PORT is the Irish word for a song or tune, sung or played, and it is the name given to ITMA’s online tune resource.  Now available through the ITMA website, each tune featured in PORT comes with a host of learning tools.  These include audio files to allow the written music to come to life for those who don’t read it, and notation for those who do.  The tunes are presented in the context of the wider ITMA collections with links to the federated search and tunes that share similar qualities.

Eventually, PORT will be home to the more than 12,000 scores from over 100 different sources in ITMA’s collections, but the initial cornerstone of Port is the 1,500 tunes that comprise The Paddy O’Brien Tune Collection.  This collection was compiled by the Offaly-born accordion player and composer Paddy O’Brien over many years.

Within PORT, you can explore the tunes from The Paddy O’Brien Tune Collection in great detail. You can search through the scores using filters like tune type, key and number of parts.  When you click into a tune, you can follow along to an interactive score. You’ll also find information on the tune written by Paddy O’Brien himself, along with a downloadable pdf of the score and ABC notation.   Watch the instruction video below for more information.

This project has been made possible thanks to the generosity of both Paddy O’Brien and Mark Bickford, a U.S.-based musician and long-time supporter of both Paddy O’Brien and ITMA.  Port is powered by Soundslice and a software application built by fiddle player Danny Diamond of Atlantic Arts. ITMA would also like to thank the guest curators who compiled playlists of their favourite selections.

PORT is currently in Beta mode, so if you find any issues with it feel free to email us at [email protected] and let us know.

We hope you enjoy.