Midi files and sheet music for the Ottawa Slow Jam
The Ottawa (Celtic) Slow Jam (OSJ) is a group of 20 or more musicians
which meet once a week at the
Ottawa Glebe Community Centre
to play mainly Irish music at a somewhat slower tempo with sheet music.
The format of this session is similar to its sister organization,
the
Carp Celtic Jam web site
(CCJ).
If you are new to this group, you may wish to download
the pdf files and print the sheet music (tunebook) that you can acquire
from the Carp web site or here. The collection is more than 300 pages and
and has remained static.
Though there are some minor differences between the OSJ
and Carp collection, either tune books are sufficient. I would recommend
the Carp tune book which is well layed out. The most
serious difference is for the tune
The Swallowtail on page 27.
In addition, The Ottawa Slow Jam has an appendix of around 90 pages,
with newly introduced tunes. The pdf file of the appendix was last
updated in March 2020.
Though the sheet music was produced from abc files it was difficult
to find the original abc files used to create this set.
In addition the appendix the appears to be have been created
by scanning various sheet music sources (printed or handwritten).
For those unfamiliar with the abc music notation format, the
site abcnotation.com is
a good starting point. Around 600,000 tunes are available
as free sheet music or midi sound files from that site.
In order to create the MIDI files it was necessary to start with the
abc notated music. The tunes corresponding to volume 2 were found
in the abc file
sessionTunes.abc
on the http://www.ceolas.org site.
In the case of the other volumes, it was necessary to reconstruct the abc music
from the sheet music. Time was saved by finding some of these tunes in abc
format on the web using John Chambers'
tune finder and
modifying them if necessary to comply with the sheet music. In many
cases bass/chord accompaniment which was missing in the original pdf
files was added. A lot of effort was made to ensure that recreated
abc music agreed exactly with the original sheet music
(including page numbering and formatting).
The midi files were created at two different tempos. If you are
learning the tunes and wish to play along with the computer, you
should download the collection at 96 bpm. A separate collection
was created at 144 bpm, to get a better feel for the music. The
midi files for all volumes, addendum and appendix have been put
in a single folder.
If you are running windows, midisheetmusic is a nice program
which allows you to slow down the tempo and displays the sheet
music corresponding to the MIDI file. You can get from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/midisheetmusic/
OSJindex.xls a spreadsheet listing the tunes
and other info. This index is still a work in progress and will contain
detailed information on the rhythm and tonality of the music.
CCJ midi files at 96 bpm in one zip file
CCJ midi files at 144 bpm in one zip file
OSJ appendix midi files at 144 bpm in one zip file
OSJ appendix midi files at 96 bpm in one zip file
The tunebook consists of all abc files except OSJ_appendix.abc
CCJ_ABC_All_tunes.abc
OSJ_abc_vol1.abc, (updated July 08 2013)
OSJ_abc_vol2.abc, (updated July 08 2013)
OSJ_abc_vol3.abc, (updated July 08 2013)
OSJ_addendum.abc, (updated July 12 2017)
OSJ_appendix.abc (updated March 13 2020)
music xml representation
xml_vol_1.zip, (created May 15 2013)
xml_vol_2.zip, (created May 17 2013)
xml_vol_3.zip, (created May 17 2013)
xml_addendum.zip, (created May 18 2013)
Here are the pdf files of the OSJ collection. The tune book consists
of all these pdfs except OSJ_appendix.pdf.
The OSJ_appendix.pdf does not preserve the lyrics and some
of the bowing markings that were present in the original document.
Please send corrections or comments to :
