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Garritan is a virtual instrument provider often bundled with Finale Notation Software. The virtual instrument player is called Aria, and various sound collections are available for purchase. In my experience, the VST works well with Finale, however, does not work well by itself or with other DAWs. This may be due to the low memory and processing speed of my computer.

Visual and audio representation of musical instruments, separated by family. Especially useful for classes age 7+, when first discussing wind and brass; and for classes 11+ when discussing composition and instrument timbre.

Great resource for introducing young students to the instrument families. Provides a picture and sound file for many of the instruments in each family. along with a short description of the family.

EastWest Sounds is one of the most popular sources for digital instruments. The website includes an online store, community blogs, news and updates, and customer support.

This website is a great resource for K-5 music.  There are jokes, games, and information regarding famous composers, including recordings of famous pieces of music.  This can be used by a classroom of kids in a computer lab, or by a teacher for lesson planning.

Classics for Kids is a resources for teachers, parents, and children. It provides lesson plans, music games and interactive links, a podcast, tips for parents, and information about composers, instruments, and music history. The lesson plans (written by my former music education professor, Dr. Kay Edwards) are standards-based and incorporate elements of Orff, Kodaly, and Dalcroze.

This website is for elementary/general music education. It is a resources for lesson plans on composers, music theory, and music listening.

This is a wonderful website for string quartet and ensembles that want to perform non-traditional music. Mona Lisa Sound has sheet music from the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin and more at a reasonable price. Music can be searched by artist, song name, ensemble make up, and difficulty.

Fun game to create sounds and beats. No background beat is provided. Allows students to create their own background beat which they totally control.

This is the kids' section of the New York Philharmonic. It has very informative pages about instruments and composers. It also has games for composition, and musical puzzles. You do need to download shockwave to view the content, but it's worth it.

This website is great for elementary students to reinforce the instruments and instrument families found in the orchestra. Students can listen to the sound of each instrument and watch short videos. There are great games and assessments for students to use, I highly recommend the Orchestration Station.

This is an online game that works will aural recognition of the instruments in the orchestra. After getting an answer correct, there is a description of the instrument in more detail, including how it looks, what it sounds like, how many are in the orchestra, and where they sit.

This page details the process of violin making, sound production and care and maintenance.  I will include this page on my school website for the students and parents to use as a reference.

Vocal Jazz sheet music for all voicing. 

This website has the purpose of gaining knowledge on saxophone musicians, and ways to practice, listen, and fine tune the sound one makes. It has articles and techniques that are meant to give saxophonists needed guidance on history, ways to improve performance, and how to perform with different styles. This site includes different genres or saxophone performance, such as classical, jazz, be bop, rock and blues, and regae. There are other links for purchasing music, mouthpieces, saxophones, and practice books.

I've used this site with students playing boomwhackers along with the animation. It's very easy for children to use and provides a great tool for visually representing sound and fractions (both in relation to the tube length and also the beats in the measures).

With almost 65,000 accessible sound files, Stanton's Sheet Music Listening Library is my first resource for finding the publisher's demo recordings of concert band and jazz band music.

An app for the iPad that provides complete mastering for recordings. This app uses pre and post EQ as well as effects for making recordings sound polished and professional. Great to use for the band classroom when making recordings. 

Another helpful site for when you have to write a musical critique. I especially like there "SHMRG" acrostic: Sound, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm and Growth (texture/formal structure) Good for students when evaluating a musical performance.

My 6th grade clarinet students often get frustrated when looking up fingerings they don't know (we try hard to not tell them the answer, but rather have them look it up themselves). The charts in the back of the methods books are great, but to a young student it can be confusing which pinky or side key is actually supposed to be used. This interactive fingering chart, while obviously not in their book, could alleviate these same frustrations in their practice sessions at home.

This is a YouTube channel that provides reviews, demos, and tutorials of many music and sound apps for the iPad and other iOS devices.

Brought to the internet from PBS Kids, Chuck Vanderchuck is a cartoon kid who dreams big when it comes to music. Along with his band-mate, Ramona and their dog Zepplin, the trio explore styles of music, compose songs, explore sounds, have jam sessions and allow an interactive inside look at famous musicians and composers in their locations around the globe. Builds music vocabulary, music history and overall exploration of various genres. Styles include: Salsa, Jazz, Country, Hip-Hop, Rock n' Roll, Blues, Classical, Reggae. Good with IWB. Offers teacher and parent resources. Can create a free account and log in anywhere to progress through the game-like environment of Chuck Vanderchuck.

Splice is a cloud platform for music creation, collaboration and sharing.

Splice is a cloud platform for music creation, collaboration and sharing.

This service creates a live back-up of work being completed in a digital audio workstation (or DAW). On the site it boasts ease of use, flexible collaboration (by allowing you to share work with other users), endless inspiration (in the form of a vast library of loops and sounds within its DAW), and most importantly, unlimited space! Sign up is free.

A website with ideas for general music educators to build and create homemade music instruments. Culturally relevant music education must pay special attention to the exploration of sound through the available resources.