Musicmap

Musicmap is a powerful, beautifully designed tool for anyone who wants to understand, explore, and connect the vast landscape of popular music. It’s especially useful for music lovers, educators, researchers or anyone curious about how music evolved over time.

The project is based on more than seven years of research, drawing from over 200 sources. Its creator, Kwinten Crauwels, aimed to strike a balance between accuracy, clarity, and accessibility — so the map is detailed, but still easy to navigate. 

How it works

• The map (called the “Carta”) is a 2D diagram: the vertical axis represents time (from past to present), and the horizontal axis groups “super-genres” (broad families of music). 
• Genres are color-coded by their super-genres, and there are different types of links:
• Parent links (showing where a genre comes from),
• Influence links (how genres affect each other),
• “Anti-links” (genres pushing back or reacting against others). 

When you click on a genre, a panel appears with:

• Its name (and any synonyms)
• Approximate year of origin
• Which super-genre it belongs to (or if it's a hybrid)
• A brief description (historical, social, musical) 
• A playlist of example songs (usually 9–12) from different artists, helping you explore what that genre actually sounds like. 
• A connectivity bar with other useful links or tools. 

Find this resource on:

https://musicmap.info/

Tune Into English

Tune Into English is a free educational website that helps learners improve their English through music. It offers a variety of resources for both teachers and students, including:​

Worksheets: Over 400 downloadable lesson plans based on popular songs, focusing on grammar, vocabulary, and listening skills. ​

Games and Activities: Interactive exercises and quizzes that make learning English fun and engaging. ​

Roadshows: Live interactive shows presented in schools across Europe, combining language learning with pop music. ​

The site is managed by Fergal Kavanagh, an experienced English teacher who integrates his passion for music into language education.

https://www.tuneintoenglish.com/

Lightnote. Interactive Music Theory Lessons

Lightnote is an interactive online platform designed to teach music theory in an engaging and accessible way. It offers bite-sized lessons that simplify complex concepts without relying on traditional musical notation or requiring prior instrument experience. The platform includes interactive exercises, virtual instruments, and ear training tools to enhance the learning experience.

For those seeking a more comprehensive understanding, Lightnote provides a premium course titled "The Complete Guide to Music Theory." This course covers topics such as chord progressions, melody creation, and the fundamentals of various music genres. It includes over 30 lessons, hundreds of interactive exercises, and additional resources like a virtual piano and guitar-specific content.

Find Lightnote on:

https://www.lightnote.co/

Musicmap vía @NaoCasanova

Musicmap is an interactive online encyclopedia designed to explore the history and evolution of popular music genres. Developed by Kwinten Crauwels, it visually organizes over 200 music genres from 1870 to the present, offering a detailed genealogy of how these styles emerged and influenced one another.

The platform features an interactive map that allows users to click on genres, view their origins, and discover related styles. Each genre includes embedded playlists to sample iconic tracks, making it an engaging educational tool for music enthusiasts and learners. Musicmap provides a glossary, a theoretical framework, and thorough explanations to enrich users' understanding of music history.

Visit:

https://musicmap.info/

Songtell

Songtell is an AI-powered platform that helps users understand the meaning behind song lyrics. With a database of over 800,000 song explanations and curated playlists around various themes, Songtell uses advanced artificial intelligence to analyze lyrics and extract key details, themes, and concepts from songs. It offers insightful interpretations that reveal the narrative, metaphor, social commentary, or personal story behind the words. 

While not always perfectly accurate, Songtell serves as a valuable resource for educators, students, music enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the meaning behind song lyrics.

Find it on: https://www.songtell.com/

Blog: https://blog.songtell.com/

Playlist for Life

Founded in 2013 by Sally Magnusson, the vision of Playlist for Life is that every person with dementia should have access to a unique personalised playlist and everyone who loves and cares for them should know how to use it to make living with the condition easier and happier. 

Their resources page is full of free materials to help people at each stage of their playlist journey, whether they are making a personalised playlist for themselves or helping someone to make theirs.

Playlist for Life can also be a useful resource from an English language learning point of view for sharing experiences and tastes in music and developing conversations around them. 

You can find it on:

https://www.playlistforlife.org.uk/

Library of Congress. National Jukebox Project

The National Jukebox is a project of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. 

The goal of the Jukebox is to present to the widest audience possible early commercial sound recordings, offering a broad range of historical and cultural documents as a contribution to education and lifelong learning. 

Find it on:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/national-jukebox/ 

Radiooooo #Music #CollaborativeProject

Radiooooo is a collaborative  project launched in 2013 consisting of a musical time machine that allows you to find and listen  to music from different countries and decades.

