[nabs-l] accessible music databases

Kaiti Shelton crazy4clarinet104 at gmail.com
Tue May 26 05:22:41 UTC 2015


Hi, Ashley,

As a music major I feel your pain.  I am glad I am through using
Oxford and Nacsos for music history research because it took so much
leg work with the DS office to get accessible versions of the
documents I needed, and just finding them in the first place was a
pain.

One thing you might try is using the International Music Score Library
Page, or the Patruchi Music Library (commonly shortened to IMSLP).  It
mainly has scores and recordings and I don't think there are much if
any documents on it, but if you're doing listening analysis on your
own it is much easier to work with.  Everything is organized by
composer and I believe by genre, although I typically go straight to
the composer/song I'm looking for.

If you're looking for a textbook that perhaps spells out different
aspects of music theory and stylistic elements of the classical period
"Sound Patterns" by Phillip Magnuson is completely online.  He's one
of my music theory professors and the book is very detailed with links
to wikipedia for definitions, links to youtube for sound files, etc.
The only thing that isn't accessible are the pictures of musical
examples but you might not need those.  If you start at the beginning
you should have examples by Bach and Handel, whereas later on you'll
have examples by Beethoven, Mozart, and others.  Stay away from
chapter 29 and onward unless you want your head to explode-that's when
we get into theory 3 and 4 with Schenkerian Analysis and the 20th
century subgenres of music respectively, but anything till chapter 29
should be interesting if you want to read for your own studying.

On 5/25/15, Ashley Bramlett via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I’m doing some research on composers and music history. Now I’m looking at
> the baroque era and its origins and how it differs from classical and then I
> might look at classical.
>
> I’m doing some music appreciation activities for senior citizens at a senior
> center as a volunter and I also just enjoy music.
>
> So, toward that end, what music databases or websites can I use?
> I live near the community college I attended called Nova for short.
> Nova subscribes to Oxford music online which has the Grove biographical
> encyclopedia.
> It seems accessible once you manage to find your search results.
>
> I cannot use the others with jaws though. Naxos music library is not
> accessible.
> The Alexander street databases which have collections of videos and music
> are giving me problems too, although I’m not sure if its accessible yet.
>
> Which other databases are usable?
> I found out many music databases are available to me if I get a neighboring
> county’s library card. My area, Fairfax county, does not subscribe to music
> databases, but other counties have a lot. I’d be interested in using them,
> but I do not want to go to the trouble of going to a library for a card and
> finding out the resources are not accessible.
> I might have to do that, but if I can avoid it, that would be nice.
>
> Has anyone had success using these databases?
>
>   a.. Classical music reference library
>   b.. Fine arts and music collection
>   c.. Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
>   d.. Pop culture collection
>   e.. Popular Music library
>   f.. Smithsonian global sound
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ashley
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-- 
Kaiti




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