The Traditional Music Archive is an attempt to catalogue and make available traditional music from around the globe. Every piece here should be in the public domain. While most of the pieces are standards for traditional string bands, there is no specific restriction on style of music. The vast majority of the pieces included are lead sheets, with chords and melody and little else, because music is really about how you want to play it.

This site is intended to be fast-loading and easy to use. Therefore, graphics are intended more for function than aesthetic quality. No graphics should take more than a few seconds to load, even on the slowest connections, and the amount of extraneous data in the database is kept to a minimum.

As the archive gets larger, searching and listing items may take a little time. Please be patient when looking for music.

I don't always have time to keep up with this, but I'm glad I created it. I am also glad to include music that anyone is willing to contribute, provided it is public domain music.

People ask me if I could include tabs for banjo and guitar. I am glad to include them, but I do not have the time to write my own out. Having originally been classically trained, I rarely think in terms of tablature, and it does not come as easily to me as using sheet music. But, if someone has tabs to contribute, I'm glad to do so. (see the "submit a song" link above.)

Most importantly, enjoy the archive and feel free to make your own suggestions!

--julie