The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Here is what student assistant Allison (class of 2022) had to say about this resource:
“Met Opera on Demand is a resource put out by The Metropolitan Opera for college and university libraries. There is access to more than 700 full-length Met performances, featuring both audio and video recordings. Scrolling through, I saw that they have a recording of Nabucco.
A still from the Metropolitan Opera’s 2016 production of Nabucco
This is of specific interest to me because I’ve played a piece from that opera in orchestra. It would be cool to watch to get a better sense of the context for the piece. This resource would be great for anyone studying music from operas or anyone who is interested in opera and wants to watch.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Here is what student manager Cole (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“Music Online’s Popular Music Library is exactly what it sounds like: an online repository of popular music from around the world, all tagged with the appropriate metadata to make the site an effective research tool. Something I appreciate about Music Online’s collection is the emphasis placed on international works. The site is filled with recordings of songs I have never been exposed to, across all genres and in various languages. Many of the works archived are not available for sale online, so the site can be a valuable resource if one is looking for an obscure, elusive track.
When I first opened Popular Music Library, I was immediately greeted by the album Babies Go Pink Floyd, one of the works featured on the rotating carousel of new arrivals.
I immediately clicked on it to find out what exactly I was seeing. Each album is displayed as a waveform, with vertical lines separating individual tracks. The music player is accompanied by a sidebar of details and the track listing, with each track accompanied by the appropriate metadata. After some listening and further digging on the site, I learned that Babies Go … is a series of albums, originally sold in the UK, that rework popular music acts into soothing lullabies. Some of my favorite editions include: Babies Go The Cure, Babies Go Led Zeppelin, Babies Go Shakira, and, of course, Babies Go Radiohead, the music player for which, in an apparent (and humorous) technical oversight, presents a flat line and reads, “Waveform temporarily unavailable.”
Though Babies Go … probably won’t be often used as research material, I like to imagine it as a testament to the diversity of material collected for your listening in the Popular Music Library.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Here’s what student manager Abby (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“QwestTV is the first ever streaming service dedicated to Jazz, Soul, Funk & World Music. Created by Quincy Jones and curatedbyothermusiclegends, this service contains hundreds of concerts, documentaries, archives, and exclusive content. And with the “My List” feature, you can keep track of all your favorites. On top of premium streaming video, QwestTV also offers articles, interviews, and album reviews written by professional journalists and renowned jazz experts. With content spanning decades, this service is a powerful research tool and just an all-around awesome resource for any music lover.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Music ID offers over 60 years (1950 – present) of international chart data for popular music recordings.
Here’s what student manager Abby (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“One of our research tools that I find particularly interesting is Music ID. This resource compiles over 100 years of global music industry data in an incredibly easy-to-use platform. The site itself is divided into three analytical topics — most popular, most profitable, and most impactful. It’s fascinating to see the difference between the three, especially with the site’s ability to separate song, album, and artist. And with data going back as far as 1900, not only can you discover some great old songs you may have never heard of but also a comprehensive meta-narrative of popular music itself, and by extension its cultural impact.”
And here’s what student manager Colin (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“A resource I like and that I have used for a paper before is Music ID. Specifically, Music ID Data‘s database has information on over 5,000 different charts, tracking music popularity in countries all over the world based on the popularity of artists and their songs on these different charts, as well as on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Shazam. This resource is best utilized by examining overlapping chart data to analyze the popularity and trends that follow an artist, whether it be through a new album release or from a popular single track. To use this platform you type a keyword into a search bar, such as the latest Super Bowl Halftime Show artist “The Weeknd,” and select the different measures you wish to analyze. From there, the website will bring you to a graph that details the artist’s popularity based on the measures you selected. For example, you can simply click “The Weeknd” as an artist and you can see his trend in the U.S. Billboard Top 100 artists over the years in which Music ID has effective data. To utilize this resource further, you can start applying additional filters, specifically on singles he has released like “The Hills” and “Can’t Feel My Face,” to effectively observe how the popularity trends of his songs affect the popularity of himself as an artist. Music ID Data has a lot of information that can be applied to many different artists across the world and is an amazing research tool when needing to find graphical trends as evidence for reference support.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
All Music offers biographies and discographies in all genres
Here is what student assistant Danny (class of 2023) had to say about this resource:
“A digital resource that I found very interesting was called “All Music.” This research guide was very helpful, for you can search just about any album, artist, or song and get not only some information about it, but what album it was connected to, reviews, the year that it came out, and reviews about it.
This guide is especially helpful to learn more about artists and the albums they have released. For instance, let’s say you just found out about a new artist. You can look them up on AllMusic and access their discography. (Some even have links that will allow you to hear samples of songs!) You can also see lists of similar albums and songs that you can check out if you want to hear more music that sounds similar to the artist you’ve searched for.
