Jazz Instruction
Since 1998 I have sent dozens of students to Changes 98 at www.changes98.com where they discover every chord type and scale plus 54 common tone substitutes for any melody note in both treble and bass clef. Arrangers and improvisers find this site to be a must stop on the Internet. Students can print out whatever scales and chords they need and keep copies in their cases, or music folder convenient for study and practice. And now there’s a new printable PDF book that includes all the information on the site in standard 8.5” x 11” notebook format, which allows you to print the entire site, three-hole-punch the pages, and carry the full content.

It’s unfortunate that performance-oriented jazz programs in the public schools give little or no time for the study of jazz history. But Web sites coordinated with classroom instruction can achieve significant impact. Jazz: A Film (A History of America’s Music) by Ken Burns at www.pbs.org/jazz/index.htm is an incredible resource with audio samples and photographs. PBS KIDS - Jazz at pbskids.org/jazz is another excellent resource that introduces jazz greats and takes a student inside the jazz band.

Band Instrument Instruction
The Texas School Music Project sponsored by Stephen F. Austin State University is an outstanding “how to” online resource for every band instrument and how to play within an ensemble. You’ll find helpful articles about every facet of band instruction from tuning to winning contests at: www.tsmp.org/band/bandindex.html. These features are short, concise, and right on the money! Also check out www.tsmp.org/orchestra/orchestraindex.html for similar orchestra articles.

Brain Kay: Brass Instrument Instructors at www.BrassStages.com offers tips and instruction on all brass instruments. You’ll find rhythm worksheets, flash cards, fingering charts, top-ten tips for teaching trombone, recommended books, repertoire audio files, and more. It’s all organized according to level for every teaching situation.

Music Compositions & Warm-up Exercises
Ever wish you could stretch your music budget with free charts and warm-up exercises for all of your ensembles? Sibelius and MakeMusic make this possible with their huge composition libraries at their Web sites. All manner of Finale files (including exercises and warm-ups) may be found for free at: www.finalemusic.com/showcase with over 46,000 compositions in 45 categories. Check out thousands of free charts for any kind of band, string, vocal and jazz ensemble. Just view, audition, and download the charts with Finale NotePad, a freeware notation application at: www.finalemusic.com/notepad/. An excellent search engine on this Web site will let you easily find compositions by title, instrument or style. Sibelius has its own showcase at: www.sibeliusmusic.com/html/sibeliusmusic/cached_stores/-1_2.html with over 7,200 musical scores. Most compositions have small fees but there are some free scores.

Southside Fundamental Middle School band program in Pinellas County, Florida has warm-up scales transposed for every band instrument at: Http://it.pinellas.k12.fl.us/teachers4/touchtonc/musicresources.html. There is a free Scorch plug-in that can be downloaded from Sibelius at: www.sibelius.com/products/index.html that will let your students practice along online as well as download and/or print out for further practice.

The very best warm-ups on the Internet for band instruments can be found at: http://www.rgsmithmusic.com/Free_music.htm. This “gold mine” offers the most comprehensive selection of warm-up materials for all band instruments that can be played at any tempo over the Internet as well as transposed through Sibelius’ Scorch as well as printed out. You’ll find progressive warm-ups for young musicians, basic warm up for high school musicians, arpeggio studies, multiple tonguing exercises, rhythm materials, free rhythm MIDI files, scale studies, grand master scale, brass range extensions, minor grand master scales and more.

Teaching Aids
Metronome Online at www.metronomeonline.com is a free online metronome ideal for quick and easy use while practicing music. Tempos vary from 40 to 208 beats per minute and the application also provides A 440 for tuning. Additionally, there are online flute video lessons, fingering charts and notated lesson plans.

On - Line Metronome at www.orcketsounds.com/tools/metronome.php also offers a practice metronome with tempos from 40 to 208 beats per minute, plus A 440 for tuning.

Kids’ Korner at www.musiceducationmadness.com/scale_cruncher.shtml has the Scale Cruncher, which allows users to build different types of musical scales starting on any note. For some students, constructing them from scratch provides better retention than just reading from a scale sheet. Just pick a starting note, and along with traditional major and minor scales, you can create locrian natural, altered natural 5, jazz minor, mixolydian flat9, lydian sharp 9,5, locrian dbl. flat 7, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, whole tone, symmetric diminished, whole step, half step, half step, whole step, augmented dim, aug. dim scale has 3 modes, and the blues scale.

Musictheory.net is a great music theory freeware application at www.musictheory.net/downloads.html that will strengthen any student’s theory skills. It’s chock full of fundamentals covering: clefs, ledger lines, note values, time signatures, dots and ties, simple and compound meter, odd meter, major/minor scales, scale degrees, key signatures, intervals and more essential music fundamentals. There are also ten tutorials, a chord calculator, staff paper generator and a matrix generator. This highly recommended resource can be downloaded to use at home or school.

Looking for free interactive guitar tuners online? Go to 8 Notes.com at www.8notes.com/guitar_tuner/default.asp?sstring=a and find separate tuners for guitar, mandolin, violin, viola, and cello. Dreadscott at www.dreadscott.com/Guitar.html offers both an online guitar tuner plus a downloadable version for both Mac and Windows computers that also has alternative tunings beyond A 440. The downloaded version works without the Internet.

Band & Orchestra Instrument Fingering Charts
Music Teachers Network at www.musicteachersnet.com/syllabus.jsp offers free fingering charts for all the major band instruments plus articles on proper brass mouthpiece placement and embouchures. The fingering charts are very attractive and easy to use. An other web resource for some of the best sources for band instrument fingerings is: Http://www.bandtek.com/fingerings/. It even covers some unusual instruments including mellophone, f-alto, bass trombone with F attachment, tuba fingerings for F, Eb, CC and BBb fingerings. If specialized fingering charts are what you’re looking for, check out the alternative, quarter tone, trill, tremolo, flattement, and multiphonic fingerings at: www.wfg.woodwind.org/. Even recorder, tin whistle and fife, charanga flute, Irish uilleann pipes, shakuhachi flute, and sarrusophone can be found among these fingering charts..

