Today's blog post rounds up all the new digital acquisitions and digitized items added to BARD in October 2024 by the NLS Music Section ..read more

Happy Summer from the NLS Music Section! We have many new additions to BARD (Braille Audio Reading Download), which are ready to be downloaded and enjoyed on any smart device! In our audio collection, we have added more lessons from Bill Brown, including “by-ear” piano instruction selections by Yiruma and music from the motion picture series “Twilight.” For guitar players, we’ve acquired another Lou Gramm Band song, “Willing to Forgive,” also taught by Bill Brown without the use of musical notation! There are also many braille selections that were recently added to BARD. This include ..read more

Welcome to our May 2024 installment of what’s new on BARD. This month, we added many braille books for our woodwind players out there, including pieces and instructional books for saxophone, flute, and clarinet. As usual we have also added some piano and organ book, including a few Schubert Waltzes, as well as choral and vocal selections. In the audio realm, we’ve added popular tunes in the piano-by-ear series. Please note that all materials listed below are also available to borrow by mail, not only through BARD. Please contact the Music Section to borrow talking books on digital cartridge or ..read more

Welcome back to our January 2024 installment of what’s new on BARD. This month, we added a number of braille books for piano, including some more from the popular Alfred’s “Basic Piano Library” series. We also have a good number of new vocal works for you to enjoy. In the audio realm, we’ve added popular tunes in both our piano-by-ear and guitar-by-ear series. Additionally, we’ve added two Talking Book editions of our new “Talking Blog” series. We’ve taken previous blog posts written by NLS Music Staff members and turned them into Talking Book editions that you can download from BARD and liste ..read more

Happy Holidays from the NLS Music Section! We are proud to share the latest additions to BARD (Braille Audio Reading Download) with our patrons! Picking up where we left off last month, we have more audio lessons on bass guitar from Bill Brown, including Beatles hits “Here Comes the Sun” and “Help!”. In our digital braille collection, we have also added a sight-singing method by Andrew Fox, and a brand new transcription of selected piano works of Sofia Gubaidulina. For our younger students, we have also recently uploaded more piano lesson books by Jane Bastien, including Pre-Reading Duets and ..read more

This month, we’ve added a number of new piano and clarinet pieces to our braille collection, along with various other pieces for voice and choir (and another one for our tubists)! In our audio collection, we’ve added more popular songs by Bill Brown to our piano and guitar collection, along with two new lectures from the Library of Congress on Henry Threadgill and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. There’s more to enjoy this month, so keep reading to check out our other new-to-BARD books. Please note that all materials listed below are also available to borrow by mail, not only through BARD. Please cont ..read more

Welcome to the January listing of our new BARD additions! In our braille collection this month, we added a variety of music for piano, violin, voice, and even B-flat tuba! In the audio collection, we’ve added more popular songs by Bill Brown to our guitar and piano collections. There’s more to enjoy this month, so keep reading to check out our other new-to-BARD books. Please note that all materials listed below are also available to borrow by mail, not only through BARD. Please contact the Music Section to borrow talking books on digital cartridge or to borrow hard copies of braille music. Cal ..read more

Anyone who has ever heard an authentic Hungarian folk tune, such as one of the many discovered by Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) at the start of the 20th Century, is familiar with the problem that notating such tunes is much like driving without a map. These ancient dialects and foreign languages had no alphabet or any other form of notation. Because of this, one has to become completely absorbed in the language in order to understand it. If any composer was ever capable of capturing the spirit of this ancient Hungarian dialect in the form of organized sounds, it was Bar ..read more

Ned Rorem (1923-2022), who was once referred to by legendary choral maestro Robert Shaw as, “the greatest art-song composer of all time,” passed away last month at the age of 99. With an amazing globe-trotting life that took him from Chicago to Morocco, and from Paris to Manhattan, Rorem’s experiences led to a titanic output of music and literature. He was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award, and served as the President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Rorem was born in Richmond, Ind., on Oct. 23, 1923. His father, Clarence Rufus Rorem was a medical economist who ..read more

Giving Thanks for BARD additions! This month, we added audio titles for piano with music from the movies and the classical area, and in braille the popular piano teaching method by James Bastien along with works by Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky. Please note that all materials listed below are also available to borrow by mail, not only through BARD. Please contact the Music Section to borrow talking books on digital cartridge or to borrow hard copies of braille music. Call us at 1-800-424-8567, ext. 2, or e-mail us at nlsm@loc.gov. If you are new to BARD, you may find the following link ..read more