Tunepal: Searching a digital library of traditional music scores

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the Tunepal project as an example of a music information retrieval (MIR) system that is having an impact on how musicians access, learn and play traditional Irish music around the world. Design/methodology/approach: This paper describes the functionality of the Tunepal system: consisting of the tune corpus, the web site tunepal.org and mobile apps supporting iOS and Android OS. Tunepal facilitates query-by-title and query-by-playing music (QBP) searches and allows a musician to retrieve and playback scores amongst other supported functions. Findings: Tunepal has been favorably received and musicians report that the system is being used in a variety of scenarios including archiving and the preparation of sleeve notes for commercial recordings. Tunepal has a growing user base in 25 countries. Originality/value: The comprehensive tune corpus (over 16,000 compositions), the query-by-playing technology and the fact that the mobile apps provide access to the corpus in situ in traditional music sessions and classes make this project uniquely useful.