Attention all women tune-writers....
We are collecting and collating material for a book of tunes by 100 contemporary female composers from the folk/traditional music scenes of the UK and Ireland to be published in 2022 by Faber Music.
This book is part of a larger project/movement and royalties will be pooled in order to set up a website promoting and celebrating female tune-writers.
We would love it if you would submit up to 3 tunes for possible inclusion.
What do you need to know/do?
Read the basic info in this document and if you would like to submit some tunes for consideration that would be absolutely brilliant! Submissions will be accepted up to 18th October 2021. We will need up to 3 tunes, a line or two of text about each tune and a short biography of yourself.
How to submit
or by email to: tunesfromthewomen@handsupfortrad.co.uk
or by post to: Hands Up for Trad, The Sheiling, Lamington, Biggar ML12 6HW
by 18/10/2021
Submissions can be sent as a pdf or you can send a handwritten submission (please be very careful to make sure each note is written clearly)
If you can add chords to your tune that would be appreciated (just chord names eg C, Gmin, D7 etc)
In order to make the book as useful as possible for teachers and players we would like as many tunes as possible to have chords to go with them. Our tunebook team will be happy to put chords to your tune for you (if you are not happy with this please let us know) Our choices will be fairly straightforward chords that will work on a variety of instruments.
The foreword will say that all chords are just a suggestion. It will be made clear when the chords are the composer’s own choice.
In addition to your tunes please also supply
1) a short biography of up to 180 words including your website address etc if relevant.
2) Up to 40 words about each tune (if you don’t have anything to say about the tune, that’s fine, just ignore this bit!)
Closing date
We will accept submissions until 18th October 2021
How the royalties/copyright will work:
Royalties
We are setting up a kind of royalties collective where, instead of each woman getting the rather small royalty that one or two tunes would generate, all the money will be pooled to set up a website to promote, support and celebrate the work of women tune-writers (whether they are included in the book or not). The basic idea works in a similar way to thesession.org but with much stricter control over who can upload (eg you can only upload your own compositions – ensuring that each tune is as the composer intended it) There will also be links to your own websites etc
Faber will pay the royalties directly to the charity Hands Up For Trad who will put it towards setting up the website, and to pay any expenses needed to make sure that Faber have all the material they need to produce the book. A complete accounting of how this money is used will be available to all composers whose tunes are in the book.
Copyright
If your tune is unpublished, you will sign an agreement with Faber Music granting them an exclusive right to publish the tune in this book. None of your other rights in the tune will be affected (and you will be able to publish the tune/s in other books as well - your agreement with Faber is just for this particular publication).
If you already have an exclusive agreement with a publisher, you will check that the publisher is able and willing to grant Faber Music the rights it needs.
Can you earn anything from the book?
Yes, you can buy discounted copies and sell on at the agreed price. Faber are happy for all composers to sell through their own websites and also at gigs/teaching events etc.
Also – the whole point is to make the tunes more easily available/accessible, meaning that more musicians will learn them and possibly record them...and then you earn your composers royalty through PRS or whoever...
How will the tunes/composers be chosen?
I am absolutely committed to making this a significant, representative and inclusive document. I know there are more than 100 great female tune-writers out there, so if we get more than 100 people submitting then choices will have to be made. Our ‘tunebook team’ of women, from different traditions, will play through the submissions on a variety of instruments and come to an agreement as to which combination of tunes will work to greatest effect. If there are too many of one type of tune (reel/jig etc) then that may affect choices so please give us a few options...some 3/2 hornpipes, slow airs, barndances, slides, mazurkas (and the old favourite.... ‘miscellaneous’ !)
I guess I just have to ask you to trust us. And if this book is a success then hopefully there will be Volume 2....
How it started: A few months ago I received an email from my friend Rachael McShane asking if I had any of my tunes written out as she was looking for female-composed material to teach her fiddle group after realising that everything on her possibles list was written by men...
I immediately sent an email out to a few of my female tune-writing pals to ask if they knew of any collections of tunes by female composers. They all said “no....but there absolutely should be such a thing” and some of them suggested that as well as a tunebook there should also be a website...and a series of podcasts...etc etc etc....and we all got excited...and the idea grew from there.
After sending out lots of speculative emails and talking to lots of people I am absolutely delighted to say that Faber have agreed to make the book a reality. This is a great opportunity to showcase some of the brilliant tunes written by women, and to set up an ongoing resource to promote female tune-writers.
I am grateful to Jo Freya, Mairearad Green, Corrina Hewat, Angharad Jenkins, Anna Massie, Rebecca McCarthy-Kent and Amy Thatcher for agreeing to form the #TunesFromTheWomen tunebook team, and being prepared to donate their time to playing through tunes, coming up with chords etc
If you want to support this idea you can: submit tunes for the book (and/or upload to the website when we get it set up); use the hashtag #TunesFromTheWomen on twitter/instagram etc; be proactive in playing tunes by other women; keep on playing and writing your own great tunes!
Thank you,
Kathryn Tickell
August 2021