PostScript files. Ghostscript uses its own "language" to work with those files, while GSView acts almost like an add-on to Ghostscript and is more user-friendly because it speaks the Ghostscript "language" for you. I use GSView to convert PostScript files I've created with ABCM2PS to bitmaps, which I can then convert to GIF files by using an image editing program. Ghostscript and GSView are both free, but the downloads are a bit large and might take a while to complete.

MIDI Locator
This is a free program for editing MIDI files which I have found very useful. You can download the program and find out more about it by checking out the link above. (Be warned, though...the download for this program is very large! I would suggest using a download manager like GetRight to download this program if you're interested.)