12000 songs for Direct Access in all important formats

Wow, this is fantastic. Thank you for preserving the Wikifonia collection and saving me tons of time converting all those BIAB files to MusicXML (and opening the BIAB files doesn't work at all in MuseScore 2.0).

Note - I also use Notion on a PC for notation, and the MusicXML files from your archive don't import directly into that program. No error message, just no response when I try to import them.

As a workaround, I open them in MuseScore (2.0) first, then export them as MusicXML. Notion is then able to read them.

Hi Rob,
I tried to download but it says the file is no longer available. Can I still get it somewhere? Thanks so much, Lori.

Hi Robin, this is fantastic work, but the link is broken would it be possible to obtain it in a different way or email me on sibbo01@hotmail.com. I would be most grateful and appreciate it many thanks David

I can't believe the copyright police are still trying to squeeze royalties out of starving musicians who have paid dues far in excess of what they've taken in. Moreover, lawyers are killing American music. They're shooting themselves in the foot by ensuring that the ears of today's listeners will be deprived of the "Great American Songbooks," or the standards that Bob Dylan recently said have more high quality and staying power than any songs by his or subsequent generations. These are the songs written for Broadway musicals and MGM films. The litmus test for a real musician is a song that can stand up as a pure instrumental, as any great symphony does--which is the case of any of the jazz standards by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington (and Strayhorn), Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers (Coltrane's fav) with Hart or Hammerstein, bringing out two musical identities from the versatile melodist, then Jimmy Van Heusen (Sinatra's and Bill Evans' fav composer), finally Jule Styne, Harry Warren, Victor Young--these are America's top composers, responsible for the unique 32-bar song and its variations--as important an art as Shakespeare's mastery of the 14-line sonnet.

Jazz and the classiic American popular song are inseparable. From Louis in the 1920's to numerous tenor saxophonists (Coleman Hawkins 1939 recording) to Coltrane, Johnny Green's "Body and Soul" has been the standard that must be met by all of these leading musicains---Just listen to every saxophonist's version, including Sonny Stitt's. Without the American popular song (with the sophistication of Cole Porter's many ingenious compositions) there would be NO JAZZ--and without jazz, the classic American song would have been some non-swinging rudimentary creation--like the gear-heavy music of today, melodies of one phrase, lots of electronics, and no swing.

Jazz and the Songbook are symbiotic. Ken Burns has done justice by one-half of the jazz story while he's missed America's greatest contributions in musical material (by Jewish composers, italian singers, African-American soulful jazz masters--from Louis to Miles and Dizzy, from Fatha Hines to Bill Evans, from Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young to Benny and Artie, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins and Sonmy Stitt and finally to John Coltrane)--the Great American Songbook and its unique and universal composers are vital to and inseparable from America's art of jazz. Burns could do a count-down, the best of each, week after week, with lots of historical and live footage. Jazz is the style, the pulse, the swing and the feeling--light and free adult music; the Standards are the material that endures from one generation to the next, frequently providing the harmonic basis of a Bird or Monk tune or used in its original form to facilitate many different musicians performing together for the first time on the concert stage. A real "jam session" is not a walk in the park; it's the struggle to fly as free as a Bird and as high as Coltrane. But there has to be a common language, and that's where the Songbook, along with the heartbeat pulse of a "walking 4/4" comes into "play."