The World's Largest On-line Collection of Free Bagpipe Music

Navigation Tips

The Docks at Anstruther

Welcome to the Navigation Tips! We've got a lot of pipe music (over 7,000 settings), and you'll find it easier to access them if you familiarize yourself with the way it's organized. We know reading instructions is no fun, so we've tried to keep it simple, yet provide an adequate explanation. In order to access the tune settings, you will need an Adobe Acrobat reader, and if you don't already have one installed there is a link button at the bottom of this page. To get started, we'll explain the individual setting files

Individual Setting Files

For each tune, there is an individual .PDF file. These files were created from scans of the tune books, so what you're seeing are the tune settings as they appeared in print. Once you've opened an individual tune file, you can view the file on your computer, print a hard copy, or save a copy to your hard drive.

As you may know from examining tune books, multiple tunes may be printed on one page. As an example, the file for the setting for "Roy's Wife" from the David Glen Collection shows a page that also has a setting for "Sweet Molly".

There are also tune settings that are printed on two or more consecutive pages, like the one for "The Canadian Kilties Welcome to Scotland" from the Cowal Collection. You see that the setting begins at the bottom of the first page and continues on the top of next page, just as it appeared in print.

In the upper left-hand corner of each file page is a link that says "return to masterindex". That link will take you to the Master Index Page, which we'll explain further down this page. To return to page where you started, you will need to use your back button.

A Word about Using the Individual Setting Files

As indicated above, you can save individual files to your hard drive or print them. As far as we're concerned, you can share these files with anyone anywhere. Printing settings for your band or emailing settings to your friends is fine with us. That's why we created this site.

The only thing we don't want is to have these settings put on another web site in a effort to simply duplicate our content. To prevent that, each tune setting file has a security feature to prevent any alteration, including the deletion of: (a) the source line at the bottom of the page, or (b) the link in the upper left-hand corner. If you have any questions or want to request an exception, just send us an email and we'll be glad to help in any way possible.

O.K. Enough about that!! Here's how access the links to the individual setting files. The first pathway is through the Library Page.

The Library Page

The Library page has a listing of all thiry seven collections offered by Ceol Sean, and the site has a page for each collection.

When you click a collection title in that list, you will link to the page for that collection. The page provides a table of contents of the settings and other items (instructions, prefaces, notes, etc.) for that collection in the order that they appear in the printed version. For example, you can see from the Music of Clan MacLean page the table of contents listing, beginning with the cover page, table of contents, and preface, followed by the tune settings.

Some of the collection pages are quite large in terms of file size; due in large part to the number of links on the page. Collections like David Glen's (over 1100 settings), Logan (over 500 settings), and David Glen's Edinburgh (over 500 settings) may take a few seconds to load, so...please be patient.

The second pathway to the tune setting files is through the Master Index Page.

The Master Index Page

The Master Index Page is a pathway to access tunes by title. The Master Index Page has links to five sub-index pages that provide alphabetized lists of individual tunes links. Each of the five sub-index pages respresents a given range of the alphabet (#1 - A through B, #2 - C through F, #3 - G through L, #4 - M through O, and #5 - P through Z). With over 6,800 settings available, it is not practical to provide a single web page that lists all tune settngs, because it takes too long to load.

When you view the listings on the sub-index pages, you will note that for each entry we have also listed the tune type and a "short title" for the collection in which it appears. If you click on the "short title", you will link to the page for that collection. The "tune type" information is taken directly from the collection if such is indicated. Otherwise, we assigned a tune type based upon our best understanding of the setting. In alphabetizing the tunes, we used the titles exactly as they appear in the printed collections. The only exception are tune titles that begin with "The", in which case we made "The" the last word in the listed title. For example, "The White Cockade" is listed as "White Cockade, The".

Searching The Master Index Page

To search the entire Master Index, we have prepared a PDF Version of the complete list of all settings. It does not have links to the tunes in order to allow it to load quicker. When using this list, you should note that there is a link to the Master Index Page at the top of the first page. Otherwise, you will need to use your back button to return to the previous page.

Good News!! You can get started from here if you want!!

You've now familiarized yourself with the instructions for the Library and the Master Index , so feel free to use either pathway to begin accessing tune settings.

We do, however, have instructions for our Alternate Titles and Piobaireachd Manuscript pages, so read on if you're interested.

Alternate Titles

We have a page that has an alphabetical listing of alternate tunes titles, along with links to the associated individual tune settings and the collections in which they appear. For example, the dance tune "Sean Triubhas" also goes by the title of "Whistle O'er the Lave Ot". The alternate titles page has a listing for "Whistle O'er the Lave Ot", and link to the setting and the David Glen Collection.

The alternate titles listings are based solely on the information from the collection in which they appear. In the case of "Sean Triubhas", you can see from the Master Index that there are several listings for this tune, and more than one listing for "Whistle O'er the Lave Ot". Only the David Glen Collection setting for "Sean Triubhas" lists "Whistle O'er the Lave Ot" as an alternate title. For this reason, once you locate a tune setting from the alternate titles page, you may want to look in the Master Index for additional settings of the desired tune.

Piobaireachd Manuscripts

Since 2007, Ceol Sean and McGillvray Piping Partnerships have hosted a collection of piobaireachd manuscripts that have been made available from the National Library Scotland. Dr.William Donaldson took the initiative to acccess these manuscripts and secure the necessary permissions to make them available. The Carnegie Trust and the Open University in Scotland also contributed resources to support this effort.

These manuscripts are available as presented for non-commercial playing and study uses only, including downloading and printing. Written permission for any other uses (including reproduction, publication, adaptation, manipulation of images, rental and leasing) must be obtained from the Manuscripts Collections Division of the National Library of Scotland.

A final note.....

In case you're interested, we do have a page called About Us, and it provides some background on Ceol Sean, the people involved, and background on our web site. The link button for the Adobe Acrobat download site is below.