Tunes, Mapped

Not transcriptions. Traditional tunes have no single correct setting, so what these pages publish is the thing that generalises: where a tune lives on the fingerboard, and what your hand has to do to get it.

Four traditional tunes, none of them transcribed. Every player's setting of a traditional tune differs, so a single written version is at best one person's and at worst a claim that there is a right answer. What every setting shares is the key and the range — and from those two facts the whole geography of the tune under your hand can be computed.

The four

Four fiddle tunes — key, range, and whether a shift is needed, all derived
TuneKeyRangeSemitonesShift needed?
Arkansas TravelerD majorD4–B521no
June AppleA mixolydianA4–B514no
Shady GroveD dorianD4–D512no
Blackberry BlossomG majorG4–B516no
Arkansas TravelerD major, two strains, and one honest question about how high you want to go.D major June AppleA mixolydian — the flat seventh that refuses to resolve.A mixolydian Shady GroveOne octave, no shift, and a raised sixth doing all the work.D dorian Blackberry BlossomG major at speed — the widest range of the four, and a real shift.G major

Deliberately not the usual four

These are not Soldier's Joy, Old Joe Clark, Angeline the Baker or Cripple Creek — those four live on our sister site Mandolin Warrior, published as first-position mandolin tab, and duplicating them here as different notation would be exactly the doorway pattern this network's guards exist to prevent. CI reads that site's registry off disk and fails the build if a tune ever appears on both.

How to use a map

Learn the tune by ear from a recording, the way it is actually transmitted. Then bring the map: it tells you which position the phrase wants, whether you will need to shift, and which open strings the key gives you for free. Pair it with the position frames and a bowing pattern, and the tune stops being a sequence of notes and becomes a place your hand knows.