Music: Web Resources

DIAMM has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is currently supported by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. It incorporates work from the Motet database compiled by Thomas Schmidt-Beste and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

From its beginnings in 1998, the purpose of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) was to obtain and archive digital images of European sources of medieval polyphonic music, captured directly from the original document. The purposes were (1) conservation and protection against loss, especially of vulnerable fragments, and (2) to enable libraries to supply the best possible quality of images to scholars. High-quality direct digital capture ensures a level of detail and colour accuracy that is not possible from scans of surrogates such as slides or glossy photographs. In particular, this type of imaging is crucial to detailed study. Normal single-shot digital photography usually captures at a maximum of 7-11 Megapixels. The imaging used by DIAMM captures at a maximum of 144 Megapixels. This extremely high resolution is necessary for digital restoration. Where there is damage that makes these sources difficult to read, detailed restoration of copies of the original images is possible, to improve legibility and scholarly access.

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) provides access to more than 200,000 music scores from both private and public constituents who post their work in an open access domain. There are more than 20,000 audio recordings of various works available.

Digital Mozart Edition provides access to Mozart's musical compositions for personal or public educational use. Originally published in German, the English translation of the works is available on the site.

These exercises help musicians to learn to identify intervals, chords, scales, and cadences.

This growing collection of flashcards builds a knowledge of key rudiments in music.

The American Musicological Society was founded in 1934 to advance research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship. 3,600 individuals and 1,100 institutional subscribers from over forty nations participate in the Society.

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings, in all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods. ARSC is unique in bringing together private individuals and institutional professionals—everyone with a serious interest in recorded sound.

Choral Public Library is the largest sole provider of choral sheet music available in the open access forum. There are more than 10,000 scores available. Users may serach by title, composer, musical period, or genre.

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music contains more than 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music registered for copyright: more than 15,000 registered during the years 1820-1860 and more than 47,000 registered during the years 1870-1885. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. The collection documents the attitudes and tastes of a bygone era with music of many varieties and sources, all of it published in the United States.

All sheet music available from Mutopia is free to download, print, perform, and distribute. There are even some audio recordings available.

A consortium of libraries, including: the Library of Congress, National Library of Australia, Duke University, Indiana University, John Hopkins University, UCLA, and University of Maine have created an open access collection of digitized sheet music. Browse music by repository, title, composer, publisher, or date.

The Music Library Digital Scores Collection contains manuscript musical scores dating from the 17th through 19th centuries. The majority of the collection is comprised of 17th and 18th century operas, opera excerpts, and other vocal music.

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era. These uses vary and are determined by the rightsholders themselves who feel that allowing a degree of free cultural access is beneficial not only to their own pursuits, but to our society as a whole. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

The Free Music Archive is a platform for collaboration between WFMU and a group of fellow curators, including KEXP, dublab, KBOO, ISSUE Project Room, and CASH Music. The site combines the curatorial approach that these organizations have played for the last few decades, with the community generated approach of many current online music sites.

Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist page will have a bio and links to the artists’ home page for users to learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s). Users can also “tip” an artist if they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’ PayPal account. Artist profiles include tourdates, encouraging users to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live music.

The Live Music Archive is an audio library of royalty-free music available at no cost.

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.