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Milner Library

MUS 434, S1 - Applied Music: Percussion

This guide contains resources to help find percussion journals, scores, books, audio recordings, and other resources for your assignments in Percussion Studio.

Too many results?

AND

AND is a Boolean operator that narrows your results to be more specific.

  • When you connect two keywords with AND, the results will only include articles that have both of the keywords you entered.
  • In the example search below for snare drum AND technique, my articles will contain both snare drum and technique.

Screenshot of Venn diagram showing that only items containing both snare drum and technique would be included in a search for snare drum AND technique.

NOT

NOT is another Boolean operator that will narrow your results.

  • It is helpful to use when you keep seeing articles about a topic you are not interested in.
  • When you use NOT to connect keywords, your search will not have any articles about the keywords you put after NOT.
  • In the example search below, if I search for mallet instruments NOT drums, I will get articles about mallet instruments that are not drums.

screenshot of Venn diagram showing that only mallet instruments that are not drums would come up for a search for mallet insturments NOT drums.

Many databases offer a menu containing a variety of ways to limit your searches both before you search and on your results page.

On ProQuest databases such as Music Periodicals Database and Dissertations & Theses, there are limiting options on the results page to help you narrow your search:

Screenshot showing search limiter options on search results page in Music Periodicals Database

Not enough results?

OR

OR expands the number of results you will get. When you use OR to connect two keywords, your article results will include some articles with only your first keyword, some articles with only your second keyword, and some articles with both keywords. In the example below for vibaphone OR vibraharp, some articles will include vibraphone, some will include vibraharp, and some will include both terms.

Screenshot of Venn diagram showing that items with vibraphone, vibraharp, or both terms would come up for a search for vibraphone OR vibraharp.

Different articles use different synonyms, or words with same meaning.

  • Check the keywords you are using to search and see if they have synonyms you could try plugging in place of the terms you already tried.
  • For example, if one of your search terms was vibraphone, you could also try plugging in vibraharp.

Another way to expand your results is called truncation. You can search for multiple words at the same time that start with the same letters by placing a * after the letters.

Here are some examples:

  • librar* will find articles using the words library, libraries, librarian, and librarians
  • percuss* will find articles using the words percussion, percussionist, percussionists, and percussive.
  • marimb* will find articles using the words marimba, marimbas, marimbist, and marimbists.

Need help? Ask me!

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Christine Fary
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