Heritage Tunes is a project built and maintained by Heather Grimstead, combining a love of traditional fiddle music with an interest in database development and creating user-friendly digital experiences. While you might occasionally encounter a bug or two as I continue learning and improving the site, the heart of this project lies in serving the traditional music community.
Why This Site Exists
Traditional music resources are abundant, but they’re scattered across the internet and often buried on sites where finding specific content can be challenging. Similarly, workshops, festivals, and jam sessions happen regularly but discovering them often relies on word-of-mouth or knowing exactly where to look. Heritage Tunes brings these pieces together in one user-friendly space, making it easier to discover both tunes and the vibrant community events where they come alive.
Discover, Learn, Play
Everything here is built around one loop: find a tune worth learning, get what you need to learn it, then have somewhere to put it to use. That’s how most of us pick up this music, and it’s the test I use when deciding what to build next.
Discover
The tune database is the core of the site: thousands of traditional and old-time tunes, searchable and filterable by key, mode, and more. Depth varies a lot from tune to tune. Many entries are still a name and a starting point, but the ones I’ve worked through include:
- Historical context: When I can verify it, a brief background on the tune’s origins and significance
- Multiple recordings: Early or traditional recordings where available, plus contemporary versions
- External sources: Links to established databases like the Traditional Tune Archive, Slippery Hill, and The Library of Congress, plus song history, lyrics, and sheet music
Beyond search, collections gather tunes around a theme: crooked tunes, waltzes, tunes from a particular source or region. Tune pages suggest related tunes worth hearing next, and the homepage spotlight rotates through the database so there’s usually something new to stumble onto.
Learn
Finding a tune you love is the easy part. Getting it under your fingers is what I want this site to help with.
Video lessons are linked on tune pages wherever I find good ones: free lessons shared on YouTube alongside paid courses and Patreon offerings. These come from working musicians who are generous with their teaching, and sending players their way is one of the things I most want this site to do.
Loopable recordings: The loop tool lets you work a tune phrase by phrase. Set start and end points around the section you’re chewing on, label it, and loop it as long as you need. The tool is available for YouTube hosted recordings. Videos play on YouTube’s own player, so the musicians whose recordings you study still get credit for the time you spend watching.
Play
A tune isn’t really learned until you’ve played it with other people, or at least played it away from the screen.
- Practice list: Save up to 10 tunes you’re actively working on. Each expands to show its recordings and lessons, so a practice session is all in one place.
- Jam lists: Build and reorder sets for a jam, a gig, or a workshop. Pull tunes from the database or type in anything not catalogued yet, then share the list with a link. Anyone can view it, and other players can save a copy.
- Events calendar: Old-time, bluegrass, and other traditional music festivals, workshops, and jam sessions. I’m in the DC metro area, so the focus is East Coast, with noteworthy events elsewhere included too.
There’s also Replay, a companion iPhone app for ear training: a listen-and-repeat memory game for pitch. It builds the skill underneath all of this, hearing a phrase and finding it on your instrument.
My Approach
I don’t aim to duplicate the excellent work already being done by other traditional music resources. Instead, I link to original sources and creators, hoping to drive traffic to the people and organizations that have spent time building the resources our community relies on.
When selecting recordings, I try to balance historical significance with practical learning needs. While early recordings provide important context, contemporary versions often offer the audio clarity that makes learning easier. I especially value hearing how different musicians interpret a tune, the variations and personal touches that make each performance its own.
A Growing Resource
This site evolves alongside my own musical journey and technical skills. New tunes, events, and resources are added regularly as I discover them. It’s not a polished, expert-level database; it’s a practical tool built by someone actively learning, for others who are doing the same.
Whether you’re just starting out or you’re an experienced player looking for new material or events, I hope you’ll find something useful here. The traditional music community has always thrived on sharing knowledge and supporting each other’s growth, and this site is my contribution to that generous spirit.