Music

This month we feature links for music, band, orchestra, and chorus instructors. Many of these sites also will be valuable for teachers working to integrate music into history, social studies, language arts, or other subject areas.

Quick Links: Classical | American | International | General

Classical

Perfect Pitch from Artsedge lets students meet the instruments of the orchestra in a fun interactive way using baseball metaphors. Instruments that comprised the orchestra during four different eras--baroque, classical, romantic and modern--are introduced with simple facts, and students can hear each instrument playing a scale. Students can then listen to a piece of music, changing the instruments that play each part of the piece to hear how the sound changes.A fact-recall quiz is also included.

The San Francisco Symphony Kid's Site helps students learn about music in a fun online atmosphere. The site, designed with the help of 5th grade students, allows users to learn about the elements of music such as tempo, rhythm, pitch and harmony, explore and listen to the instruments of the orchestra, and listen to many excerpts of classical music.

The New York Philharmonic Kidzone provides a fun introduction to classical music topics for younger students. Features include a composers' gallery with brief biographies, information about strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion, and highlights on notable composers and soloists. There is even an instrument lab for designing instruments and thecomposers workshop to experiment with composition.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's DSO Kids site features an instrument encyclopedia with sound clips, an orchestra seating chart that illustrates changes from baroque, classical, romantic and modern periods, and a listening library with audio clips from pieces by many composers. The Teachers Resources Page offers additional items such as information on composers and music theory, student activities tied to particular printable blank staff paper.

The ArtsAlive Music site from the National Arts Centre of Canada provides great resources for teachers, parents and students. View and listen to all the instruments of the orchestra in the instrument lab, find information about composers, listen to pieces of classical music, compose simple melodies using an interactive musical staff, take online quizzes and more. This site is also available in French.

Music History 102: A Guide to Western Composers and their Music from the Internet Public Library presents a concise guide to historical periods, with information about notable composers and their works.

The Classical Music Navigator from Western Kentucky University allows users to learn expand what they know about composers and their works by utilizing existing knowledge to identify additional information.

Women Musicians from the International Alliance for Women in Music provides information about individual historical women musicians.

AfriClassical.com presents information about classical musicians of African descent. The site highlights African, African American and Afro-European conductors and instrumental performers. Audio clips featuring many of the musicians are available.

The Music Chamber presents a comprehensive, student-created introduction to chamber music. It features sections on instruments, music theory, periods, and composers, as well as a long list of chamber music pieces, some with audio clips.

Energy in the Air: Sounds from the Orchestra is a student-created site that offers information about the history and range of each instrument in the orchestra, with activities, quiz questions, and sound clips.

The Online Music Encyclopedia, created by students, features short biographies of many composers, as well as brief descriptions of brass, stringed, woodwind, and percussion instruments and many midi (sound) files.

American

The Library of Congress provides the National Jukebox, a site with over 10,000 historical sound recordings made between between 1901 and 1925. Search or browse for music, or explore playlists such as Tin Pan Alley, the Foxtrot or songs by Irving Berlin.

The Performing Arts Encyclopedia invites visitors to experience the diversity of American performing arts through the Library of Congress's collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, maps, and other materials. The site features interesting special collections, such as one on Patriotic Melodies with history, sheet music and sound recordings of over 25 songs.

American Masters from PBS contains a database with information about musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Placido Domingo, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, and more.

Blues Journey from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a multimedia journey through the history of this art form and the play of the same name. Music clips, photographs, audio narration, maps and other information make this informative site very interesting to explore.

Jazz from PBS is an interactive exploration of Jazz to accompany the Ken Burns series. Users can explore the history of jazz through an interactive map or an event timeline, find biographies of nearly 100 premiere jazz artists, and learn about how jazz mirrored changes in American society. Jazz for Kids provides a simple timeline, biographies and interactive activities for younger students.

Drop Me Off in Harlem from Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge features images, audio and video clips as well as information on American musical greats such as Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller, James Johnson and others.

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn: Jazz Composers from the National Museum of American History includes biographies and audio and video clips.

I Hear America Singing from PBS provides a narrative history of American concert song; a timeline; biographies of key composers, artists, and poets; and a songbook with audio files.

