Finding Music Articles Online

Hello and welcome to Finding Music Articles Online. My name is Dave Wildermuth and I will be your Music Librarian. This Guide is intended to help you find scholarly articles for your Music 344 research paper. Please read the Getting Started section below, then watch the three short videos. If you have any questions, I can be contacted at David.Wildermuth@nau.edu.

Getting Started

Before you start your search, it’s important to take a moment to do a little planning. Specifically, you need to decide what exactly it is you’re searching for, and this depends on the topic that you’ve chosen for your paper. Ask yourself: What are the central concepts that I’m looking for? Divide your topic up into its main ideas. For example, if you want to know about the relationship between Bach’s Cello Suites and dance forms of the time, the main ideas are Bach, the Cello Suites and dance.

Once you have the central concepts listed, come up with synonyms for each. How else can they be expressed? For example, Bach is also known as JS Bach or Johann Sebastian Bach. The Cello Suites are also known as the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and the Suites for Solo Cello. Keep a list of your main ideas and their synonyms handy as you execute the search.

These videos will show you how to log on, search for articles and obtain them.

Logging On and Searching by Keyword

Searching by Descriptor

Accessing Your Chosen Article

Second School Assignment

Just a quick heads-up that I'll be using this blog to publish another school assignment later today. After that, it's back to American Music.

Chris Whitley Clips

Years ago, Johnny C turned me on to a fascinating songwriter out of Houston named Chris Whitley. I went in search of clips recently and found a few that capture his style pretty well:





Apologies for the cheesy advert at the beginning of this one, but it's worth it...

Bugbites Videos!

Here are clips of a couple of tunes we played at last month's Bugbites show at the Green Room. From left to right, the Bugbites are Ceta, Doug H, Jim W and myself...

Strange Days

American music sometimes shows up in the strangest of places.

I've long thought that Soft Cell's 1981 hit Tainted Love epitomized New Wave music. It captured the contrast that embodied that particular style: upbeat, poppy music supporting what is essentially a dark message. Further, it came along right as the world was first hearing of AIDS; "tainted love" indeed. I have held this tune up as a piece that perfectly fits its era. So imagine my surprise when a piece on NPR revealed that Tainted Love was actually written in 1964:




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I have to credit Naida D will turning me on to another bit of mindbending musical synchronicity. She mentioned to me that she had read a book entited The Cellist of Sarajevo, about Vedran Smailovic, a musician who risked his life every day to play on the streets of Sarajevo during the war between the Serbs and Muslims. The piece he played was the Adagio in G Minor by Remo Giazotto. We were able to find a recording of this piece, arranged for cello ensemble, using the Naxos Music Library, accessed through Northern Arizona University's Cline Library. Here's the piece (it's often erroneously credited to Tomaso Albinoni):



I couldn't help noticing similarities bewteen this piece and Barber's Adagio for Strings (see previous blog entry); this makes sense, as Barber and Giazotto were contemporaries. So I found a recording of it on Naxos and spun it for Naida. Within thirty seconds, she recognized that she had heard Barber's Adagio before. Consulting her iPod, she found a techno remix of it by a Dutch DJ named Tiesto. Here's the clip I located on YouTube (brace yourself, it's a bit more hard-driving than the original...):



I have to admit being pretty knocked out that one of the most exquisite examples of twentieth-century American orchestra composition was the inspiration for something so radically different in sound and texture. Regardless of whether or not you like European dance music, it's hard not to see that musical fusion as something innovative.


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And now for something completely different, while we're on the subject of new and innovative musical treatments (and the subject of my last blog entry). I saw Victor Wooten play this one on stage at a concert by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and I'm telling you, I'm not sure I would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes:



Many thanks to Maya C for hippin' me to the Flecktones, all those years ago...


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Till next time...

D

But Beautiful

What are the most beautiful pieces of music ever written by an American composer or songwriter? Here a three of my nominations:





YouTube wouldn't let me embed Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, so you'll have to check it out here.

Music Subject Guide for New Students

Hello and welcome to the Music Subject Guide. What follows is a list of resources to get you started searching for music-related information resources, organized by music discipline.


Music Theory

• The Oxford Dictionary of Music is helpful in understanding music theory terms and concepts. It also has entries for individual pieces, in case the student needs information for an analysis project or ideas for choosing a piece to analyze.
• For additional help with terminology, including English translations of foreign language terms, the Music Dictionary Online is an easy-to-use online resource. A beginning guide to music theory, available here, is a useful reference to refresh one’s knowledge of theory concepts.
• More advanced students can keep up with current trends in music theory through scholarly journals such as Music Theory Spectrum and Journal of Music Theory. Both include full-text journal articles devoted to the advancement of the structural knowledge of music.


Performance

• There exist a number of live, interactive, collaborative performance websites; the most prominent of these is eJamming. It allows performers to interact and record together in real time, and it features a search function to connect students with musicians who have similar interests.
• Students can also use videoconferencing services such as Skype and ooVoo for real-time interaction. Such websites enable performers to practice together even when separated by great distances, though they do lack to the music-specific recording capabilities of eJamming.
• Recordings of prominent works are available through a range of resources such as the Database of Recorded American Music, Naxos Music Library and the British Library Archival Sound Recordings. Using these sites, performance students can hear how masters of their instruments interpret well-known and historically significant pieces of music, and they can use these renderings to improve their own performances.


Music History

• Scholarly journals devoted to nearly every musical era are available to students for research papers and presentations. These include:
o Early Music
o Early Music History
o Eighteenth Century Music
o Journal of Seventeenth Century Music
o 19th Century Music
o Computer Music Journal
o Twentieth Century Music
o Contemporary Music Review
o General Music Today


Composition

• Sites such as eJamming and JamStudio give composition students an opportunity for creative collaboration with others. Both allow students to build compositions by adding parts asynchronously in a manner similar to updating a wiki. In addition, JamStudio offers a full range of digitally-recorded sounds, so that the composer does not need to be an accomplished performer on any instrument.
• Kompoz takes this idea one step further. It is an interactive musical collaboration site that offers students a kind of apprenticeship in composition and recording. The site hosts a range of ongoing musical projects; students can sign up to be a part of one and participate in music creation from start to finish. Creation of new projects is encouraged through easy-to-follow video tutorials.


Music Education

• Students can follow the latest trends and approaches in music education through the scholarly journals listed below. All are helpful and informative resources for research papers and projects.
o Action, criticism, & theory for music education
o Bulletin - Council for Research in Music Education
o Contributions to Music Education
o Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
o Journal of Music Teacher Education
o Journal of Research in Music Education
o Music Education Research
o Music Educators Journal
o Philosophy of Music Education Review
o Research and Issues in Music Education
o Teaching Music
• A wide range of music education publications specific to different areas of the country and parts of the world can be accessed through the RILM Abstracts of Music Literature.