If you need a 4-valve euphonium/baritone fingering chart, go to: Http://homepage.mac.com/yutakatuba/CompEuphfingering.pdf#search=%224-valve%20Euphonium%20Fingering%22 and find a 3-valve treble clef and bass clef euphonium chart at: www.dwerden.com/pdf/tc3basic.pdf and www.dwerden.com/pdf/bc3basic.pdf, respectively.

Fretted Instruments
Ever wish your guitar students didn’t use open strings in their chording? Internet guitar fingering charts can help you. For simple chords, go to: www.guitarprinciples.com/Guitar_Technique/Chord_Songs/chords_basic.htm. Looking for a printable free guitar chord chart with more than 100 chords? Go to www.firstact.com/tuneandplay/free-guitar-chord-chart.html. You can print charts out for each of the six guitar strings. Find guitar power chords at: www.ababasoft.com/music/chord_finder.html and you will see the fretboard instantly guide you to cool-sounding chords with the fingerings right on the fretboard itself. Along with major/minor chords, there are 7ths, 9ths and 5ths plus alterations. A fast, easy way to learn new chords. The same Web site at ww.flashmusicgames.com/guitar_chords_basic.html uses flash cards for graphic, fretboard fingering options. To hear the chords as well, go to: www.ababasoft.com/music/guitar_chord.html and you have a powerful chord fingering table which when you click on the chord both the fingering is shown on the fretboard and the chord is played.

For more online instruction with even more diversity of chords and scales, go to: www.all-guitar-chords.com/guitar_scales.php?qqq=13&scch=E&scchnam=Melodic+Minor+%28Ascending%29&get2=Get. There’s even a guitar jam machine to solo with specific chord progressions in different styles, in any key.

Bass guitar players can find free fingering charts online at: www.musicked.com/musicked/pages/instruments/fretted-strings/Electric-Bass/Electric-Bass-Fingerings.htm with graphic fretboard illustrations matched to the music notation.

Rhythym Section Instruments
Drum rudiments are also covered on the Internet. Rudiments are the building blocks of drumming technique and the ability to play them fluidly at any tempo is essential in any style. Start with Drum Bum at: www.drumsdatabase.com/rudiment.htm. The first lesson presents 13 primary illustrated drum rudiments with a separate video to further explain and demonstrate. There are 14 videos available. I particularly like how the 26 drum rudiments are presented at: www.drummingweb.com/rudiments.htm. Perhaps the slickest web rudiment presentation is found at www.vicfirth.com/education/rudiments/01singlestrokeroll.html. Not only does this site have superb videos, but also excellent documentation with insight on how to track your progress on all rudiments. Just click on the bottom portion of the Web page for each of the 40 rudiments

Find free music games for piano, guitar, or drums at: www.ababasoft.com/music/music02.html. Piano players are in luck. There are good places to find piano chord fingerings. Start with www.directory.co.uk/search.asp?keyword=Piano+chord+fingering+chart&x=0&y=0 for 14 options. Notable ones are found at www.beyond.dk/chords/ and Virtual Piano Chord Finder at: www.hearandplay.com/virtualpiano.html. It also does scales. Learn any chord in seconds! Simply pick the root, then the type of chord or scale and watch it appear immediately on the screen. it can even invert chords so you can learn them in all inversions.

MIDI Compositions
There is a wealth of standard MIDI charts on the Internet which can be used in software notation/sequencing performance applications beyond music notation and sequencing applications such as Finale 2007, Sibelius 4.0, Band-In-A-Box among others. If you don’t have a MIDI software application, you can use a media player such as QuickTime, Windows Media Play, RealPlayer or WinAmp. One media player that does particularly well with MIDI files is Anvil Studio MIDI player/editor. It is better than the above media players because it allows you to view and edit the notes and all MIDI data plus you can listen to your files, save them and create your own custom play list. This freeware can be downloaded at:. www.anvilstudio.com.

One of my very favorite Web sites for downloading MIDI compositions is Classical MIDI Connection at: www.classicalmidiconnection.com/cmc/index.html. I really like how the organization of Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, Twentieth, new composers, choral connection, X-mas connection, recent additions, previous updates, and composers list. Another Web site is Classical Music at: www.midiworld.com/classic.htm 
which offers downloads major compositions of major classical composers in both MIDI and .MP3 file formats. Another source for Standard MIDI files playable with MIDI plug-ins, MIDI players and MIDI sequencers is Standard MIDI Files on the Net at www.manythings.org/midi. I did a search for Beatles songs and got 191 links to MIDI songs. A definitive Web site sources for downloading MIDI files is the Harmony-Central Web site at: www.harmony-central.com/MIDI/files.html. A definitive resource for thousands of choral PDF files is at www.cpdl.org. In fact, CPDL is one of the world’s largest free sheet music sites with over 8,200 compositions and nearly 1,200 composers. You can use CPDL to find scores, texts, translations, and information about composers go to ChoralWiki at: www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page But some of their music is in “native” file formats such as Finale, Sibelius and Encore among a few others. Of note, PhotoScore Professional at www.neuratron.com/photoscore.htm is the music scanning program that reads PDF files directly, plays them back and saves in Sibelius file format and MIDI if PhotoShop MIDI is used.

Closing
“Free” doesn’t necessarily mean “inferior” and if you’re more inclined to be a “guide on the side” rather than always the “sage on the stage,” perhaps these sites can spark confidence and more creative practice.