Finally, there is a new release radar, a discover tab, and articles related to current news that can be extremely helpful if you want to keep track of the day-to-day goings-on in the music industry.”
And here is what student assistant Ryan (class of 2022) thought about the AllMusic Guide:
“Allmusic.com is an incredibly broad music database that has information on all kinds of music, from B.T.S. to R.E.M. The website features Discover sections that can help you find music based on genre, mood, and even lyrical content.
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Kanopy Music Videos offers streaming videos of performances and documentaries in all musical genres.
Here’s what student manager Colin (class of 2021) had to say about Kanopy Music Videos:
“A resource that I enjoy from our streaming audio & video resources is the Kanopy Music Videos selection. This website has a great, diverse selection of films that most people will be able to find something of interest to them. Examples of these topics include videos on documentaries, live concert performances, ethnomusicology, music instruction, classical music, opera, musicals, and much more. While this service may not focus particularly on one genre or characteristic of music, limiting its resources to deep or extensive videos on one topic, Kanopy guarantees that all users will find something of interest and help. The user interface is friendly, as the videos are all available by scrolling through the page, and there is a search bar to use in case a user cannot find their intended video. Kanopy Music Videos is great for me, as I am definitely a visual learner and love watching films, which this resource focuses and delivers on.”
And here is student manager Cole’s (class of 2021) take on this resource:
“I love Kanopy. It’s an online streaming service for films and documentaries that all University of Richmond students have access to via the libraries. The Music category is a diverse collection of material, including well-known films (The Beatles’ flick A Hard Day’s Night), under the radar works of ethnomusicology (Shaping Bamboo, a documentary about the ‘Are’are people of the Solomon Islands and their panflute ensembles), and even videos of music instruction, such as Max Milligan’s Play series, videos that unpack the unique playstyles of iconic guitarists.
Two other notable resources include both of Ken Burns’ music docu-series: Jazz and Country Music. These expansive series could be useful for any research into the respective genres. Another benefit of Kanopy is the inclusion of time-stamped, fully searchable (via CTRL + F) transcripts with all of their videos. This makes pulling out specific clips or quotes far easier, especially for series such as Ken Burns’ with total running times of over 1,000 minutes.
Kanopy is one of my favorite library resources, both for research and entertainment. I find it easy to lose myself in its vast catalog, and I always leave with a longer list of things to watch.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Here is what student assistant Allison (class of 2022) had to say about Grove Music Online:
“Grove Music Online is an extensive online music encyclopedia that provides detailed information on composers, their music, and other music scholarship. I like how the resource is run by an editorial board at Oxford University Press so that there isn’t much question regarding the credibility of the content. I looked up Paul Hindemith and George Gershwin and found a lot of information about each of their respective lives along with some articles about their work. Grove Music Online seems like a very valuable resource for researching composers and music in the classical/jazz field.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Archive of rock and pop music journalism from mainstream publications and niche magazines.
Here is what student manager Cole (class of 2021) had to say about Rock’s Backpages:
“Rock’s Backpages is an online archive of popular music journalism, from industry standards like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, to more obscure and international publications, such as Stereo Review and Melbourne Weekly. Although the site catalogues a wide array of content (including reviews, letters, obituaries, book excerpts, press releases, columns, and more), the advanced search function makes it easy to filter by subject, author, original publication, and format.
My favorite use of the site is to read old reviews of albums and artists that I like, to get a sense of contemporary critical reception. In a 1980 review of U2’s debut album Boy, Paul Mory calls the group’s music “not radical, in many ways… traditionalist.” Seven years later, in a review of the band’s seminal album The Joshua Tree, Simon Reynolds writes that the band’s very existence is “at once radical and reactionary.” I find this not-conversation of radicality especially amusing considering the band’s current reputation among my generation as that dad-rock group whose 2014 album was forced upon anyone with an iPhone— an idea that would be humorously unfathomable for those critics writing in the 80s.
The Rock’s Backpages archive is the perfect tool to read music journalism from years past, uncolored by retrospection.”
And here is student assistant Alex’s (class of 2021) take on this resource:
“Rock’s Backpages is a fascinating resource and a deep dive into the views on musicians in their prime. If you have ever wondered what mainstream journalists thought of The Beatles in 1963 or AC/DC in 1975, this resource is right for you. You can use the “Free Articles” section on the left side of the screen under the resource’s Library to find an assortment of 1000s of articles on pop and rock stars through the ages. You can also easily search for any article you want to read and filter by artist, genre, publication, or writer. Rock and Pop music took the world by storm in the 20th century and you can read all about it as it happened with this amazing resource.”
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
This special edition of Arachnophonia features contributions from students in Dr. Joanna Love‘s MUS 235 class: “I Want My MTV: Music Video and the Transformation of the Music Industry.”
