Improvisation Research

A whole special issue of Contemporary Music Research on improvisation. Looks interesting.

Music References

A quick list of some online resources on music through the University's libraries.

The Grove Music Online is a well-known general reference on music. It can be useful to look up some musical terms, get some information about genres or search for specific musicians (especially in Jazz and Classical genres)
Direct access: http://0-www.grovemusic.com.mercury.concordia.ca/index.html?authstatuscode=200

The Music Index Online is an index of music journals by author and subject. It has apparently been greatly improved last February.
Direct access: http://0-www.hppmusicindex.com.mercury.concordia.ca/brs/hpplogin.jsp
RILM stands for «Répertoire international de litérature musicale» but it's known, in English, as "Abstracts of Music Literature." It's a very extensive database for all references having to do with music, from dissertations and books to journal articles.
Direct access: http://0-search.ebscohost.com.mercury.concordia.ca/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=rih

Concordia has access to the full JSTOR III collection, which includes many full-text articles on music.
Direct access: http://0-www.jstor.org.mercury.concordia.ca/

In all cases, you can access the databases from campus or from an off-campus connection with your library login information (barcode and PIN).

Audrey Laplante is the subject librarian for music.

Brain On Music

There's a nice website for Dan Levitin's book This is Your Brain on Music. The Science of a Human Obsession. I wanted to have part of this book required for the ANTH398D course but, for several reasons, I replaced it with Ian Cross's discussion of the evolutionary impact of music. Levitin's book may still be an entertaining read and his site is full of interesting bits about music from a rather broad perspective (that of both a professional musician and a psychology prof).

Music References, RefWorks

Anyone in the worldGood news! The whole Concordia community now has access to the very comprehensive RILM Abstracts of Music Literature database. That database is available through both on- and off-campus connections. It contains a remarkable number of references in most fields of music study, including most articles and books written in the anthropology of music, ethnomusicology, and comparative musicology. One of the nicest things about some of the newer bibliographic resources is that they are directly integrated with the RefWorks online reference manager (think Endnote or ProCite on the Web, only better). Concordia has a site license for RefWorks which means that any member of the Concordia community can set up RefWorks accounts, add references directly from online databases, including Google Scholar (it's especially easy from campus but can be done from other connections), and share references with the outside world. I've been posting a number of ethnomusicology and anthropology of music references through that functionality. Very useful!