HUGE NEWS FROM THE IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC ARCHIVE IN DUBLIN

June 30, 2026

Launch of PORT and The Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection

Port is the Irish word for a song or tune, sung or played, and it is the name given to ITMA’s new online tune resource. Now available at itma.ie/port, each tune featured in Port comes with a host of learning tools. The initial cornerstone of Port is the 1,500 tunes that comprise The Paddy O’Brien Tune Collection. This collection was compiled by the Offaly-born accordion player and composer Paddy O’Brien over many years.

Within Port, you can search through the scores using filters like tune type, key and number of parts. When you click into a tune, you can follow along to an interactive score. This project has been made possible thanks to the generosity of both Paddy O’Brien and Mark Bickford, a U.S.-based musician and long-time supporter of both Paddy O’Brien and ITMA.

Explore Port

Read more about Port, and explore curated playlists from the Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection

FROM THE ITMA WEBSITE:

Between 1995 and 2013 Paddy published three tune collections, comprising 33 CDs and 1,500 tunes in total. This collection features all of the sessions standards and more, including unusual tunes, different settings and 285 compositions, of which 47 came from the pen of Paddy O’Brien himself. For each tune the book contains a paragraph of text that tells the reader where Paddy got the tune from, who played it, where he heard it, and interesting details about versions and titles. This treasure trove of information was a go-to resource for tune information in the ITMA library in the days before the internet.

In early 2024 ITMA received an email from Mark Bickford, a long-time supporter of Paddy and a musician himself.  He had received an inheritance and wondered if ITMA was open to helping to make Paddy’s collection publicly available. This welcome philanthropy aligned perfectly with ITMA’s long-held ambition to re-imagine the presentation of the 10,000+ interactive scores already on the ITMA website. Discussions with Mark led to the development of PORT, an online resource that will ultimately hold 12,000+ traditional melodies from over 100 different sources, with the 1500 tunes from The Paddy O’Brien Tune Collection as the initial cornerstone.

All this means that The Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection is freely available to the general public via the ITMA website/PORT system, and is no longer published and distributed by Paddy himself here on this website.

Tune Collection History | Reviews | List of tunes (by album) | List of tunes (alphabetical) | Acknowledgments