This index is the personal contribution to the ragtime community that has given, and continues to give, each of the contributors so much enjoyment.  It is hoped that this material will aid other interested parties to find tunes they would like to hear and that it will encourage players/sequencers to record/sequence some of the currently unrepresented tunes.   It is, hopefully, also a lead to sources of scores for performers.

This site provides a free downloadable Excel 6 spreadsheet with details of 13,703 ragtime tunes, including composer, lyricist (if pertinent), year of copyright and publisher.  If Excel 6 doesn't suit you, the spreadsheet can probably be supplied in alternative formats.

Version 8 (31 May, 2008) includes web site sources for those 4,136 tunes for which MIDI renditions have been found on the Web or which can be made available.  To fully understand the spreadsheet you need to download and read the explanatory notes.  Click here to see a sample (file is 19 Kb) of what the spreadsheet looks like.

From here you can download three files - the spreadsheet, the notes and the Watanabe folio list.

• The spreadsheet is large (1.02 Mb in zipped format).  It is set up alphabetically by title, but you may sort the spreadsheet anyway you wish - by composer, by year of composition or just by which titles have MIDIs available.   Alas, there are inevitably some unintentional transcription errors.   Please notify us at the e-mail address below if you see any errors.  Click here to download the main spreadsheet.

• To understand the spreadsheet you need first to download and read the notes (13 x A4 pages - 54 Kb in zipped form).  They explain how the spreadsheet is laid out, what the references mean and give the MIDI sequencers home pages.   You may need to repaginate this before printing if A4 (297 x 210 mm) is not your normal page size.  Click here to download the notes.

• The smaller Excel 6 spreadsheet (zipped down to 46 Kb) gives the detailed contents of 34 sheet music folios and the publishers of them.  Click here to download the Watanabe folio spreadsheet.

Producing this spreadsheet has sometimes seemed an impossible task given the conflicting data available. When the concept for this site/project was being developed it seemed to fill a void.  With the developments in web technologies (broadband in particular) and the digitising of scores by many libraries (and individuals) much of the material has been readily accessed elsewhere although not as a comprehensive index.  But the time required to maintain it, given the new material being added to the web daily (piano roll scans particularly) has become too great for me and so Version 8 is my final offering.

On my hard drive I have a copy of almost every MIDI cited and can help people with copies of most.  Particularly I offer a CD of 'a version of each title for which a MIDI is listed' (USD 12 posted anywhere in the world).  A RAGTIME COMPENDIUM is not, and never has been, 'commercial' so the price reflects only the copying effort and freight.  If you wish to get this, please contact me, making sure you put 'compendium' in your message title, for details of how to remit.   As it is a hobby, please allow for holidays, etc.


Michael Mathew
31 May 2008