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Music Research

Resources and research information for music students and faculty.

Websites

Alan Lomax Collection

Part of the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, it contains pioneering documentation of grassroots music.

Alex Ross: the Rest Is Noise

Blog by the music critic of The New Yorker.

All About Jazz

Site by jazz fans for jazz fans; information and opinions.

All Music Guide

Extensive coverage of all types of music.  You can subscribe to their New Release Newsletter.

American Memory (Library of Congress)

Free access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

American Record Guide

          This site has America's oldest classical music review magazine.

American School Band Directors Association (ASBDA)

          Furthers the cause of music in public schools.

American Vernacular Music Manuscripts, ca. 1730-1910: Digital Collections from the American Antiquarian Society and the Center for Popular Music

          Makes available over 17,000 pages of American music manuscripts.

Arts ATL

Blog on the current arts scene in Atlanta.

Atlas of Plucked Instruments

Information about almost all the different plucked instruments still in use.

BGSU Music Library & Sound Recordings Archives

Bowling Green State University in Ohio has the largest collection of popular music recordings in an academic library in North America.

Billboard

Good site for information about new releases; reviews for fans and music executives.

Birthplace of Country Music

Sponsored by the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance (BCMA). Bristol, Tennessee is the birthplace of country music because Ralph Peer made the first commercial recordings of country music there in 1927.

Black Composers in Classical Music

Reference guide by Temple University.

Black Composers - Scores

Provides links of black composers' names to worldwide library holdings of their classical music scores.

Black Grooves

Archives of African American music and culture.

CD HotList

A Baker & Taylor product, this site provides monthly reviews of new release music.

Center for Popular Music

Archive and research center at Middle Tennessee State University devoted to the study of American popular music from the pre-revolutionary era to the present.

Chopin's First Editions Online

Digital first editions of Frederic Chopin.

ChoralWiki

Home of the Choral Public Domain Library, one of the world's largest free sheet music sites.

Civil War Sheet Music Collection

          About 2,500 pieces specifically about the war, not simply of the time period, from the collection at the Library of Congress.

Clarinet Quintet

          Developed by Don Oehler, the clarinet professor at University of North Carolina, this website provides information to 600+ works for string quartet with clarinet.

Classical Music

From BBC Music Magazine.

Classical Music Navigator

This database helps you find music that is similar to something that you already know and like.

Composers You Should Know

          Research guide from Youngstown State University that lists representative composers from different time periods and countries.

Copyright Clearance Center

The Copyright Clearance Center provides free online sessions about copyright issues.

Danish National Digital Sheet Music Archive

Digitized music scores.

Di-Arezzo

Music scores, especially European scores. 

Dictionary Catalog of the Music Collection

          Digitization of the New York Public Library's music catalog.

Digital Bach Project

Covers the legacy of J. S. Bach, history’s most influential composer.

Digital Mozart Edition

Access to the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Discography of American Historical Recordings

A database of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78 rpm record era.

Downbeat

Definitive monthly record of jazz, blues, and roots music.

Downtown Music Gallery

Jazz/Avant-garde/Art-pop/Progressive/Improvised, etc.  Has a weekly email announcing new releases.

Drummerworld

Provides drummers with information about important performers, video and audio recordings of performances, and instructional materials.

Ethnomusicology Musical Instrument Collection

          University of Washington's collection of over 400 musical instruments.

Fanfare

Magazine for serious record collectors.

Folksong Index

Index to traditional folk songs of the world with an emphasis on English-language songs.

Free Music Archive

An interactive library of high-quality legal audio downloads.  Directed by WFMU.

Free Scores

Site to obtain sheet music and instruments.

Freesound Project

Focuses on sound, not songs.  Provides a database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps.

fRoots

Folk, roots, and world music guide, archived now; continued by podcast.

Georgia Music News

Free online newsletter provided by the Georgia Music Educators Association.

Gilbert and Sullivan Archive

Devoted to the operas and other works of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.

Gramophone

Classical music reviews and news.

Harvard's Online Resources for Music Scholars

Links to about a hundred websites.

HathiTrust Women Composers Collection

Digitized sheet music for about 3000 musical works by more than 700 women composers, mostly from the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, with a few pieces from the 18th century.  The originals are from the University of Michigan Music Library.

Hofmeister XIX

Searchable version of the Hofmeister Monatsberichte for the years 1829-1900. Containing some 330,000 records of music publications, it is the most extensive resource for establishing what was published where and when during that period.

Hymnary.org

Comprehensive index of hymnals, published hymns, scores and media files, and other sources.

International Music Score Library Project/Petrucci Music Library

An impressive virtual library containing all public domain music; over 326,000 scores and 36,000 recordings of over 97,000 works.

Internet Broadway Database

Official database for Broadway theatre information.

Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies

Sponsored by San Jose State University.

Irish Sheet Music Archives

          Freely-available digitized images of public domain sheet music from the Ward Irish Music Archives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; covers about 1750-present.

Jazz Archive

Hamilton College's Fillius Jazz Archive has videorecordings of interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers and critics.

Jazziz

Jazz magazine.

JURN

Curated academic search engine that indexes thousands of free ejournals in the arts and humanities.

Last FM

Free popular music recordings.

LiederNet Archive

Archive of texts used in lieder and other classical art songs, and translations of the texts.