This project is curated by a group of Djs, producers and artists. It has a basic version and a premium plan with more features (rewind or skip tracks, bookmark songs, follow other members of the community…)

It can be interesting as a tool to introduce students to popular music from all over the world throughout history  

Find it on:

https://radiooooo.com/ 

LyricsGaps. Improve your English through music

LyricsGaps is a fun method to learn and improve your English (and other languages) through music and typing in song lyrics. You can listen to songs and fill in the blanks or take some quizzes. For each song there are different levels: Karaoke, Beginner, Intermediate and Expert.

Video clips are embedded on the page to listen to the song and fill in the blanks at the same time. 

Quizzes can be printed out. Teachers can also create their own quizzes or customize the existing ones.

http://www.lyricsgaps.com/en

Bluebird Music Lessons

Blog devoted to sharing the best music lessons plans, products and apps available for elementary music teachers and students. They also share teaching tips to help you provide an exceptional music experience for your students. 

Website:

https://bluebirdmusiclessons.wordpress.com/ 

On Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.es/bluebirdmus0105/

Classics for Kids

Lesson plans and teaching resources that use classical music to help children learn. The materials incorporate various philosophies, including those of Orff, Dalcrose, and Kodaly. Games, composers, effective activities to help teachers teach the basics of music, musical terms, music education methodologies, and much more. 

Find it on: 

https://www.classicsforkids.com/

World Peace Song Project

World Peace Song, composed by Women of the World, is a song for connecting people from around the world with their wishes for peace. It was premiered in a concert in Nagoya in 2015 in which children with many backgrounds in World Museum contributed lyrics in their own languages and created a global chorus. Since then, the song has been sung in several concerts and workshops.

In 2018, many new partners have joined the project and have contributed their works creating lyrics in their native languages, singing, recording and videotaping.

Visit:

http://wmuseum.weebly.com/world-peace-song-2018.html

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9DOyb8EQEc7hnen-_va7YQ?fbclid=IwAR2OpZ_zEl508zY5qv5C4raaXAQ2YQ99AU2roBGN5n5TPj9SZjHUB_PlH1Y

Callixtus (Medieval music)

If you are interested in medieval music, this YouTube channel is dedicated to the chanting tradition of Western and Eastern Christendom: Gregorian Chant, Byzantine Chant & more. 

Visit:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Callixtinus/featured

Classics for Kids

Classical music helps students to think more creatively, and stimulate the mind. It can also help teachers meet the educational objectives of their students.

Classics for Kids offers lesson plans and teaching resources that give educators and families practical plans and activities that use classical music to help children learn (composers, games, music, resources for parents and for teachers...)

(Source; Classics for Kids)

Visit:

http://www.classicsforkids.com/

Sing King Karaoke

Karaoke can be a musical way to improve your English. Sing King Karaoke is a great YouTube channel with many karaoke versions of the latest hits to chose from. Free karaoke content from the brand new to the old classic.

Visit it on:

https://www.youtube.com/user/singkingkaraoke/featured

Tune into English

Songs are meaningful to students. Tune into English helps them to learn English by listening to pop songs, singing and playing games. The site contains lots of helpful tools like phonetic charts, games and explanations. A motivating ESL educational tool.

http://www.tuneintoenglish.com/

On Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/TuneIntoEnglish

On Twitter: 
https://twitter.com/tuneintoenglish

Songlyrics.com

It's great to use songs in the class. Songs are often used in the ESL classroom to learn new vocabulary and expressions, and to consolidate concepts that they have already learnt. Songs help recognize sound patterns and words of a foreign language in a motivating way.

Songlyrics.com offers thousands of song lyrics searchable by artist and genre. Music news and songs and albums reviews are also available. In fact, it is one of the largest entertainment sites and one of the most complete lyrics databases in the world.

http://www.songlyrics.com/

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/songlyrics

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongLyrics

GoNoodle. Brain breaks

GoNoodle is a free service designed to promote physical fitness and to improve self-regulation, academic performance, language skills, and more. It provides an online environment where they can choose avatars to represent themselves. This environment helps them channel their physical and emotional energy.

Hundreds of short funny videos (2-5 minutes) that get the kids active at school and at home. Very interesting for quick brain breaks in the classroom.

https://www.gonoodle.com/

An example:

Music in the English Class

Music is one of the best and most motivating resources in the ESL/ EFL classroom. Music is the universal language of mankind. This makes it an amazing teaching tool which connects cultures and languages. 

Studies have shown that music improves concentration and memory. It relaxes people, makes learning fun and constitutes a shared learning environment regardless of the age, background, sex… of the learner.

The following educational resource by M.Àngels Araujo, Isabel Clara Moll, Josep Perez-Prior and Laura Rocamora provides a very interesting example of good practice in this regard.

http://apliense.xtec.cat/arc/node/30500

Easy Way Lyrics

Created by Easy Way Language Center, this app synchronizes lyrics with the songs and translates them in real time with Google Translate.

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/easywaylyrics/id858836240?mt=8