What is #TradSongTues?

Each Tuesday, on Twitter we post and retweet contributions at intervals throughout the day and evening. We welcome exciting findings, recordings, photos, quotes, blogs and other oddments. You can follow the posts at #TradSongTues on Twitter or https://www.facebook.com/trads... on Facebook and contribute yourself, sharing your favourite songs and videos around the weekly theme which is posted on the preceding Thursday.

We are a small, but perfectly formed, team of volunteers who share a love and passion for traditional song and music, led by Fay Hield, with Nicola Beazley, Kirsty Greenfield, Jenna Walker and Andy McMillan helping to keep those fantastic trad songs coming to you.

To add to this content, we've made some podcasts and blogs for the website exploring in more detail some of the themes and content of the Twitter feed with some of the people who contribute. Please enjoy them and share them if you like.

Posts include exciting findings, recordings, photos, quotes, blogs and other oddments. You are welcome to just follow us and look at the posts but we’d love you to contribute too as the whole thing relies on people sending in interesting things that others are interested in seeing.

Next week we will have a bit more information on the Trad Song Tues team and will look at having a special new feature each week on the site.

When is #TradSongTues?

#TradSongTues and https://www.facebook.com/trads... runs every Tuesday. You can tweet or post at any point during the day or even the week, our team will post and retweet on Tuesdays broadly during these sessions times (GMT):

• 8.30am-10am
• 11.30am-1pm
• 3.30pm-5pm
• 7pm-8.30pm

You can send in anything you find interesting, but to help give us focus a themes for each week is announced on the preceding Thursday to give you time to find and record things...

How can I take part in #TradSongTues?

Simply visit the #TradSongTues or https://www.facebook.com/trads... to see all posts with the hashtag or follow @TradSongTues on Twitter and Facebook for our posts and retweets. You can now also keep an eye on these through our new website. Read the posts that you find interesting and retweet or post any you like and want to share. Please do comment if there is something that excites you or if you have a question. If you would like to contribute a post to #TradSongTues, tweet the title of the song or a little information about it, along with a link to the image/video/article, and type #TradSongTues at the end of your tweet. .

What can and can’t I post for TradSongTues?

We are relatively new to this, so still working out the boundaries - obviously any definition of traditional song is a can of worms! Our inspiration is for the thread to celebrate traditional songs and their singers from the UK and further afield however you wish for now. Let’s grow together… Here are some ideas for things to share:

• Traditional songs (in written or recorded forms)
• Information about singers and collectors
• Debates around traditional song
• Photos or information about events where traditional singing happens

Please refrain from tweeting:

• Anything containing offensive language.
• Explicit sexual references, pornography or nudity.
• Any of the ‘isms’: racism, sexism, etc.
• Posts featuring children with photographs of faces or identifying information due to our child protection and safeguarding policies
• Anything unrelated to traditional song!

Can I promote my music / event / business through TradSongTues?

We realise that your music or event might be of interest to traditional song enthusiasts, so rather than a blanket ban on promotions, we have decided that:

• One promotional tweet per person can be posted each week using the #TradSongTues hashtag if your music, event or product is traditional song related.
• If it is unrelated to traditional song, we will consider it to be spam.
• Please do not post about anything more than once – if we have shared it, people have seen it and while we want to support artists and promoters, we don’t want to skew the feed towards commercialism, we’re sure you understand.
• We reserve the right not to retweet promotional posts at our discretion.
• If you spam us continually, that is unfriendly and we will have to be unfriendly back. We will report you as a spammer.

How do I make sure my tweet or post appears on TradSongTues?

• Make sure you add the hashtag to your tweet, e.g.: #TradSongTues (It doesn’t matter if you use capitals or lowercase – your tweet will still come through)
• If you can please add in the #theme for the day this will help in future to be able to search these themes as an additional song reaource.
  
• You can tag us personally into your tweet (e.g. @TradSongTues), but this won’t appear in the #feed – it will just let us know that you have mentioned us.

Why might my tweet not have been retweeted by @TradSongTues?

• Make sure you have added #TradSongTues to your tweet otherwise we won’t see it.
• Make sure you have read our posting guidelines and your tweet doesn’t contain anything we can’t retweet.
• We might not be able to retweet you if you post during one of our breaks during the day.
• Some days just too many tweets come through and we can only retweet the most informative posts. If someone else has tweeted about the same thing earlier in the day, we try not to duplicate posts.
• Sometimes even excellent posts get missed as we are fallible. Sorry if that happens to you, please don’t let it put you off sending new things in.
• Comments and messages: we do like chatting to people during #TradSongTues but sometimes we miss comments and might not reply. This doesn’t mean we don’t like you – we really do! If it’s important, send us a direct message.
• Remember, your posts don't have to be retweeted by us for people to see them on the hashtag page, so don't despair, it is still out there.

*Proudly modelled on the guidelines from @FolkloreThursday who are doing such a great job.

How can I meet and singalong with like-minded people who love trad song ?

Well, on the first Tuesday of every month Fay and some of the team host a meet in a zoom room and share songs, much as we would in a pub singaround. The whole thing is live streamed to the Soundpost Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/sound... so people can watch and comment alongside. Around 30-50 singers usually join in and over 1000 people see the feed each week. We have regular singers from Britain, Ireland, the USA Canada and it is building into a really lovely community of singers.

The session is linked to the @TradSongTues twitter event and songs on the weekly theme are welcome, as well as anything else you want to share.

If you'd like to join in please follow the link and complete the very short registration form to receive the Zoom meet details. https://soundpost.org.uk/event...