Music Guide
Resources
Fan’s aggregation of MTV’s 120 Minutes during its heyday, with links to music videos that appeared on the show. There is a wide range of alternative music to be found here.
Southern African-American music, including prison songs and gospel, jazz and blues standards, video and print ephemera.
Free Christmas songs and lyrics for those reduced to humming from the second verse on.
New Scientist has 5 great auditory illusions.
Generator for band names, such as “Obvious of the” and “Bung Thingy.”
Electric Bass
James Jamerson terrified bassists all over the world. Listen to him on the Temptations “You’re My Everything“; Bernadette; Darling Dear, and finally the isolated bass track for Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On?
Harvard master class Unanswered Questions; Mahler’s 9th; Rite of Spring (2, 3, 4, 5, 6); Journey Into Jazz.
Prewar Blues Lyrics Concordance. What is a concordance? Prewar Blues.org is a great companion.
Interesting interface, amazing tracks, need a musical tag?
Directory of links to charts from over 80 countries, including over 20 charts from the U.S.
Hear The Choirs Sing has a large collection of choral music clips in various formats.
Large collection of choral sheet music.
A directory with links to over 4800 free to download classical performances on the internet, sorted by composer and work.
Podcast collector a la themes; the archive page contains all of their themes.
Recorded exclusive sessions and interviews with today’s top artists.
MusicMoz is an open directory of more than 145,000 items of music-related content, from articles to reviews, bios to websites.
Drinking songs, toasts and recitations; a select collection of English songs (1783), A tankard of Ale (1919), Barstool Mountain Top 100 Drinking Songs.
Vocalist UK has an online ear training and pitch exercises.
Details on more than 2,500 music festivals in North America, plus travel resource.
A free site that let’s you search for sound effects and musical instrument samples.
Smithsonian Folkways are 24 downloadable podcasts that explore the collection of folkways music held at the Smithsonian.
Lightning49 has 160 YouTube videos of French singers with subtitles.
This is fascinating. Converting genome-encoded protein sequences into musical notes allows researchers to perceive previously unrecognized patterns
When you want to hear exceptional new music, here’s a site with exceptionally good ears.
Online guitar tuner from 8notes.
Large ‘learn how to play guitar’ book with moving images and sound.
KudzuRunner’s Channel has over 140 free tutorials (YT) for the blues harmonica.
Archive at Duke University 1850-1920; includes notables like Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin and John Philip Sousa.
Visual map/interactive timeline - mouse over albums from jazz to hip hop and see the links between them.
iconcertcal is a site that scans your iTunes and tells you when a band you like will be playing a concert near you.
Find, share and listen to free internet radio stations.
International public domain music score library for classical fans.
Listing of several music awards, including MTV, Billboard, Grammy, AMA and CMA.
Links to musicians, composers and research resources by topic.
Legendary jazz producer and writer Orrin Keepnews short interviews covering such notables as Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, and McCoy Tyner.
The internet archive of mishear lyrics; rib-tickling, funny, sometimes sad.
Listen to music for free, but pay to take it with you.
The social music revolution finds out what you like, then only gets better by helping you discover more along the likes of what you like.
Lots of free live music across a wide spectrum, including professional quality recordings of the Grateful Dead.
He’s a American trumpeter and composer; the Ballad of The American Arts; transcript of speech; PBS/Ken Burns Jazz.
“The first time I’ve ever been able to see music.”
Learn the sounds of the basic music intervals from minor second to perfect octave.
Gracenote has an interactive music map, where you can find out what people around the country and around the world are listening to at the moment.
Wiki page first; then photo of stone at Delphi containing the second of the two hymns to Apollo. Ancient Greek notation was capable of representing pitch and note-duration, and to a limited extent, harmony. It was in use from at least the 6th century BC until approximately the 4th century AD. The founder of what is now considered the standard music stave was Guido d’Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from 995–1050 A.D. His revolutionary method—combining a 4 line stave with the first form of notes known as ‘neumes’—was the precursor to the five line stave, which was introduced in the 14th century and is still in use today.
Interactive web radio helps you build your own radio based on your mood…
Musichits provides over 3,000 links in its search engine.
An open music encyclopedia that lets you find and listen to music based on keywords you provide.
AllNationalAnthems is a collection of all national anthems.
Odd instruments, acoustic technologies and more.
About 18,000 Real Audio streams of public domain jazz recordings (available as mp3 downloads for $5/3 months).
Free internet radio, part of music genome project.
Get the style, sophistication and joie de vivre of the 20’s, 30’s & 40’s (cleaned up recordings perfectly suited for your listening heart).
Neat little game that lets you test your pitch recognition - do you have absolute pitch?
Play the interactive, online piano from Grotrian.
A short history of Jazz before 1930, with some wonderful links.
Index of Reggae; everything from Bob Marley and The Wailers to Zion Train.
Source for raw musics of all stripes, including a masterful scrubing of the Charlie Patton box set.
Convert pixels to music at the RGB Music Lab.
Antioch College professor and composer’s notes and taped lectures on 20th Century Music.
A daily sampler, with smart insights, into the music you’ll love.
Historic sheet music collection at Duke University.
Stephen Sondheim
Master class by Sondheim at Guildhall School of Music - Send In The Clowns (2); My Friends in Sweeney Todd; Later from A Little Night Music; Not Getting Married from Company.
Listen Now! (music search engine interface for Seeqpod)
“A virtual behind the music” source of meanings (behind the lyrics), trivia, games and, yes, music.
Scans your iTune, internet radio and pandora accounts and tells you of upcoming concerts and new releases.
PBS station WNET (NY) digitized 9 episodes of Soul, 1970’s live music show.
Free audio downloads of featured artists.
Classical Archives has over 45,000 full length music files covering more than 2,000 composers.
Free audio and video files from independent artists in rock, pop and urban categories.
An award winning site that lets you listen to, explore, discover and create music - includes composer guides, tools that help take music apart and videos of composers at work.
“The ONLY royalty free music library which meets all the licensing and technology requirements needed for education!” Cool selection of music that seems great for Powerpoints…
Prison and gospel songs, jazz and blues standards, video and print ephemera, it all here at the University of South Carolina’s SAAM site.
Listen to a demonstration; Allan Holdsworth in concert; Lee Ritenour’s Earth Run; David Sylvian.
Download Free music to help you learn to play the piano (a la guitar hero), whether that be video game music, classical music and holiday music.
A music discovery game that rewards those who help others listen to good new music.
Get a timeline of videos based on your keyword search.
aM Laboratory lets you make music with pattern sequencers and controllers.
Huge collection of over 3,800 TV theme songs.
Point and play: use the interactive brushes to paint the music.
The voices and music of World War I; anti war; patriotic; France-themed; Kaiser-bashing.
The Voices of World War II; song themes include a reluctance to enter the war; the post-war era.
Brings back the melodies from years past: Your senior year in high school, the songs blasted out at the swimming pool of your youth, and so on.