Research Guides: Music Research Guide: Online Sources

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Online Sources

Recommended sites about music.

Digital Resources for Musicology
"This website provides links to substantial open-access projects of use to musicians and musicologists." From Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, an affiliate of the Packard Humanities Institute, at Stanford University.
Glossary of Musical Terms
An alphabetical list of musical terms. From Naxos Digital Services.
MusRef
MusRef is "a site devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference." From Brigham Young University.
National Jukebox
"The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives."
NPR Music
"Features, streams, live concerts and music news" from NPR
Online Resources for Music Scholars
"Provides a basis for beginning electronic research on a wide variety of topics in music, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, composition, and performance practice. It collects links to archival collections, online scores and sound recordings; article indexes, discographies and bibliographies; scholarly societies; musical reference works; and a miscellany of useful websites. Each entry includes a brief description of the resource, with tags for subjects and resource types." From Harvard College Library.
OnMusic Dictionary
"Award-winning, pioneering designers, developers, publishers and distributors of world-class, accredited courses, training programs and services used in-classroom, online or blended environments in over 1500 colleges and universities in the USA and abroad since 1999. OnMusic Dictionary is the successor of former Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary."

Recommended sites about instrumental music.

Music & Musical Instruments
"The Museum's music collections contain more than 5,000 instruments of American and European heritage." From the National Museum of American History.
Musical Instrument Museum
"MIM displays more than 6,500 instruments collected from around 200 of the world’s countries and territories. Most displays are enhanced by state-of-the-art audio and video technologies that allow guests to see the instruments, hear their sounds, and observe them being played in their original contexts—performances that are often as spectacular as the instruments themselves."
Musical Instrument Museums Online
"MIMO began life as a consortium of some of Europe’s most important musical instruments museums, which came together for a European Commission funded project that aimed to create a single online access point to their collections. The MIMO Project ran from September 2009 until August 2011 and successfully achieved all of its objectives, in the process creating the world's largest freely accessible database for information on musical instruments held in public collections."
Musical Instruments
"The great majority of musical instruments fall readily into one of six major categories: bowed strings, woodwind, brass, percussion, keyboard, and the guitar family, the first four of which form the basis of the modern symphony orchestra." From Naxos Digital Services.
National Music Museum
"The National Music Museum is one of the most renowned institutions of its kind in the world. With 1,200 musical instruments on public display, and more than 15,000 (representing virtually all cultures and historical periods) in the overall holdings, the NMM's collections are among the best anywhere."
New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives
"The New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives was launched in February 2011, and currently comprises more than 1.3 million pages, including almost 14,000 printed programs, marked conducting scores, business documents, and photographs."

Recommended sites about songwriting.

American Songwriter
"American Songwriter magazine is published bi-monthly. The magazine offers in-depth Q & A’s with up-and-coming, established and legendary songwriters, covers recording technology, including the latest gadgets and gear every songwriter should know about, and reports on the business of music publishing with interviews and insight from publishers, producers and other industry professionals."
The Essential Secrets of Songwriting
A songwriting blog from Gary Ewer. (Note: there are many ads on this site.)
Rhymer
A rhyming dictionary.
Song of America
"Our goal is to build and curate a comprehensive archive of American song that tells the story of our culture and nation, through the eyes of our poets and the ears of our composers."
Songwriters Hall of Fame
"The Songwriters Hall of Fame’s ongoing mission is to preserve, honor and celebrate the legacy of the great songwriters whose work has enriched the world’s culture, while developing new writing talent through professional education, Master Sessions, workshops, showcases, scholarships and digital initiatives."
Songwriters on Process
"Songwriters on Process is dedicated to the creative process of the songwriter. It's nothing but interviews with songwriters and the occasional poet across a variety of genres, emphasizing indie, alt-country, singer-songwriter, and Americana music (and some metal for good measure)."
SongwriterUniverse
"SongwriterUniverse is an online music magazine which features interviews with hit songwriters and artists, and our "Best Song Of The Month" Contest."

Recommended sites about voice.