In this article, Daryl Easlea details Jackson’s career from the 70s to the 90s in the context of Jackson’s recent (this article was written in the summer of 2009) death. Elsea himself is a critically acclaimed author, radio broadcaster, and DJ. Easlea discusses Jackson’s commercial success and offers a behind the scenes look at the musicality of Jackson’s work, primarily by including excerpts from Bruce Swedien, an audio engineer that worked with Jackson. This is important because it shows the range of Michael Jackson’s discography. In addition, it highlights the public reception of Jackson’s works while looking back on his life. While at times, Swedien himself gets bogged down in the specifics of the recordings, e.g. what microphone was used, this information can be crucial to artists influenced by Jackson’s sound that look to produce the same quality of music as him (even if it is not exactly pertinent to my research).
The range of Michael Jackson’s discography, however, is essential to my research for this project. While being crowned the “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson’s endeavors in various other genres made him an influential artist well outside the scope of just ‘pop’. Being the multi-faceted artist that he was, Jackson delved into genres such as rock, soul, R&B, funk, and disco. Easlea discusses how Swedien handled Jackson’s music with unprecedented care, which is portrayed in the crispness of the snare drum in tracks like “Billie Jean.”
This article is also important because it details the history of those who worked with Jackson and helped him cultivate his sound. Jackson had worked with the likes of Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien as early as 1977 on The Wiz, but not exclusively on Jackson’s work until his solo debut album Off The Wall in 1979.
L-R Michael Jackson, Bruce Swedien and Quincy Jones
Both of these producers contributed to the genre-bending and futuristic pop sound of Off The Wall that made it a coming of age story for the Motown prodigy. Easlea makes few references to the actual music itself, but when he does, such as when he describes the ‘itching bass synth’ in “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”, they are chock full of description. Easlea’s mention of Off The Wall and its success is important to my project because this was the album that saw disco out the door in its waning years and also introduced dance-pop to the mainstream.
From here, Easlea goes into great detail about Jackson’s professionalism and what it was like working with him in the studio (at least from Swedien’s perspective). Having recorded with acts like Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Dinah Washington, the Chi-Lites, Tyrone Davis, Buddy Miles, and Eddie Harris, Swedien still puts Jackson at the top of this list, which says a lot about Jackson’s raw talent, but also their chemistry together. Swedien recounts studio sessions with Jackson, describing him as always punctual and prepared, having committed all the lyrics to memory so he would not have to read them whilst recording. As a result, legendary albums such as Thriller were recorded in only three months with all the lyrics having been written before Jackson even entered the studio. Easlea describes the recording for Thriller as a “magical time”, with stars such as Rod Temperton, Eddie Van Halen, and Paul McCartney featuring on the album and adding range and an experimental element to Jackson’s music.
Easlea makes important notes of peculiar instrumentation used in Jackson’s recording sessions. One example is in the beginning of “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”, where Michael Jackson and his siblings are playing soda bottles, by tapping sticks on the bottles. In the same manner, Jackson used a four by three piece of plywood with Masonite, known as the ‘bathroom stomp board’ on the Thriller’s opening track, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Jackson also had drum cases set up that he would use as musical instruments. The use of these makeshift instruments only added to the detail of Jackson’s music and if anything comment on the ingenuity of his artistry.
Easlea also frames the scene during the recording of Jackson’s seventh studio album, Bad, which was also the last time Jackson worked together with both Swedien and Jones. He describes it as a literal zoo, with Jackson bringing his chimp, Bubbles, and boa constrictor, Muscles, to the studio along with him. Future researchers may apply this information when trying to find out what kinds of in-studio influences artists may have around them, and how much these things (or animals) actually influence the music making process.
Jackson with pets Bubbles the chimpanzee and Muscles the boa constrictor
It is interesting to note the transition Jackson undergoes in the making of these projects. Similar to Off the Wall, there is an air of independence in the making of Dangerous, as it was self-produced. Nonetheless, there was an emphasis on quality, as everything in this album was exaggerated from the moment the high energy drums hit on the album’s opening track, “Jam”. This focus on quality followed him into the recording of HIStory, where Swedien states that “the musicality never wavered,” no matter how much and how quickly Jackson’s life was changing.
Easlea shifts the focus to Swedien, who was still in mourning over the death of Jackson at the time, but was also excited to be working on Jackson’s newer songs, which had no designated plan or destination. Swedien recounts Jackson’s favorite song, and the one that best summarizes his work, “Smile”, which was a rendition of a Charlie Chaplin song. This song was sung with a full orchestra, which Swedien states is a feat that very few pop singers are capable of. On looking back on his career and history with Jackson, Swedien declares Jackson as the best — as a vocalist and musician, due to his ability to use his voice to continually push musical boundaries all throughout his career. He describes his instrument as the studio, and Jones’ instrument as Jackson’s ideas, which are two sentiments that can be expounded upon if someone were to do research on the work of producers and sound engineers both in relation to, but also independent of whatever artist they may be affiliated with.
