St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota is well-renowned for its music education program, including its choirs, orchestra, bands, and dance program. On St. Olaf's website, music lovers from around the world can watch recordings of past musical and dance performances at the college, including student, faculty, and guest performances. Some of these performances are accompanied by short...

Raised in and around Pittsburgh during the 19th century, Stephen Foster grew up singing in an all-male secret club and receiving some modest musical training from a local German immigrant, Henry Kleber. He soon became intensely interested in song-writing, and his first published song, “Open Thy Lattice Love”, appeared when he was 18. Of course, he went on to write around 285 songs, including such...

The Bing Crosby Internet Museum, organized around a list of 65 FAQ's about Bing Crosby, allows you to test your knowledge of this legendary crooner. Each question links to detailed information about Crosby, his career, and his music. There are many music clips to download, including Crosby's 1932 recording of "Please," which Paul McCartney credited with inspiring the Beatles' "Please Please Me."...

The Streaming Audio Recorder application allows users to record any type of streaming audio via their computers' speakers or microphone. It's a simple way to record audio from sites such as Grooveshark, YouTube, BBC, and others. The program is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer.

Hosted by Nate Sloan, a music professor at Fordham University, and musician and songwriter Charlie Harding, Switched on Pop is a podcast dedicated to "the making and meaning of popular music." Each episode of this podcast is dedicated to a single contemporary song and, occasionally, a pop song from yesterday. To do so, they often invite a guest musician on the show to discuss the song's lyrics,...

K-12 teachers looking to engage their students in critical thought about the world today may appreciate this collection of lesson plans created by TeachRock. Here, they will find standards-aligned lesson plans that use "contemporary pop music as an entry point into a wide variety of topics." For example, one lesson uses P!nk's song "What About Us?" to review the major events of 2017 and discuss...

Over the past few years, more and more university libraries have worked diligently to digitize some of their vast sheet music holdings. Old chestnuts are being revived by vocal groups on campus and farther afield, which is certainly a good thing. This sheet music collection from the Temple University Libraries brings together 850 pieces of music for consideration by the general public. Visitors...

Music appreciation can take many forms, and certainly gaining a basic understanding of how music is composed and subsequently analyzed and performed can provide years of enjoyment and edification. With his website, Teoria, Jose Rodriguez Alvira offers visitors the opportunity to take online tutorials, complete exercises, and read articles about music all in the same place. In the “Tutorials” area,...

November 14, 2000 was Aaron Copland's 100th birthday and NPR celebrated with this website, pulling together a nice variety of resources on the composer, some created by NPR, and some by other organizations. As is to be expected from a 15-year-old website, a fair percentage of links no longer work, especially audio files from older NPR programs and links to Sony Classical's Discography. NPR...

Along with Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland may be considered one of the most well-known and regarded American composers of the 20th century. Copland’s accolades were many throughout his long life, and the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress has seen fit that the web-browsing public will be able to learn a great deal more about Copland’s works and life. Currently, this online...