Some years ago I discovered early American shapenote, or “Sacred Harp” music and began singing, collecting, and publishing some of the tunes in small hand-made songbooks. The last of these is here presented.
This is a collection of various early American songs from many different songbooks. There are also some new songs included, which were made by matching folk tunes to christian poetry (I didn’t write these songs, I simply put them together). In most cases, only melody and chords are included, and only regular music notation is used (not shapenote notation). So it is more a songbook for a single or small group of singers who enjoy Irish/Scottish/English music, and would like to sing sacred music in that style. The book is wonderfully illustrated and bordered.
(click on image to download pdf...)
Sample Pages – Here are a few images of some of the pages, to give you an idea of what the book looks like:
