The Woodilee Collection of Traditional Music by Simon McKerrell – New Tune Book Out Now
This post is taken from Simon McKerrell’s website:
The Woodilee Collection of Traditional Music is my combined collection of 73 traditional tunes I have composed for bagpipes, Uilleann pipes, banjo, whistle, fiddle accordion and other instruments. The tunes stretch as far back as the 1990s for me personally, and I have only included the melodies I felt were worth publishing. For those interested, in the book there are:
- 7 Airs, Waltzes and Slow Tunes
- 18 Jigs
- 13 marches
- 4 strathspeys
- 26 reels
- 5 hornpipes
It also represents my first foray into self-publishing which has been very interesting. Given that this is not intended as an academic book but is primarily for players and musicians (of all abilities), I have decided to release it as a paperback via print on demand on the Amazon platform.
The book contains my best compositions including those that have become better known such as Lauren McCowan’s Reel, Gillian Frame’s amongst others. There should be something there for everyone from the very simplest marches and airs to one or two very technical pieces.
There were a number of reasons for this, but my previous foray into tune book publishing was not hugely satisfying (yes–I am one of the fools with a garage still full of expensively printed books) having released a book of tunes with Finlay MacDonald in 2007. That book contained some great melodies but we didn’t have the time to follow up on distributing the book and therefore it has only been available via The National Piping Centre in Glasgow and Scotland’s Music (Taigh na Teud) website on Skye.
This time, I am releasing a much longer and more detailed paperback book entirely composed of my own tunes which is only printed when someone buys a copy (POD: Print On Demand). This seems a much more useful way for printing a niche interest music collection and so that is the route I have opted for. A big thanks to Andrew from Tangent Graphic who did the design for the book and helped solve my numerous design newbie errors.
Do spread the word and I hope that anyone who gets a copy finds something they really like.
