A compilation of music scores mixing some of the most frequently danced tunes in the European Balfolk festivals and some of the most frequently danced tunes in regional folk scenes.
The Jamictionary is a compilation of music scores for some of the most danced tunes in the Portuguese Balkfolk scene.
This is a community effort.
Contributions are welcome! ❤️
Visit us in GitHub.
This site is Open Source and can be re-used: https://github.com/jamictionary/jamictionary.github.io
It was built by André.
The data is Free Access and public: https://github.com/jamictionary/jamictionary-data
It was compiled by João Valente.
A full PDF is available in the Downloads page, as well as a zip file of all the master files (MSCZ).
Author's rights to the scores belong to their composers, except for the traditional tunes.
Traditional tunes have no owner.
Any traditional tunes shared here are Open Access and can be used without restrictions.
MuseScore is free (and legal!).
João learned most of the tunes by ear and then painfully transcribed them into the software — which, by the way, is an excellent way to memorize them
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Money is not a factor here, the Jamictionary is not for sale. It was created because the rain wouldn't stop in November 2022, and João wanted a way to pass the time.
Unless we find out otherwise, all of this work is legal.
The first version of the Jamictionary was created by João Valente in PDF.
João collected the tunes that seemed to be the most popular in the 2010s and 2020s Portuguese Bal Folk universe.
From there, a wild dream came: what if we could make it searchable, groupable by categories, easy to share!?…
That is where this website was born.
The goal of the Jamictionary is to achieve a minimum common repertoire in the Portuguese Balfolk jam sessions.
Up to a point, it follows the blueprint of jazz's reference jam session book, “The Real Book.”
It then abandons the binding to exist as a shared folder on the internet that you can save on your computer.
All tunes are saved as a MuseScore file.
MuseScore is a software that allows you to edit the tunes, so we can create multiple versions of one score.
There are no standards for the tunes—the melodies and chords that have been provided are only suggestions.
If everything goes well, the Portuguese jam sessions will get much livelier and they will be a meeting place for different generations and musical logics.
There will be updates with more tunes and dance genres.
It'll be a party.
If everything goes poorly, this will be just another half-hidden musical database, and a handful of people will use it for gigs without ever mentioning its existence.
Alea iacta est!
Let's jam!