Digital music library

Draft

Introduction

Note: This page never will become an index of download sites and commercial sheet music. It's main purpose is to describe what digital music libraries are and to provide links open and free resources.

List of repositories

MIDI

• musescore.com (related to the MuseScore.org free music editing software).
• freemidi.com Software for midi and karaoke and index of midi file sites

Free printable Sheet music

Music scores can be published in PDF or other printable formats, as well as some kind of source format. Sometimes, MIDI files or audio files with free performances also can be found. Most free music is "classical" music, for obvious copyright reasons. Unfortunatley, not many modern artists agree to free their creations ...

• IMSLP - International Music Score Library Project (also known as Petrucci Music Library)
  • Best place for printable scores (PDF).
  • Some entries also include performances, e.g. as Midi files
  • 43,332 works · 110,441 scores · 3,199 recordings · 6,288 composers · 102 performers
  • Wikipedia entry

• WIMA - The Werner Icking Music Archive (will be merged with IMSLP - decision taken in sept. 2011)
  • The other large archive
  • WIMA used MusiXteX for typesetting

• Mutopia Project
  • Uses the LilyPond typsetting software, scores are also available as PDF or as MIDI
  • 1675 pieces for various genres available.
  • Wikipedia entry

See also: Other sheet music sites (at WIMA)

Recording catalogues

• MusicBrainz! is an open music encyclopedia that collects, and makes available to the public, music metadata.

• http://www.musipedia.org/ Musipedia] is a search engine for identifying pieces of music. “You can play it on a piano keyboard, whistle it to the computer, simply tap the rhythm on the computer keyboard or use the Parsons code.”

Links and Bibliography

• Music library

Institutions

• Distributed digital music archives and libraries Lab Univ. McGill.

• OMRAS2 project Online Music Recognition And Searching, or alternatively Ontology-driven Music Retrieval & Annotation Sharing service. Omras2 is a framework for annotating and searching collections of both recorded music and digital score representations such as MIDI. The project is funded by the EPSRC.

Publications

• Bainbridge, D., Dewsnip, M. & Witten, I. H. (2005). Searching digital music libraries. Information Processing & Management, 41(1), 41-56. http://hdl.handle.net/10289/1299