Topic: The Milliner - Koken Collection Of American Fiddle Tunes

[uncle bud]

Thought I would mention this, which I noticed in an announcement from Elderly Instruments. Description from Elderly:

THE MILLINER - KOKEN COLLECTION OF AMERICAN FIDDLE TUNES transcribed and annotated by Clare Milliner and Walt Koken
An impressive collection of 1404 tunes in the old-time fiddle tradition. Includes a ten-page introduction with explanations and examples. Indexed by title (with references to source recordings and cross referenced to similar tunes and titles), key, tuning and artist. With brief bios of the 347 fiddlers/bands represented, a majority of whom were born before 1900. A comments section offers interesting information about the tunes and fiddlers. Oversize, easy to read, cloth hardcover, lies flat, library/heirloom quality. No chord notation. 888 pp. $90.00


http://elderly.com/books/items/158-72.htm

[Cleoma]

A student of mine brought over his copy and it is magnificent!  I just ordered my own copy!

[eric]

Wow!  Now we know what Walt Koken has been doing for the last few years.  Looks like an incredible resource.

[uncle bud]

Yes, looks monumental.

[Lyle Lofgren]

I don't think Walt (or  anyone) could have done such a monumental project alone in one lifetime. I'm sure Clare, being the fiddler, had a lot to do with it.

Lyle

[uncle bud]

I don't think Walt (or  anyone) could have done such a monumental project alone in one lifetime. I'm sure Clare, being the fiddler, had a lot to do with it.

Lyle

Indeed.   There's some background on the creation of the book at this blog.

"The foundation of the book began in the 1980s when Milliner started playing old-time fiddle. She began transcribing tunes as a way of learning and remembering the music. Milliner and Koken started applying for grants to the National Endowment for the Arts and other foundations in 2003, and Koken began transcribing Milliner's handwritten tunes onto computer software."

The musical notation is done without bar lines apparently (in case anyone feels that would be an unpleasant surprise). "The steady beat of the tune is apparent because the notes of any one beat are beamed (connected by a beam across the ends of the note stems, or is a quarter note (one beat). " (excerpt from the intro courtesy the Banjo Hangout) The idea being that this simplifies notation of crooked tunes for one thing. More here: http://www.banjohangout.org/topic/200787

[eric]

I don't think Walt (or  anyone) could have done such a monumental project alone in one lifetime. I'm sure Clare, being the fiddler, had a lot to do with it.

Sorry, didn't mean to leave Clare out of the glory.  I would think this would be a must have item for any old time player, and it probably won't be in print forever. 

[RobBob]

I have written a review of this tome and Clare's fingerprints are all over it.  She had several notebooks of transcriptions and they took the main body of that work and compiled it into an 880 page masterpiece.  There are some odd things about it but they are fully explained and the transcriptions play well.  I would recommend it to any music reading fiddler.  IT is an interesting work to say the least. 

[Lastfirstface]

Resurrecting a dead thread here, but I came across this and noticed that no one had mentioned the website where you can listen to samples of all the tunes:

http://slippery-hill.com/M-K/

[Rivers]

Threads are never dead on here LFF, resurrect away.