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Music live and online

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I've just had a fantastic week beginning with Mayer Hawthorne last Thursday night at the Powerstation, followed by Bon Iver on Monday at the Wellington Town Hall, amidst days of amazing food & coffee in the capital. All things I highly recommend.

Mayer Hawthorne: thanks to Stuff.co.nz

Bon Iver: thanks to Einstein Music Journal

Good to be back in muggy old Auckland though. Wish I was going to Roots Manuva tonight. Here's one of my favourite music videos:

But if you're saving your coins and you have an Auckland University Student ID card, you can check out The Naked & Famous, Ruby Frost & Artisan Guns, tonight for free!

On another note, here are two online music resources I have been using a lot lately:

http://grooveshark.com: Grooveshark is the world's largest on-demand music streaming and discovery service. Over 30 million users flock to Grooveshark to listen to their favorite music, create playlists, discover new tunes, and share it all with friends via Facebook, Twitter, social news sites, and more.

Give it a go - if you're looking for a song, I have found it a lot more efficient than Youtube.

And of course: Freegal Music. A brilliantly simple new eresource from Auckland Libraries, giving you access to New Zealand's Sony Music Digital Catalogue, where you can download 3 mp3s a week for free, for keeps.

I recently discovered Dimmer's first album I Believe You Are A Star is out of print: you cannot get it anywhere on disc, but it is all available for free on Freegal. See what other discoveries you make, and let me know!

Listen to music online via Naxos

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The library doesn't just offer physical things like manuscripts and CDs to music fans, we also have a solid collection of Music eResources in our Digital Library. During NZ Music Month we're running a special class in one of these resources, the Naxos Music Library. Unfortunately this class is all booked up already, but I'll give you a run down so you can have a browse yourself.

The Naxos Music Library is a collection of music that Auckland City Libraries members can listen to online for free. Just login with your barcode number and PIN and you're hooked up to more than 600,000 tracks streaming in CD or near CD quality.

Naxos, with its excellent classical music content, is perfect for listening to pieces you might need to learn for music lessons or theory tests. The recordings come from all the big classical labels like Chandos Records and Hungaroton, so you know that the recordings are of the top quality.

I don't tend to spin up classical music for much more than soothing background sounds, but one thing that caught my attention was the Pop & Rock section. "Listen to an impressive array of Scandinavian rock and pop music, jazz, indie-pop and folk/acoustic pop," says the catalogue listing, so of course I had to check it out. A quick trawl turned up what seems to be a mash-up of the scores from The Two Towers and Requiem for a Dream, Requiem for a Tower by Clint Mansell of Pop Will Eat Itself. Totally LOL-worthy, and not at all bad.

I also stumbled across some pretty sweet electronic pop by Nashville-ites Venus Hum. Check out 'Pink Champagne', but steer well clear of the remix. You have been warned.

Naxos also has classic and contemporary jazz, folk, blues, world, nostalgia, and even Chinese collection. Jazz, in fact, gets its ownNaxos Jazz Music Library. It's possible to search by country, and yeah, there are some kiwi tracks on there. Have a dig.

If you're already set up to log in to the library website then you have all you need to get on to Naxos. Chuck on some strings while you study, bone up on some classic jazz to match your new beret, or get ready for your next Young Workers' meeting by singing along to some Pete Seeger. It's free music on the internet, imagine that!

~Ashley

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