DRAM – streaming music via your computer 24/7
By: Betty Glass
May 3rd, 2007
What does a moon guitar sound like? 
Photograph created by Larry D. Moore (c)
What can convey the sense of self-reliance in the Old West to students faster than a cowboy song?
How many swing era jazz aficionados know how Billy Tipton opened doors for women wanting careers as jazz instrumentalists or have heard a composition by the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet?
DRAM is part of Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., an educational foundation that also includes New World Records and Composers Recordings. The original goal of New World Records, when it began in 1975, was to preserve the work of important American composers and musicians who were not selected for promotion by large, for-profit recording companies.
The continuing focus of DRAM is to build a high quality audio database of hard-to-find, culturally significant, and academically important music recordings.
The University is now a participating member of DRAM (formerly The Database of Recorded American Music), a non-profit digital library of CD-quality streaming audio music recordings of complete compositions, along with their original album liner notes and cover art.
DRAM currently contains over 9,800 compositions from over 1,500 CDs, and its content continues to grow. Genres, both instrumental and vocal, include classical, early rock, electronic, folk, jazz, musical theater, Native American, and opera. The recordings provide a means of approaching American cultural history through 200 years of representative music.
Now the scope of the database has expanded to include international music, with much of the collection coming from the New World and Composers Recordings catalogue.
Faculty can make DRAM streaming audio recordings available to their students via online course reserves, but DRAM is also available to any UNR-affiliated student, faculty or other employee — 24/7 — from any computer.
You don’t have to be a music major to master using DRAM. DRAM can ease the homework burden of students in music appreciation classes as well as delight scholars of ethnomusicology.
DRAM’s BROWSE feature is an easy way to find recordings by instrument, artist, ensemble, or composer. The Advanced Search option allows people to specify a search by album title, composition date, release date, catalog number, instrument, and even keywords in an album’s liner notes.
When a complete album is displayed, its liner notes can be read and the image of its cover art can be enlarged. Also, the album content list doubles as the interactive selection list for playing a recording. An individual composition or an entire album can be selected to be played.
You need QuickTime 6.5.2 (Mac) or QuickTime 7.0 (PC) or higher on your computer to play the streaming audio. A free download screen is provided if you need to add the software to your computer. Downloading is not available at this time.
The small sampling below only begins to convey the variety of recordings available in DRAM:
- Composer Scott Lindroth’s 1999 album “Human Gestures,” performed by the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble
- eXchange: China - a CRI album of works by 10 young Chinese-American composers
- A November 1993 recording of the Sterling Jubilee Singers a cappella performance of “Operator” at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama
- A May 1985 performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” by the New York City Opera (Grammy Award, 1986)
- An August 1975 recording of a Cherokee Stomp Dance at the Medicine Spring ceremonial ground in Oklahoma
- A 1941 recording of Elliott Carter’s “The Defense of Corinth” performed by the Columbia University Men’s Glee Club
Some of the music seen in DRAM’s database is accompanied by the message “This piece has not been cleared for use in the Database,” and the music is not available to stream. Those recordings have not yet cleared royalty negotiations between DRAM and the publishers.
Whether you are taking a music class, teaching a class with a music component, or just enjoy listening to music, DRAM is an audio database you should investigate. After all, you know a music database must have something for everyone when its “instrument” category includes: broken piano, conch shell, kazoo, and radiator.
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Betty Glass, University librarian, can be reached at glass@unr.edu.
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