Sound files for all the songs of Dear Old Illinois

This page offers an opportunity to hear the melodies of all the songs in the book. The sound files are of the MIDI type, though they were generated by the notation program used to make the scores, rather than a digital instrument. The actual audio file type is .mp3, so about any player should play them.

The sound files are not consistent. Some sound the chords only once at the point of each chord change; others give the accompaniment as it would be played on the guitar. The latter requires manually writing the accompaniment part, which takes considerable time, so relatively few of the sound files are like this.

Also, in terms of effect, their sterile, synthesized sound is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the voices that sang these songs to preservation years ago. But we feel that as learning tools, these files are better than nothing, especially for those who are just beginning to learn to read written music notation. We hope you find them useful.

* Gray shading indicates alternate versions.
* Yellow shading indicates "as performed" versions. As in the book, these are given without accompaniment.