The Digital Tradition Project
by Dick Greenhaus

> In the beginning....(back when strange beasts roamed the earth...)

> Back in the Spring of 1988, two folk music enthusiasts, each clutching a weighty notebook, met and compared (what else?) notes. Since the two, Dennis Cook and Susan Friedman, were both using home computers as word processors to produce new notebook pages, a decision to pool resources was an obvious one. Dick Greenhaus inserted his two cents worth, and The Digital Tradition was born.

> It soon became apparent that word processor files had severe limitations as a storage format for the words to a large number of songs -- even with the 400 or so songs that we started out with, the collection was space-consuming. Worse, it was almost impossible to find what you were looking for. Duplications kept popping up, and cataloging was a nightmare.

> After a good deal of experimentation and researching -- we first tried archiving the songs to save space, but this didn't help us with any of the other problems -- we encountered a very fast, very powerful full-text search program called askSam that was the answer to our prayers. To make things even better, askSam's publisher (askSam Systems, Perry Florida) was interested in what we were doing, and graciously allowed us to distribute a read-only sub-set of their program at no charge. As a result, it's a simple matter to sift through our ever-growing collection (7800 or so songs as of April 1999) and extract any song with, say, the name Mary in it. Or all (or any) of the over 460 versions of Child ballads we have. Or songs by your favorite composer. Or, for that matter, any bawdy Scots parodies dealing with computers -- yes, we even have one of those.

> The next major step was to find a way to share the melodies of the songs. We found an effective answer in a music-processing program called SongWright (Songwright, Leesburg VA). This program allowed us to enter songs in a reasonably compact format (so that they don't occupy an unreasonably large number of disks), and, among other things, allows them to be played on the computer's built-in beeper. The Macintosh version of the application translates the SongWright format into a form that can be played by Quicktime MIDI.

> Many, many thanks to...

> All the people who have contributed songs to the Digital Tradition. These include Dennis Cook, Susan Friedman, Dick Greenhaus, Mark Cohen, Bob Reed, Bob Pfeffer, Harry Berkowitz, Dick Park, Diane Tankel, Alan Booth, Edith Lux, Peter Sailer, Bruce Gewirtz, Jonathon Young, Steve Shapiro, Spike Werner, Steve Gilette, Dave Green, Steve Putz, Martin Jonas, Dan Schatz, Anne Bredon, Abby Sale, Jerry Middaugh, Jon Bartlett, Barbara Shaw, Craig Cockburn, Alberto Marchesi, Ian Page, Peter Auber, Murray Shoolbraid, Gerry Myerson, Josh Newman, Mark Gregory, Bob Waltz, Gene Graham, Martin Ryan, Tom Norcott, Steve Suffett, Dave Pelletier, Bruce Olsen, Gene Graham, Joe Offer, Ezio, Tim Jacques, Conrad Bladey, Greg Furness, and another dozen or so whose names just don't come to mind at this moment.

> Thanks too to Dennis Cook, Dick Greenhaus, Bob Lux, Hymie Snyder, Steve Putz, Mark Heiman, Alan Foster, Max Spiegel and those others who have provided invaluable programming assistance.

> Special thanks to the Philadelphia Folksong Society, whose generous grants have allowed us to upgrade our computer equipment to keep pace with the ever-increasing demands made by the ever-increasing size of the ever-increasing Digital Tradition.

> And the future...

> We're not sure exactly where the Digital Tradition will wind up, except that it will always represent the best way we can come up with to disseminate folk songs. And it will also be supplied at no charge (or at cost, if you include postage and storage media) to anyone who wants it. Internet users can get copies directly over the net through the magic of FTP; World Wide Web can let those with access make their queries directly from the Internet at www.mudcat.org; mere mortals can mail us blank disks and we'll use the Post Office's snail mail. We've just come up with a CDROM edition to save disk and postage costs (and also lets you run searches without having to download to your-or your boss's-hard disk).

> We're currently adding about 300 songs (mostly with tunes) every six months. We're looking at schemes to make searches faster and more flexible, and working on faster and friendlier interfaces. We've added virtually all of the Laws-numbered ballads, and instituted a new numbering scheme to make cross-indexing easier. We're investigating low-cost/no-cost software to play the tunes better using sound cards (for those that have 'em) and to print out the music. We're trying out some Windows-oriented versions of the DT. We're open to suggestions.

> If you'd like to be part of the Digital Tradition, instead of a mere user, send us some songs. We can accept word files from just about any word processor (ASCII files are the easiest). If you can supply tunes (SongWright format is wonderful, but we'll take MIDI, Noteworthy, MusicEase, Xeroxes of music, WAV files, GIF files, hand-written music, ABC files, Qbasic files or audio tapes) that's great; if you can't send the tune, please include the source (book, record or whatever). We assume that anything we receive is public domain, unless you tell us otherwise--if you know the author and copyright holder, please let us know and we'll include that info.

> The fact that a song appears in the Digital Tradition does NOT guarantee that it's not copyrighted: it doesn't confer any permission to anybody to use any of the material. If you know the source of any non-attributed song, please let us know and we'll add that information the next time round. We're not perfect, but we do our best.

> If you wish to give a copy to someone else, feel free. The Digital Tradition is copy-encouraged. Experiment! You won't damage anything.

> The Digital Tradition
> Dick Greenhaus
> 28 Powell Street
> Greenwich, CT 06831
> E-Mail: digitrad@world.std.com
> http://www.mudcat.org