The inaugural online presentation of the Aaron Copland Collection at the Library of Congress celebrates the centennial of the birth of the American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990). The multiformat Aaron Copland Collection from which the online collection derives spans the years 1910 to 1990 and includes approximately 400,000 items documenting the multifaceted life of an extraordinary person who was composer, performer, teacher, writer, conductor, commentator, and administrator. It comprises both manuscript and printed music, personal and business correspondence, diaries, writings, scrapbooks, programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, awards, books, sound recordings, and motion pictures.

The first release of the online collection contains approximately 1,000 items that yield a total of about 5,000 images. These items date from 1899 to 1981, with most from the 1920s through the 1950s, and were selected from Copland's music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs.

This is a lesson about the ukulele. It covers the sizes of the ukulele as well as the anatomy of the instrument itself.

Students play and record the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” song using musical instruments and analyze the intensity of the sound using free audio editing and recording software. Then they use hollow Styrofoam half-spheres as acoustic mirrors (devices that reflect and focus sound), determine the radius of curvature of the mirror and calculate its focal length. Students place a microphone at the acoustic mirror focal point, re-record their songs, and compare the sound intensity on plot spectrums generated from their recordings both with and without the acoustic mirrors. A worksheet and KWL chart are provided.

Al-Bab is a portal website designed to introduce non-Arabs to Arab culture by providing links to news sources, country profiles, articles, and a blog on Middle East current events. There are also specific links related to learning Arabic: dictionaries, language classes, textbooks, and other information pertaining to the study of Arabic. A free e-book, The Birth of Modern Yemen, is available for download.

The collection consists of over 62,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the nineteenth century. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred music and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.

This resource was created by Whittney Carnahan, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.

This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples — sound art, environmental recordings, music — will be provided and invited throughout the term.

This blog offers translations of Arabic songs into English. Arabic transcriptions of the song lyrics are also provided, as are the transliterated lyrics. Where possible, the song has been added to the website as well so that users can listen to the song as well as read along. Users can request new songs to be translated, submit their own translations, and leave comments. Users can also search the site or click on a singer's name to be given a list of their songs that have been translated on the site.

The Bedouins of ancient Arabia and Persia made poetry a conversational art form. Several poetic forms developed from the participatory nature of tribal poetry. Today in most Arabic cultures, you may still experience public storytelling and spontaneous poetry challenges in the streets. The art of turning a rhyme into sly verbal sparring is considered a mark of intelligence and a badge of honor. Students will learn about the origins and structure of Arabic Poetry.

This is a blog that links to videos, music, and other information about studying and learning Arabic. The blog provides comments on information provided. For instance, there is a link to an episode of The Simpsons in Arabic while providing sentences and translations of some of the more complicated phrasing.

This group of free videos uploaded to YouTube by Dar Al Syraj offers myriad opportunities for young children to learn the Arabic language. There are multiple videos on the alphabet and the letters, including writing, singing, and pronouncing the various letters, as well as videos on basic vocabulary such as animals and days of the week. Most of the 40 uploaded videos are no more than a couple of minutes in length. Some of the videos include transliterated words and lyrics along with the songs.

Students will learn about the jazz singer Billie Holiday and the sociohistorical context in which she performed. They will learn how discriminatory statutes (called Jim Crow laws) affected daily life. They will also analyze how movement is created in photographs and the effect of a photographer's point of view on composition. Finally, students will photograph a musician, paying attention to what can be communicated through point of view.

Students will discuss the form, function, and decoration of an ancient Greek wine cup. They will learn about the importance of music in the daily life of ancient Greeks. They will discuss a page from a late-medieval choir book and compare and contrast the role of music in antiquity, the Renaissance, and today. They will create cups for a social gathering inspired by ancient Greek symposia, and create and perform a song, poem, or story.

Guitarist Dale Williams studied blues guitar with Willie Dixon and Phil Upchurch, but doesn't limit himself to the blues. He has performed and recorded with such artists as Sun Ra, George Lewis and LL Cool J. He teaches and lectures, in addition to performing. (24 minutes)

Musician, singer, songwriter, arranger and producer Patrice Rushen has a vast array of recordings to her name, and in recent years has been musical director for the Emmy and NAACP Awards, and for Janet Jackson's 1994 world tour. (29 minutes)

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(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

This open textbook was created with the support of an ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. Topics include art integration, music integration, physical education / dance integration, and the theoretical foundations of arts integration in education

In this lesson, students are introduced to audio engineers. They discover in what type of an environment audio engineers work and exactly what they do on a day-to-day basis. Students come to realize that audio engineers help produce their favorite music and movies.

In this video from August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand the playwright discusses the influence that the blues has had on his writing. The clip also features a performance from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and commentary from several theater scholars.

This supplement was designed to help students build a strong foundation in aural training and sight singing by progressing through the core rhythmic and melodic patterns that are found in music. Through the progression of content, students will build skills in pattern recognition and an understanding of how music functions. Rhythms for each section include single and two-part examples as well as pitched examples for use in aural training. Melodies for each section include single line melodies, canons, duets, and chorales. Melodies were designed to be easily accessible for students with basic keyboard skills, and were written without articulation and dynamic markings to allow students and instructors the flexibility to personalize them.