LibGuides: OER By Discipline: Music

OER Collections

JSTOR Open Content — Music
Thousands of Open Access ebooks are available from top scholarly publishers. Focus on high-quality content, ease of use, and digital preservation.
MERLOT — Music
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
OER Commons — Music
OER Commons provides a curated collection of textbooks and other course material for the study of music.

Textbooks

"Fundamentals, Function, and Form: Theory and Analysis of Tonal Western Art Music" — SUNY
"Music Appreciation" — Lumen
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This course is an exposition of the philosophy, principles, and materials of music from the Baroque Period to contemporary period with illustrative examples from the Baroque Period, Classical Period, Romantic Period, Contemporary Classical Music and Popular Music.
"Music Appreciation: Its Language, History and Culture" — Pressbooks
"Understanding Basic Music Theory" — Open Textbook Library
An expanded version of "Introduction to Music Theory".

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This course includes a review of common notation and an introduction to the physics behind music theory, as well as the basic concepts of music theory and a few slightly advanced but very useful topics, such as transposition.
LibreTexts — Music Bookshelves
The Bookshelves area in this LibreTexts Library holds texts that are curated by the LibreTexts Development team and can be used either directly or as content for building customized remixes.
MERLOT — Music Textbooks
OER Commons — Music Textbooks
These textbooks are either in use at academic institutions or have been produced by subject matter experts affiliated with academic or professional institutions.
Open Music Theory
Open Music Theory is an open-source, interactive, online “text”book for college-level music theory courses.
Open Research Library — Music Textbooks
The ORL is planned to include all Open Access book content worldwide on one platform.
Open Textbook Library — Music Textbooks
These textbooks in the Open Textbook Library are considered open because they are free to use and distribute, and are licensed to be freely adapted or changed with proper attribution.
Project Gutenberg — Books in Music
Project Gutenberg — Books in Opera
Textbook Equity — Music Textbooks
Free digital college level textbooks with Creative Commons Licenses, royalty-free, academically reviewed, low-cost prints.

Open Courses

"Reception of Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective" — OpenLearn
This free course explores how audience reception, changing social situations and technology impact musical performance.
MERLOT — Music Online Courses
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
MIT OpenCourseWare — Music and Theater Arts
MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects available on the Web, free of charge.

Audio/Visual Resources

"Explained: Music" - Netflix Educational Documentaries on YouTube
"Exploring the World of Music" — Annenberg Learner
Learn the essentials of music theory and how music expresses culture in this video instructional series.
ccMixter
Thousands of hours of free music - all you have to do is give credit to the musicians.
Corpus Christi Watershed
Provides liturgical music and rare Gregorian chant tomes online.
Duke Libraries Historic American Sheet Music
Provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.

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Images and texts on these pages are intended for research or educational use only.
Free Music Archive
Much of the music found on the Free Music Archive is released under Creative Commons licenses.
Harvard Library Digital Scores and Libretti
Loeb Music Library's digital collection of scores and libretti, selected for their rare or unique natures and their popularity as objects of research and teaching.
Internet Archive — Audio Archive
Download or listen to free music and audio.
Library of Congress Digital Collections: Music
Morgan Library & Museum Music Manuscripts Online
Works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Fauré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, and Schumann, among many others.

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Images provided through the Music Manuscripts Online Web pages may be printed or downloaded for personal, educational, or noncommercial use.
Musopen
Recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions.
Mutopia Project
Music free to download, modify, print, copy, distribute, perform, and record – all in the Public Domain or under Creative Commons licenses, in PDF, MIDI, and editable LilyPond file formats.
Sheet Music Consortium
Provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public.
TED Talks — Music

Supplementary Materials & Tools

Music Subject Websites
From the "Subject Websites" directory LibGuide. Some website materials may be copyrighted, but all are available for students to access.
SSRN Music Research & Composition Network
A repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research. Copyrighted, but available to view and cite.
Wolfram Alpha: Music
Compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase and AI technology.
Writing Center Tips & Tools: Writing for Music
From UNC at Chapel Hill.