Student Blog: Resources For Music Students

Hello!

Whether you are about to start your journey at a music school, or you are close to graduating, it is always helpful to have resources to help you. Throughout my time at school, I have been recommended some great websites and books by my teachers. Here are some of the resources that have helped me the most!

imslp.org

The IMSLP is a digital library full of public domain scores. You can browse works by different categories, such as time period or nationality. I have used this website to pick out pieces for my piano class, and it has helped me learn about different composers that I might have otherwise never heard of.

If you have a piano class where you have a lot of freedom regarding your repertoire choices, take a look around this website! There are a ton of of works on this website, making it easy to find a piece that fits your needs.

Method Books

On the above website, you can not only find scores, but also books full of exercises to strengthen your technique. My favorite has been Hanon's The Virtuoso Pianist. It contains 60 exercises meant to improve the strength of your hands, wrists, and individual fingers.

A fun thing about practicing music is coming up with warm-ups. You should be warming up each day before practicing, and there is an endless amount of exercises you can use. As a beginner, I like referencing Hanon's book when I'm at the piano; the exercises are pretty fun to learn, and they help to "wake up" my hands before starting to practice.

musictheory.net

This website has been a life-saver for me from the beginning. A lot of my peers took music theory in high school, but I went into college with little knowledge about the subject. Musictheory.net helped me get familiar with different keys and chords by using their calculators.

Of course, you should not heavily rely on this website; you should aim to memorize these concepts eventually. Still, the calculators on this website are helpful for checking your work - to make sure you are working in the right key, identifying the right scale, or constructing a chord correctly.

If you are starting a music theory class and you don't have much experience with the subject, play around with this website. Besides calculators, there are also exercises on there that you can customize and use to test your knowledge. Eventually, you will be able to identify the patterns and rules used in music theory, such as the construction of different scales, or the order of sharps and flats.

Social Media!

If you want to find the perfect pieces to learn for the semester on your main instrument, social media is a great way find some works that suit you! I'm lucky in that I have been given the freedom each semester in regards to selecting repertoire. Instagram has been the perfect place for me to find up-and-coming composers. Once you find one, give them a follow, then look at who they follow, and so on. There are so many unique composition styles to explore, and this is a great way to learn more about them!

If you have any free time before or during the semester, I would recommend browsing through some of these resources. They have been useful for helping me through my classes, but they're also just a lot of fun to play around with. I hope you all have a good end to your semesters, and your future classes!