Music Learning Today - 2nd Edition

The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access (SCLDA) uses all the Smithsonian offers to empower learners to explore their own interests and collaborate with others to bring ideas to life. We create models and methods that make the Smithsonian a learning laboratory for everyone.

The Keeping Score web site is designed to give people of all musical backgrounds an opportunity to explore the music and life of the composers featured in the Keeping Score television series in depth, and at their own pace.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts 372 art history books online. All of the books can be read online or downloaded as PDFs (warning, some of them are massive files). You can search through the catalog of books by thematic category, format, and publication type. And, of course, you can search through the books by title, author, and keyword.

Pick a year and see what songs were popular.

An index of images, information about, and recordings of Medieval and Renaissance instruments.

This modest but interesting site traces the history of rock music by decade, from its roots in the African American Rhythm and Blues to the grunge craze of the 1990s. Along the way, readers can glean interesting tidbits (did you know that the term “rock and roll” was coined by Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed?) from well-constructed essays, and view classic photos of rockers across the generations.

smARThistory.org is a free multi-media web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional and static art history textbook. The combination of video lessons, text articles, and audio lessons about eras and themes in art history is what makes Smarthistory a valuable resource.