Metacritic

Rock/pop/alternative site compiles reviews from multiple sources and assigns an overall score to new releases.

Metal Archives

Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives is a site for heavy metal music coverage.

Music and Dance of Africa

Columbia University Libraries provides an extensive list of online resources about music and dance of Africa.

Music and Popular Culture Collections at Georgia State University

GSU has collections about Johnny Mercer, country music in the Atlanta area, and WSB radio broadcasting.

Music Cataloging at Yale

By Mickey Koth, renowned music librarian at Yale.

Music Education Online

By Children's Music Workshop, this site aids music educators, students, and parents.

Music Production Schools

Resource for music production professions and their educational requirements.

Music Sack

Database of information about people involved in music.

Music Theory & History Online

Sponsored by the Dolmetsch Organisation.

Music Treasures Consortium (Library of Congress)

Researchers can access the world's most valued music manuscripts and materials held at the world's most renowned music archives.

Music With Ease

Free music resources on classical music, opera, jazz, rock, etc.  Good site for pictures and quotations.

Musicalics

          Information on classical composers.

Musictheory.net

Music theory lessons, exercises, and tools.  Generate and download staff paper from this site.

Musipedia

          Helps you to find and identify tunes, even if the melody is all you know.

MusRef

          BYU site devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference.

National Anthems

Site devoted to national anthems of countries and territories.  All files are in MP3 format.

National Association for Music Education

Advances music education.

Night At the Opera

          Opera materials from the collection of the Library of Congress Music Division.

No Depression

Serving the Americana, alt-country and roots music community since 1995.

Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943

Covers Central Georgian folk festivals created by and for African Americans. Contains 100 sound recordings, plus letters, photographs, etc. Especially useful for lyrics of some wartime songs.

Oral History of American Music Collections Guide: Major Figures in American Music

Yale University Libraries database of over 1000 interviews of composers, performers, and other significant musicians.

Other Music

American roots, in, out, electronic, funk/soul, hip-hop, international pop, jazz, psych/prog, reggae/dub, world music.

Partifi

Free automated tool for creating parts from music scores.

PianoGroove

           Free jazz piano lessons.

Pitchfork

Indie rock.

Pollstar

Trade publication covering the worldwide concert industry.

Music and Popular Culture Collections at Georgia State University

GSU has collections about Johnny Mercer, country music in the Atlanta area, and WSB radio broadcasting.

pertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale

RIdIM provides a database of music, dance, theatre, and opera iconography images.

Roderic C. Knight Musical Instrument Collection

Covers Oberlin's collection--a comparatively small number of instruments (297 in 2012)--but does it well. See also Stearns Collection link below and Virtual Instrument Museum link below.

RoJaRo

World's largest free music magazine index; searchable key to articles, discographies, record reviews, etc. from 1992 to now.

Rolling Stone

Rock/pop/alternative music.

Roots & Rhythm

Great source for root music: blues, gospel, vintage rock, country, bluegrass, folk music, etc.

Sacred Harp Singing

Sponsored by the Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association.

SBO [School Band and Orchestra] Magazine

Focuses on the management aspects of running a successful school band or orchestra music program.

Schubert Online

Largest online collection of Franz Schubert.

Second Hand Songs

Find out who performed the original version of a particular song, or who covered that song.

SEMLA

The Southeast Chapter of the Music Library Association.

Sheet Music Consortium

UCLA, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University provide searchable indexes of their sheet music collections.

Shockwave-Sound

Royalty-free music, stock music, and sound effects.

Sibley Music Library: musical scores

The University of Rochester's Sibley Music Library is the largest academic music library in North America. It has digitized thousands of its public-domain music scores, emphasizing scores not widely held by other libraries and not digitized elsewhere.

Snopes.com: Music

Site about urban legends with respect to music.

Songfacts

Song meanings, lyrics, and trivia.

Sonic Dictionary

          A collection of sounds--think sound effects--sponsored by Duke University.

Southern Folklife Collection

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has one of the nation's foremost archival resources for the study of American folk music and popular culture.

Spin

Rock/pop/alternative music.

Spirituals Database

          Searchable database of nearly 1600 tracks from recordings of spirituals written for the solo voice.

Spotify

Free popular music recordings.

Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments (U. of Michigan)

Over 2,500 historical and contemporary musical instruments from all over the world.

The Percussion Room

Includes part assignments for percussion and timpani (how many players are required and who plays what) and a percussion dictionary.

Theodore Front Musical Literature, Inc.

A primary resource for the serious musician, institution, and music lover; book and music titles.

Trouser Press

Alternative rock since 1983.

Tune Find

Find out what music was used in television and movies.

Voice of the Shuttle

Authoritative links for humanities research.

Wesleyan University Virtual Instrument Museum 2.0

Wesleyan University has one of the largest and most diverse collections of world musical instruments and has a virtual museum.

World Hip Hop Beats

         Download free instrumental music available for educational, commercial & non-commercial use.

#1 Song On This Date In History

Look up and listen to Billboard's #1 song on a specific date in history.

 

 

 

 

 

Open Access Journals

Open access journals are digital/online scholarly journals that are free of charge, both to publish in and to access.  Here are some that may be of interest to you.
 

Directory of Open Access Journals

A great place to start, this website lists several dozen open access journals in music, with links to each.

Directory of Open Access Repositories

A directory of academic open access repositories.