What is SoundJunction and what can I do?

Listen to music

SoundJunction’s full of different styles of music. The site commissioned three new pieces – an African song, a jazz/big band song and an orchestral piece. Then we asked musicians to make remixes of these pieces – rock, drum ‘n’ bass, broken jazz, fusion and experimental. There are also over 300 other pieces of music from around the world, across the site. Find out about some of them in Music in context.

Take music apart and find out how it works

Using interactive online tools, you can take this music apart and find out how it works by experimenting and listening. You don’t need to know about music to understand SoundJunction. If you do, there’s a lot more to discover still. Start in the Explore Music section, or jump to the interactive Explorer tool for African, jazz or orchestral music.

Create your own music

You can make your own music online, drawing from thousands of samples, using the SoundJunction Composer tool. Jump to How to create music in SoundJunction or go to Create music yourself for some composing guides. Or check out the Composer forum for music other people have made on the site.

How do people make music?

If you want to find out how composers, writers, producers and remix artists make music, you can watch them explaining the process on video. Jump to Composing and remixing.

Musical instruments

You can watch over 200 demonstrations on video of musical instruments – how they work, how you play them etc. Jump to Instruments and voices or, if you’re interested in a particular instrument, go straight to All individual instruments for a list.

How do you become a pro musician?

Over 40 professional musicians talk on film about how they got to where they are, and what they think of it! Jump to About musicians or go to All individual musicians for a complete list.

Background to different musical styles

If you want to find out how hymns and jazz gave rise to hip hop, how European music has developed over 500 years, how traditional African music is different from the West, how a traditional song from the Pacific Solomon Islands ended up in Norway, or much more, go to Music in context.

Teach music

SoundJunction’s an enormous free music learning resource with around 1,000 pages of information and activities. If you teach music, have a look at the Teacher resources section for some ideas of how you could use the site in your teaching.

Choose your own style of navigating around

You can browse around the site freely, or use Journey mode to track your progress and suggest further steps, or you can go to the Learning trail forum for some step-by-step trails on particular subjects and issues.