California Consolidated Drum Band : Music

Music Page

These are some of the tunes we play, as well as some others that are just interesting. These are saved in various formats; if you notice any problems or have questions, feel free to contact the webmaster.

See the format notes toward the bottom for information on how the songs are organized and what all these funny abbreviations mean.

You'll find some drum music down towards the bottom of the page.

As usual, this is a work in progress, so new tunes are being added all the time. If you don't see one you're interested in, just ask.

Zip files of the whole set are available. See the information at the bottom of the page.

Col. H. C. Hart's "New and Improved Instructor for the DRUM"

Frog in the Well	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Beaux of Oak Hill	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc

Bruce and Emmett's "Drummers' and Fifers' Guide"

Biddy Oats	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Downfall of Paris	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Hell on the Wabash	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Montezuma (the last song in the evening duty)	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Newport	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
No Party	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Owl Creek	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Retreat (afternoon duty)	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Three Camps (Reveille)	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Turnpike Bend	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc

"No Party" is written with a high C. Aside from the fact that many fifers find it dfficult to play a high C, there has been some discussion about whether this is actually correct. The version here has that C written as a B.

The American Veteran Fifer

Most of the American Veteran Fifer tunes have been transcribed and are on a separate page of their own.

Revolutionary War Era

from various sources

The Turk's March	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Knolton's Quickstep	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc

The Company of Fifers and Drummers

A major source of tunes, the books of the Company are available on-line. (See the links page)

Baker's Buck	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Father O'Flynn	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
First of September	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Fisher's Hornpipe	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Green Cockade	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Korn Likker	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Little Tea	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Paddy on the Handcar	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Roving Sailor	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Sailor's Hornpipe	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Sgt O'Leary	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Sisters	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc

CCDB Music

Some songs have "local variations" which differ from commonly available printed material. The songs that CCDB plays that are unique to the group appear below.

Ashworth's Quickstep	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Balquhidder Lasses	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Buffalo Gals	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Battle Hymn	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Catholic Boys	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Irishman's Wages	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Mountain Dew	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Paddy on the Handcar	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Rally 'Round the Flag	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Union Quickstep	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Village Quickstep	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
Welcome Here Again	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc
When We Go Down To Washington	PDF	JPG	Midi	abc

Format notes:

The files on this page were created with various programs on various systems. They are hopefully correct, but if you find any that appear bad, illegible, or need to be cleaned up - please let me know.

PDF	"Portable Display Format", by Adobe. Use the Acrobat Reader (acroread) to view and print these files. They're formatted for US sized 8-1/2 by 11 inch pages.
JPG	a picture format, sometimes known as JPEG. Your web browser should be able to display these. The jpg files here may be smaller size (and smaller scale) than the GIF images. There's one song per page.
Midi	a sound file. These are short and only contain the first part played one time through, followed by the second part played one time through (AB, not AABB as they are usually played). The only exception is if there are first and second endings for the tune; then you get the whole thing. The tones should match your (B-flat) fife, although an octave low. The files are automatically generated and don't sound much like a fife, but will hopefully give you an idea of what it should sound like if you have difficulty following the written music.
abc	a simple text format that contains the notes and lengths. It's a format used on the Web to email tunes back and forth. It's not too legible, but it's very compact. See the web pages for abc and abcplus on sourceforge for more information and various programs which allow you to read, play, and print music files. There are LOTS of abc tune archives out there.

Drum Music

Following are some drum beatings for specific songs as well as general beats that are used for many fife tunes. These are presented in printable format, but do not include abc or midi files at the moment. (I have had trouble getting abc to handle drum notation, so the music files use a shareware program named "Mup", or Music Publisher (from arkkra). This runs well on Unix/Linux systems and produces PostScript output for printing.) Some drum music contains snare and bass drum parts written on the same staff. The snare is above the bass.

Frog in the Well (from Hart's)	PDF	JPG	mup
Ashworth's Quick Step	PDF	JPG	mup
Yankee Doodle (Hart's Plain Flam)	PDF	JPG	mup
Army 2/4 Standard Beat (Bruce & Emmett) (See note 1)	PDF	JPG	mup
Roving Sailor (See note 2)	PDF	JPG	mup

Notes:

The Army 2/4 is written with two emphasized 16th notes at the beginning of a beat. Many people play this with only the second 16th emphasized to create a syncopated rhythm. It's wrong. (My pet peeve.)
The Roving Sailor is an early beating that apparently is a predecessor to the basic Army 2/4. It's useful for several different tunes and as an alternate to the old standards (Army 2/4 and Monumental).

CCDB Stand Pieces

6/8 Medley	PDF	JPG	mup
Matt Conklin's Flam Tap	PDF	JPG	mup
British Grenadiers	PDF	JPG	mup
Crazy Army	PDF	JPG	mup
Lily-O	PDF	JPG	mup
Crazy Monumental	PDF	JPG	mup

Zip files

By request, for those who want the complete set of files to examine at their leisure, zip files are available. These contain the PDF files for printing, the JPG files for viewing, and the Midi files (fife music only) for listening.

The files are:

Fife music from this page	1278113 bytes	14-Jun-2004
Fife music from AVF	1502420 bytes	27-Nov-2004
Drum music from this page	243671 bytes	18-Oct-2003

(The AVF music file contains only PDF and Midi files. Including the JPG images increased the size dramatically. If you do need JPG files, they are available but large - about 4.8 MB.)

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