Choral Public Domain Library
"CPDL currently hosts free scores of at least 26,132 choral and vocal works by at least 2,861 composers."
Full IPA Chart
"The IPA chart and all its subparts are copyright 2015/2005 by the International Phonetic Association."
The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive
"This is the "home" site for all Gilbert and Sullivan related activities on the Internet. Links from the Archive lead to many other G&S sites, and to other opera and arts related Internet sites."
International Music Score Library Project - Petrucci Music Library
"Sharing the world’s public domain music."
IPA Chart with Sounds
"The International Phonetic Alphabet chart with sounds lets you listen to each of the sounds from the IPA. Click on a symbol to hear the associated sound."
Project Gutenberg: Sheet Music Project
"From approximately 2001-2006, Project Gutenberg volunteers were been engaged in digitizing public domain sheet music, using a variety of techniques, to enable study and performance. For the most part, the musical pieces created were chamber music, with composers such as Brahms and Beethoven. This sub-project is no longer active, because there are other efforts that have stronger workflows for sheet music."
Song of America
"Our goal is to build and curate a comprehensive archive of American song that tells the story of our culture and nation, through the eyes of our poets and the ears of our composers."
The Speech Accent Archive
"The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds."
University of Tennessee-Knoxville Song Index
"This database provides access to about 50,000 songs in more than 1,500 published song anthologies owned by the George F. DeVine Music Library at the University of Tennessee, located in Knoxville. Use this citation index to determine which anthologies contain the song(s) you need. You will not find the music or the words here, just the call number and book title. If you are not in Knoxville, ask your librarian about interlibrary loan options to obtain the songs you need."

Music-related associations and organizations.

American Bandmasters Association
"The American Bandmasters Association, founded in 1929, with John Philip Sousa as Honorary Life President, recognizes outstanding achievement on the part of Concert Band conductors and composers."
American Musical Instrument Society
"The American Musical Instrument Society is an international organization founded in 1971 to promote better understanding of all aspects of the history, design, construction, restoration, and usage of musical instruments in all cultures and from all periods."
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
"ASCAP is a membership association of more than 600,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers. We uphold the value of our members’ music, and help them thrive alongside the businesses that use their music every day."
Music Teachers National Association
"Music Teachers National Association supports the careers of studio music teachers by offering continuing education, small business resources, peer to peer networking, student performance opportunities and much more."
National Association of Teachers of Singing
"Founded in 1944, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Inc. (NATS) is the largest professional association of teachers of singing in the world with nearly 7,000 members in the United States, Canada, and nearly 30 other countries."
Recording Industry Association of America®
"The Recording Industry Association of America® (RIAA) is the trade organization that supports and promotes the creative and financial vitality of the major music companies."
Society for American Music
"The Society for American Music is dedicated to the study, teaching, creation and dissemination of all musics in the Americas. As a scholarly, collegial, and inclusive organization, we serve a wide and diverse array of academics, librarians, composers, performers and members of the general public."
Society for Music Theory
"The Society for Music Theory promotes the development of and engagement with music theory as a scholarly and pedagogical discipline. We construe this discipline broadly as embracing all approaches, from conceptual to practical, and all perspectives, including those of the scholar, listener, composer, performer, teacher, and student. The Society is committed to fostering diversity, inclusivity, and gender equity in the field."
Society of Composers
"SCI is an independent organization concerned with the fellowship, collaboration, career goals, and objectives of new and contemporary music composers and those interested in topics related to composition."
Songwriters Guild of America
"The SGA fights to protect songwriters, the music they create and their ability to earn a living for themselves and their families.The SGA carries out its mission in three ways: through its music advocacy on Capitol Hill and elsewhere; through services to professional and developing songwriters; and through community outreach via the SGA Foundation."

Alternative search engines. Useful for locating specific types of sources.

Congress.gov
"Presented by the Library of Congress, Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information."
FDsys (Federal Digital System)
"GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government."
Google Images
Image search from Google - either text-based or reverse image.
Google News
A news aggregator
TinEye Reverse Image Search
Reverse image search - upload an image or provide a URL to an image's online location.
USA.gov
"USA.gov is an interagency product administered by USAGov (formerly the Federal Citizen Information Center), a division of the U.S. General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service. Our mission is to create and organize timely, needed government information and services and make them accessible anytime, anywhere, via your channel of choice."