TTA

Welcome to the Traditional Tune Archive The Semantic Index of North American, British and Irish traditional instrumental music with annotations, formerly known as The Fiddler's Companion.	56,256 Tunes by title

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Elk River Blues

Composed by Braxton County, West Virginia, old-time fiddler Ernie Carpenter (1909-1997).

According to the booklet accompanying Carpenter's LP, the story behind the tune is one of a difficult adjustment to a forced change in Ernie's life. He had worked most of his life for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company in Clarksburg, prior to retiring in 1972 to his home in Braxton County, West Virginia.

He was a regular visitor during his working years to his homeplace on the Elk River, and was witness to the planning and construction of the Sutton Dam by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the river during the 1950's and 1960's.

Unfortunately, this resulted in the flooding of his boyhood home and the surrounding area, despite the efforts of himself and neighbors to forestall the project through a lobbyist. He refused the government's initial offer for his land (they didn't offer him anything for his house), and took the case to court.

He was able to gain a marked increase in the money he eventually was paid through this process, although he had to pay legal fees out of his pocket. He stayed in his Elk River homestead while the dam was being constructed, even though most of his neighbors had already left. Workmen blocked the roads in and out of the area, but Carpenter found alternate routes until they too were closed off.

"I was the last person out of there," he said," I went ahead then and tore the old place town and brought it up here. Part of its in this house." Of the tune, he remarked: "I was sittin' here one day, an' I had the blues. I reckon as bad as anybody could, thinkin' about my old homeplace up on the Elk River. I started sawin' on the fiddle an' that's what I came up with."

...more at: Elk River Blues - full Score(s) and Annotations

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Who Builds the TTA

Although we are not trained musicologists and make no pretense to the profession, we have tried to apply such professional rigors to this Semantic Abc Web as we have internalized through our own formal and informal education.
This demands the gathering of as much information as possible about folk pieces to attempt to trace tune families, determine origins, influences and patterns of aural/oral transmittal, and to study individual and regional styles of performance.
Many musicians, like ourselves, are simply curious about titles, origins, sources and anecdotes regarding the music they play. Who, for example, can resist the urge to know where the title Blowzabella came from or what it means, or speculating on the motivations for naming a perfectly respectable tune Bloody Oul' Hag, is it Tay Ye Want?
Knowing the history of the melody we play, or at least to have a sense of its historical and social context, makes the tune 'present' in the here and now, and enhances our rendering of it.
Andrew Kuntz & Valerio Pelliccioni

Please register as a user to make the most of the many functions of the TTA, and enjoy the many ways that information about traditional tunes can be elicited and combined, from simple to complex situations. Users may make contributions, which, when reviewed by an editor, become part of this community project. Serious user/contributors may become editors through the TTA's promotion process, in which quantity and quality of entries allows increased levels of permission to edit and review the entire index.
Above all, the developers wish you joy in the use of the TTA.

Getting started

Navigation: Registered users can navigate the Traditional Tune Archive for information in a number of ways.

Search. The Search function is located at the top right, and can be used to search the entire index for any key word. See Search help pages
Alphabetically by tune title. Under “The Archive” on the SideBar on the left is “The Index”. Click on it to open up the list of tune titles in the TTA arranged in alphabetical order, 200 titles to a page. At the top of the page is an alphabetical breakdown that serves as a shortcut to pages. Clicking on any title will bring one to the music and tune fields. Once the tune appears, clicking “Tune Discussion” at the bottom of the page (below the notation) will open up the narrative information on the tune.
Query the Archive. The “Query the Archive” function under “The Archive” in the sidebar can be used to draw down reports from the TTA in either in single items or in a number of combinations. One might, for example, use a single item query to run a report in the TTA for a particular composer/core source. Clicking on the arrow at the right of the bar draws down a list of composer/core sources, or one may be typed in. For example, clicking on “Bill Pigg” and then the “Run Query” tab at the bottom left will result in a list of all compositions listed in the TTA that the Northumbrian piper either composed or is the core source for. Reports may also be run in combinations, as, for example, by selecting “William Marshall” as a composer/core source, “Three Flats” for the number of accidentals, and “Major” for the Key/Mode. This will result in a report of all Eb Major compositions of Scottish fiddler/composer William Marshall that are indexed in the TTA.
Tune Books/Magazines in the TTA can be accessed under “Publications” in the left side bar. These are reproductions of publications for which access has been granted to the TTA by the copyright holder, under the Creative Commons license.