Research Guides: Open Educational Resources and Zero Textbook Cost: Music

Open Textbooks

Music Appreciation/Music History for Non-Majors

Music: Its Language, History, and Culture
Music on the Move
With its innovative multimodal approach, Music on the Move invites readers to listen and engage with many different types of music as they read. The text introduces a variety of concepts related to music's travels—with or without its makers—including colonialism, migration, diaspora, mediation, propaganda, copyright, and hybridity. The case studies represent a variety of musical genres and styles, Western and non-Western, concert music, traditional music, and popular music. Highly accessible, jargon-free, and media-rich, Music on the Move is suitable for students as well as general-interest readers.
Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context
Although this book is intended primarily for use in the college music appreciation classroom, it was designed with consideration for independent learners, advanced high school students, and experienced musicians. That is to say, it includes enough detail that expert guidance is not required and is written using broadly-accessible language. At the same time, it addresses advanced topics and positions music as a serious object of study.
Understanding Music: Past and Present
Understanding Music: Past and Present is an open Music Appreciation textbook co-authored by music faculty across Georgia. The text covers the fundamentals of music and the physics of sound, an exploration of music from the Middle Ages to the present day, and a final chapter on popular music in the United States.

Music Education

Music and the Child
The text offers a research-based and practical approach to teaching children through music. The author provides an informed framework and rationale for music in education and for creating educational environments for children in which they can grow as humans.

Music Theory

Music Fundamentals 1: Pitch and Major Scales and Keys
This collection is the first of five dealing with the rudiments of music.
Music Fundamentals 2: Rhythm and Meter
This collection is the second of five dealing with the rudiments of music.
Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom
Music Theory for the 21st–Century Classroom is an openly–licensed online four–semester college music theory textbook. This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. This text is meant to take the student from the basics of reading and writing pitches and rhythms through twelve–tone technique and minimalism over the course of four semesters. Whenever possible, examples from popular music and music from film and musical theater are included to illustrate melodic and harmonic concepts, usually within the context of the phrase.
Open Music Theory
Open Music Theory is an open-source, interactive, online “text”book for college-level music theory courses. OMT was built on resources authored by Kris Shaffer, Bryn Hughes, and Brian Moseley. It is edited by Kris Shaffer and Robin Wharton, and is published by Hybrid Pedagogy Publishing.
Understanding Basic Music Theory
A good concise introduction to music fundamentals.

Pedagogy

Brass Techniques and Pedagogy
Textbook for undergraduate brass methods course focusing on brass instrument techniques and pedagogy.
Sight-Reading for Guitar
Sight-Reading for Guitar: The Keep Going Method Book and Video Series teaches guitar players from all musical backgrounds to understand, read and play modern staff notation in real time. The Keep Going Method is designed to impart the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for sight-reading with efficiency, fun and encouragement.
Teaching Low Brass
The purpose of this textbook is to provide resources about teaching low brass instruments to music educators and future music educators.
Vocal Techniques for the Instrumentalist - 2nd edition
Vocal Techniques, the course title used at many institutions, is essentially a voice class for instrumentalists, and is a required course for instrumental music education majors seeking all-level certification. Students take at least one Vocal Techniques course to learn proper singing technique along with basic pedagogy and can include teaching techniques as they apply to adolescent singers. The focus of the course is the development of the individual singing voice. This includes breathing, tone production, articulation, musicality and textual expression and understanding. Students also develop confidence in front of groups, improve their general vocal quality, and learn that a healthy voice serves them well in the general and performance classroom.

Open Access Scores (FREE!)

Open Access Critical Editions (Scores)

Library Materials

Research Guides

Databases, Streaming Audio & Video, and Online Sources

DRAM | Database of Recorded American Music This link opens in a new window
DRAM | Database of Recorded American Music is a not-for-profit resource providing educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio (192kbps Mp4), complete original liner notes, and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. DRAM is specifically 20th- and 21st-century American music.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Music Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
Music Periodicals Database is a music journal resource with more than half a million indexed articles, plus detailed abstracts and full text from 1874 to current, covering the scholarly to the popular.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Music Index This link opens in a new window
Music Index database provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts covering every aspect of classical and popular music.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
Digital collection of sound recordings of classical music with access to liner notes, libretti, opera synopses, composer and artist biographies, and more; includes the complete "Naxos" and "Marco Polo" catalogues as well as selected titles from other labels.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Access limited to ten (10) concurrent users.
Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window
NOTE: Content is currently unavailable, pending the CUNY subscription renewal during March. The gateway to Grove Music Online, with access to The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online has over 52,000 articles.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature This link opens in a new window
The best single source for exploring the world of music; includes broad international coverage of all categories of music literature in every genre.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
IPA Source This link opens in a new window
IPA Sources is the largest collection of literal translations and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions on the web. The goal of IPA Source is to promote comprehension and accurate pronunciation of foreign language texts in order for the singer to imbue each syllable with the appropriate emotional content.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Music Online: Opera in Video This link opens in a new window
Music Online: Opera in Video contains five hundred hours of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.