Are you a high-tech folkie? How about taking the complete O’Neill’s Music of Ireland in your pocket to a folk festival! Here’s where Bryan Duggan’s TunePal comes to the fore. I first encountered this wonderful software when I found an early version for my Psion 5MX. Since upgrading to an HP iPaq2750 I have been on the lookout for something that would play .abc format tunes, so I can take an aural reference with me to festivals. Enter Bryan Duggan again – with an updated version for pocket PC (pocket windows 2003+).
The software is easy to instal, and, once you pay the €10 registration fee (ten euros)you can then install a MIDI instruments package that lifts this software into a truly useful package. So you can play the tunes with a fiddle-like sound, and control the volume, and more importantly, the speed of play. That is, you can vary the speed without varying the pitch – so you can slow the tune down to learn it, then speed it up as you get more confident with the tune – or to hear it at session speed.
This will play any .abc tune, and runs very stably on the iPaq. So now I can go armed with literally thousands of tunes, and when I hear one I like at a session, I can retire from the fray and play it over a few times to get it stuck in my head and ready to play for real 🙂
As you can see from the screen shots above (the bulge is an artefact of the camera lens) the interface is simple, clear and easy to navigate. The only further development I would like to see is a means to display the tune as sheet music – but this has a big thumbs up from me – well done Bryan 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
Four Strings 