ScotMus.com is an independent, free-to-access multimedia project devoted to the online publication of historic sources of all traditions of Scottish music, presented in a scholarly but accessible form. It was launched around Midsummer 2009 by the freelance Scottish musicologist, Dr. Steve Sweeney-Turner (ie. "me"). It currently receives no external funding or institutional support of any kind, aside from the good-will of local, national and international research libraries and diverse cultural centres. Its widest support is moral and grass-roots, coming from its primary readerships among the general public, the academic community and the music profession itself. More detailed information can be found on these pages:
| Transcription Policy | MIDI Policy | Copyright Policies | Technical Issues | Anti-Spam Policy | Press & Media Info |
The website as a whole is dedicated to my daughter and my parents: the three people who, more than anyone else, have enjoyed the three greatest benefits of my chosen career as a Scottish musicologist — weird noises, ranting psychobabble, and grinding poverty.
Talking of which, I'm always available for public talks, media work, and all other means of proselytizing my art for anything from a small gratuity to a major windfall. If you're fortunate enough to have more money than sense, please don't hesitate to contact me.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank (in approximately-random order) the staff of the following institutions in particular for their patient moral support and generous help in providing advice on and access to rare source-materials for the project: Edinburgh Central Music Library, the Scottish Music Centre, the National Library of Scotland, the Wighton Collection, Glasgow University Library, Edinburgh University Library, the Stevenson House Collection, the British Library, Cardiff Central Library and the National Library of Wales.
ScotMus.com is the end result of a life-long obsession with Scottish music which has been encouraged and enhanced by many personal and professional relationships down the years — too many to summarise in any meaningfully-brief way. Individual notes of acknowledgement to folks who've made direct contributions to the improvement of specific aspects of ScotMus.com are included on the relevant pages throughout the website.
However, I'd like to pay particular tribute here to the major influence of my relationship with that late, great and idiosyncratic pioneer of Scottish musicology, Dr. David Johnson — quite possibly the strangest fellow-human it will ever be my fate to have known. Like all the best of best-friends, we were also often each other's best-enemies, cantankerously keeping each other in check on many things, both professionally and personally (or at least trying to — mostly in vain). Unfortunately, David died probably only just before the last phone-call I made to him (or rather, to his eerily-silent answer-phone), which was to tell him about my initial plans for starting the ScotMus.com project back in Spring 2009. Selfish auld git to the last, he swanned off at precisely the point that I needed him most. Nonetheless, his surreal spirit still guides me from the pages of his books, and my memories of the many unreasonably-lengthy and exhaustingly-intense coffee 'n' fags sessions we shared down the years. I do have to admit one thing, though — David absolutely loathed the idea of scholars giving their work away for free on the internet, and it's quite likely that he'd have been livid with me for starting ScotMus.com at all (although he'd have been equally intrigued by my mad-cap failures to make a living from it — getting paid for an honest day's scribal labour was one of David's dearest obsessions). So for all I know, we'd have ended up ignoring each other in a majorly-jippy huff for a fair old while for the X-millionth time. Nonetheless, I also know that he wouldn't have been able to resist constantly heckling me on numerous points of scholarship, and that his vast, unprecedented and still-unparalleled knowledge, wisdom and uncanny sixth sense for the obscure and the unknown would no doubt have made this a far better website than it ever will be in his absence. David — you, your unnervingly-experimental curries, and the brazenly-knobbly knees beneath your ludicrously-belligerent kilt are sorely, but affectionately, missed. May the Merry McMuses rest your crazy auld soul. Gin ye dae meet Rabbie on the ither side, gie'm a sonsie wink fae me. Have fun up Ben Parnassus, and I'll see ye later.