Knoxville Scottish Music Club

Scottish music is one of the celtic or gaelic music traditions. Most of it is dance music. The fast tunes include reels, jigs and hornpipes. There are also many lovely slow airs. And above all, there is the strathspey - the quintessential Scottish tune. There are several stylistic variations within Scottish music, including music from 18th century Scotland with its heavy classical influences, as well as Shetland music, with its Norwegian influences, and music from the western Highlands and from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. We explore all these styles.

Much of southern Appalachia was settled by Scots and Scots-Irish over two hundred years ago. They brought their music with them, and some of the old Scottish tunes are still recognizable, though their names have changed.

Who we are: We are a group of amateur and professional musicians who get together to learn and play music in the Scottish style. We welcome musicians of all levels. Its fun to play in a big group!!!

When we meet: We meet on a monthly basis, typically on the fourth Sunday of each month. Our next meeting will be on Sunday, January 23, 2005. Meetings begin at 2:30 PM. We start off with a learning session in which we slowly go over new tunes. We usually try to learn at least one tune by ear. Sheet music is available for all the tunes. We take a break around 4:00 for refreshments and conversation, and spend the rest of the afternoon playing Scottish tunes both old and new.

Where we meet: We meet at the Laurel Theater at the corner of 16th St. and Laurel Ave. in the Fort Sanders neighborhood of Knoxville (near UT).

As we have a lot of new members, and many of the older collections have great tunes in them, this year we are reviewing the music from Book II. We are also adding a few new tunes. As a focus for learning the style better, we will be studying John Cunningham's "Fair Warning" Album. If you cannot find it in your local music store, it is available at Amazon.com.

We are currently in our eighth year. We have one book of tunes for every year that we have met. They are in ABC format. If you do not have ABC, you can obtain it from the ABC website listed below. You can download a book of our tunes and print them for yourself, or if there is a specific tune you want, you can look it up on the ABC tunefinder and it will output the tune in any one of several graphic formats.