African-American Sheet Music:1850-1920 from the Library of Congress consists of 1,305 pieces of music, including songs from the abolitionist movement, titles associated with the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Civil War and reconstruction period songs.

The Leonard Bernstein Collection from the Library of Congress makes available a selection of 85 photographs, 177 scripts from the Young People's Concerts, 74 scripts from the Thursday Evening Previews, and more than 1,100 pieces of correspondence.

The Aaron Copland Collection from the Library of Congress is a primary resource for the study of musical life in 20th century America. The collection includes music manuscripts, printed music, correspondence, diaries and writings, photos, awards, programs, and other biographical materials.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum focuses on the great figures of rock and roll and their songs, with special sections for students and teachers. Also included are interdisciplinary lesson plans that use music to get secondary students interested in history and other subjects.

The Woody Guthrie Educational Curriculum from the Woody Guthrie Foundation includes many primary source materials and lesson plans for elementary and high school students.

Swinging through Time: The Graystone Museum and the Story of Detroit Jazz from the Internet Public Library presents jazz history, photographs, essays by jazz scholars, and audio and video clips.

River of Song from PBS and the Smithsonian Institution explores American music at the end of the 20^th century through a voyage along the Mississippi. The site includes a teacher guide that addresses national standards for music education.

Folk and Blues in the Schools from the University of Michigan's Cultural Heritage Initiative gives background information on American-Indian, Anglo-American and African-American music as well as the Blues. Other neat features include audio files teaching the blues and a music composer that lets students place compose and listen to their own simple compositions.

Uncommon Instruments tells the stories of instruments that came to America with people who emigrated from countries all around the world, bringing music, and a little bit of their culture, with them. This site from the Library of Congress' America's Story website for kids includes audio files and historical information.

International

Soundscapes: The Arab World from Kennedy Center's Artsedge allows users to listen to and mix samples of music from around the Arab world.Audio clips include beat, environment, instrument, music and voice, and can be chosen from a map and dragged to a mixing board to listen to them. Brief background information puts the clips in context.

World Music resources from Artsedge includes video clips of music from many countries and cultures, such as the Beijing Traditional Music Ensemble, Mariachi from El Salvador, a contemporary Sudanese vocalist, traditional Indian lute, and more.

The Instrument Encyclopedia from the Music Heritage Network provides a sampler of some of the world's most interesting musical instruments. Students may search by key word or use a clickable map to find photographs, background information, and audio clips.

The Music Heritage Network also features an in-depth look at the Glorious Gamelan.

Virtual Tours from the Music Heritage Network supplies music, images, slide shows, and educational resources about the Indonesian gamelan, Latin American salsa, and Great Lakes powwows.

Foundation Course in African Dance-Drumming provides an online course, with maps and photographs, that covers drums and drumming, rhythmic principles, and sub-Saharan dance-drum culture.

Omaha Indian Music from the Library of Congress features traditional Omaha music from the 1890s and 1980s, as well as speeches and interviews.

On Appreciation of Indian Classical Music comes from the Ravi Shankar Institute for Music and Performing Arts.

Traditional Japanese Music from KidsWeb Japan provides an introduction to Japanese musical traditions. The site also includes information on Japanese instruments and a printable fact sheet on Japanese music.

A Brief History of Slack Key Guitar comes from Hawaiian musician Keola Beamer.

General

Visit SoundJunction for a fabulous collection of interactive tools for exploring and creating music. Sections include how music works, musicians, instruments and voices, composing and remixing, and more. SoundJunction was created by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in the UK.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts offers arts-based educational programming free to teachers and students across the country through the Performing Arts Series. Programs feature artists and companies who perform at the Kennedy Center and explore the areas of music, dance, theater, and literature.

The National Association for Music Education site provides information and resources for music teachers, text of the National Standards for Music Education, and electronic communities for band, chorus, and orchestra teachers.

K-12 Resources for Music Teachers from Mankato schools provides a collection of links for band, orchestra, choral, and classroom music teachers.

This Music Assessment website from the University of Miami provides information and forms to help music teachers create rubrics and other assessment tools.

Young Composers publishes the work of composers under the age of 39 as midi (sound) files.

Created 06/2005
Last updated 6/1/11