NLTrad is a small, curated collection of traditional music organized in an online, searchable database. My focus is on Newfoundland and Irish tunes that are played at local sessions here in St. John's, NL, Canada.

Have a Newfoundland tune you'd like to add to the database? Send me a transcription. If you could make an audio file to go along with your transcription, that would be even better! I have no formal training in transcription or notation so if you spot errors in the transcriptions or have an idea on how to improve them, please do get in touch.

You can contact me at allan.farrell@gmail.com or you can find me most Sundays playing at the afternoon session at O'Reilly's pub in downtown St. John's.

Tunes in this collection will always be free - each page provides options to download the ABC notation or print (to a pdf, if you prefer) any tune or set in the database.

--- Allan

News

2020-01-01
Since Sept 4, 2019, when I started collecting stats, nltrad.ca has had 5776 page views from 435 users. Top four countries for visitors are Canada, United States, United Kingdom and Ireland. Through it I've made new friends, learned lots about this traditional music that has been passed down to us and improved as a musician. Thanks to all who have helped me get the site up and running by providing feedback, giving me access to hard to find recordings, providing transcriptions, sharing new tunes and encouragement. It's been a group effort in too many ways to name. Looking forward to a good year of music in 2020!
2019-04-14
I've added a little practice page to let you practice a random tune or set. Check the main menu to access. It's very simple at this stage but could be developed further!
2019-03-18
Search has been improved - it should now return results for partial search term matches. I've also added a new image from the session yesterday at the YellowBelly.
2019-03-18
Search has been improved - it should now return results for partial search term matches.
2019-02-09
When viewing a tune you can now see which sets it belongs to.