Dots

Some people are sniffy about dots, believing they have no place in an aural tradition. I am not very good at picking up tunes by ear and pipes are loud so it's hard to hear someone else play, live or on a CD, while you play.

Luckily there are plenty of dots out there for pipe tunes. This is where I find mine.

Coelsean
This is an amazing resource, mostly older tunes from out of copyright collections. They claim to have over 7000 settings, and they are all free. The only real downside is that the scores are often quite  cramped, making them hard to read. It's a small price to pay.

Scores are in pdf, and the collection includes front covers, contents pages, introductions etc from the original books that the tunes were published in. Includes some piobaireachd. You can search alphabetical listings, which includes alternative names for tunes, or use the full pdf index.
http://www.ceolsean.net

The Session
This is a bit hit and miss. On the plus side tunes are listed with their aliases so it's easy enough to find something even when you are not certain of its name. Scores are nicely laid out and in a good size font. Some tune listings will also include a bit of history, names of tunes often played together, and links to details of CDs where you can hear the tune being played.

On the negative side tunes are mostly transcribed by non-pipers, which sometimes just means they are free of grace notes  and sometimes means that gracings are misintepreted as notes, which plays havoc with timing when you try to grace those grace notes. Descriptions of tune types are limited so you'll find 6/8 marches, strathspeys and other described as waltzes and heaven knows what else. The selection is also quite limited, as this is really a resource for Irish trad. At least it means you might find tunes you can play at your local session if Irish is the preferred idiom.
https://thesession.org/tunes

Scottish Smallpipes
The website of the monkey's maker, Ian Kinnear. He has a tune of the month page which includes dots but also sound clips of him playing the tunes on one of his own sets of pipes. A mix of tunes from different places, reasonably clear scores, with gracing. Not a big collection, but growing slowly.
http://www.scottishsmallpipes.com/sound/tune-of-the-month/archive/

Pipe tunes on demand
A site from Mcgillivray piping. Searchable by tune name, composer and difficulty level. Midi file for each tune. A mix of old and new tunes, but it seems a bit hit and miss and I don't know what the criteria for inclusion are, especially since it includes some real oddities such as settings for pop tunes and hymns.

These are not free tunes! You sign up, make a downpayment, and then buy tunes against that credit. Tunes are in pdf format.

I personally dislike the white on black colour scheme, but the composers' biographies and pictures are a nice addition.
http://www.pipetunes.ca

The viper piper
I'm a tad wary about recommending this, as it occasionally seems to upset my antivirus package. Searchable database with a good number of tunes.
http://www.therealviperpiper.com

Kilbarchan Pipe Band
Nice  clean scores, with gracing, and ideas for sets, although these are band sets (MSRs, medleys) rather than session sets, and the number of tunes is quite limited.
http://kilbarchanpipeband.org/tunes.htm

Books
There are plenty of real live books out there, although sadly no longer retailing for 70p, which is the cover price on the elderly copy of The Piper's Delight which I, ahem, borrowed from the fan.

The main problem here is that you pay for a whole book out of which you only ever play a handful of tunes, and once you start collecting books you find that they overlap on a number of tunes. The format often means that the score is  cramped or runs over pages and they don't sit easily on a bookcase. It's not always easy to find out which tunes are in any given book, and when  it comes to Donald McLeod I find that the tune you really want is always in a volume don't yet have.

Some music shops sell books of piping music, but the internet is your best bet, unless you happen to be in Scotland. The College of Piping shop stocks a good range, as does the Bagpipe Shop at the Piping Centre.

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