TheSession Trad Tune Explorer

Dig up underrated, high-quality tunes that have been commercially recorded by professional artists but are rarely played in amateur session circles. Surprise your session mates with fresh, beautiful material that deserves more playtime!

Discover the most popular traditional folk tunes played in sessions worldwide. Backed by real-world set appearance statistics to help you build an essential session repertoire.

Rediscover historically significant, widely recorded tunes that were once central to the tradition but have faded from modern session repertoire. Brings classic, legendary melodies back to today's session circles.

Rank traditional cornerstones by combining their commercial recording footprint (tracks, albums, and artists) with real-world session popularity. Find the essential, core repertoire that every traditional musician is expected to know!

Highlight the ultimate "set builders"—melodies that connect naturally with the widest variety of other tunes in actual session setlists. Find the ideal tunes to start a set or change melodies without killing the session's flow.

Search TheSession tune names and aliases offline, then see and play a short ABC preview of how the tune goes. Instant results with no server round-trip.

Ideal for live sessions.

Paste a short two-bar ABC fragment and search across tune settings for matching melodic shapes, even when the phrase is remembered in another key.

Supports exact matching and approximate fuzzy matching for incomplete or slightly imperfect remembered phrases.

Search for a tune and compare all its ABC settings. Identify the most popular versions, filter by mode or chord usage, and quickly find the settings most commonly played in sessions.

The selected tune appears in the centre. Artists who recorded it are arranged around it. Click an artist to open its matching recordings.

Visualise a tune's signature characteristics across five qualitative dimensions. Compares commercial recordings, session set appearance, tunebook density, bookmark activity, and global geographic reach relative to all other tunes of the same type.

Harmonize scale degrees into triads & 7ths across all traditional Celtic modes, Harmonic Minor, Whole Tone, & Lydian Dominant scales. Visualise note structures on a chromatic wheel, 2-octave piano, & interactive fretboard with multi-instrument tunings (Guitar, DADGAD, Mandolin, Banjo, Bouzouki, Ukulele), plus instant Trad Session Key Shift Matrix lookups.

Explore modal open-string chord voicings, drone resonance, and fretboard fingering patterns. Designed for traditional backing musicians using DADGAD guitar, GDAD bouzouki, and standard tunings. Includes continuous synth drone practice pads.

Watch backing chords and individual melody notes light up dynamically on the guitar or bouzouki fretboard during playback. Search for any session tune setting with chord annotations. Supports DADGAD, GDAD, and standard tunings.

Explore tune continuation paths found in TheSession.org recordings. View either the most common follow-on tunes or more unexpected pathways branching from the selected tune.

Explore tune lead-in paths found in TheSession.org recordings. View either the most common transitions or more unexpected pathways leading into the selected tune.

Explore which tunes most often follow one another in recordings. A useful way to spot common recorded pairings and study tune flow in performance.

Explore tune continuation paths found in TheSession.org sets. View either the most common follow-on tunes or more unexpected pathways branching from the selected tune.

Explore tune lead-in paths found in TheSession.org sets. View either the most common transitions or more unexpected pathways leading into the selected tune.

See which tunes most commonly follow one another in shared sets. Helpful for learning practical session pairings and common set-building habits.

Explore tune flow patterns found in TheSession.org sets. View either the most common tune transitions or more unexpected pathways. Tunes that lead into the selected tune branch to the left, while tunes that follow it branch to the right.

Explore tune flow patterns found in TheSession.org recordings. View either the most common tune transitions or more unexpected pathways. Tunes that lead into the selected tune branch to the left, while tunes that follow it branch to the right

Select an artist and explore recorded tune-to-tune pathways. Follow shared transitions, starting tunes, and destination tunes to discover related musicians.

Explore how tonal centres tend to flow from one tune to the next in sets from TheSession.org. Choose a starting tune or mode family, then a starting tonal label such as G major or E dorian, and see the most common follow-on destinations.

Drill down into specific tonal transitions between two modes. Explore the exact tune-to-tune pairings that occur between combinations such as G major → D major or E dorian → D mixolydian.

Useful to quickly find recordings to listen to. Search album recordings for tune sets: find exact recorded sets, the same tunes in a different order, recordings containing all searched tunes, and partial matches.

Explore common tune pairs, triples, and repeated set patterns drawn from real-world shared sets.

Animated race of cumulative set creation, plus current leaderboard.

Tune collection details and analysis pages. Open any collection to see its overview page, tune list, and later deeper collection-based tools.

Explore distinctive and common tunes by country, with rhythm, mode, and similar-country repertoire fingerprints.

Browse all tune settings submitted by a member and filter by tune name, type, mode, meter, popularity, album recordings, aliases, and date. Ideal for exploring how a player actually contributes tunes over time.

Browse a member’s sets and narrow them down using filters for tune, rhythm, mode, set length, and set originality.

Browse a member’s tunebook and narrow it down using filters for tune name, rhythm, mode, popularity, incipit, and dates.

Track your practice progress for any member's tunebook, bookmarks, or sets. Features checking status persistence, dynamic filters, printable checklist layout, and CSV export.

Search a member's tunes across their sets, tunebook entries, and bookmarked settings in one place.

Find which members have bookmarked tune settings submitted by a selected member. Filter by tune, bookmarker, type, mode, meter, popularity, albums, and bookmark date.

See how your repertoire stacks up against other members. Discover shared tunes and pick up what your friends are playing.

Discover which tunes to learn next to unlock the most complete sets. Based on your tunebook and other members, this tool highlights the highest-impact tunes for expanding your playable repertoire.

Discover which tunes to learn next to unlock the most complete sets. Based on your tunebook and other members, this tool highlights the highest-impact tunes for expanding your playable repertoire.

Browse all tune settings bookmarked by a member and filter by tune name, type, mode, meter, popularity, album recordings, aliases, and bookmark date.