This is my personal list of sites with mp3 and other recordings of nusach and Jewish liturgy. I collected these links because I am deeply interested in the music of Jewish liturgy, and I want to learn every melody there is for everything. I am not likely to ever reach this impossible goal, but this list is my attempt at it, at least!
These resources are arranged by an algorithm that considers how extensive a resource the resource is in each area. This consideration is subjective, but if you are looking for a particular High Holiday tune, you are more likely to find it toward the top of the High Holiday page than the bottom. Resources in gray boxes contain significant non-Ashkenazi nusach, in some cases alongside Ashkenazi nusach and in other cases to its exclusion.
Keep posted, since I add new resources to this list from time to time. I am also working on a larger project, NusachDB, to collect the melodies themselves. If you know of any useful sites not on this list, or notice a miscategorization, please let me know at webmaster@offtonic.com. Notable missing (or not well-covered) recordings include the Saturday night portions of Maariv, Kiddush Levanah, the Hoshanot of Sukkot, the Hakafot and Chatan Torah passages of Simchat Torah, the Al Hanisim paragraph in the Amidah and Birkat Hamazon of Chanukah, Purim, and Yom Haatzmaut (in the Conservative tradition, anyway), the Haggadah chanting of the Magid and others, and, of course, any less famous melodies for well-covered services like Kabbalat Shabbat and Hallel. If you know of any sites with these, please send them along, or hey, record them yourself if you'd like!
Click "Catalogued recordings" to see which recordings or sheet music in a particular site have been added to NusachDB. For the foreseeable future, these do not represent the totality of recordings for most sites, but the lists will get more complete with time.
Please enjoy this list and may it increase your learning.
Not what I'm interested in -- until "More Cantorial", where you'll find a Haggadah recording of Cantor Pinchas Rabinowitz with a whole bunch of new tunes. Awesome. Would totally rock if it didn't have blinking animated GIFs.
Note: live Hoshanot (Hoshana Rabbah) under Various; start at about 10 minutes, but it's not very melodic
In Italian. Huge archive of Italian recordings, including Italian laining, Italian nusach, and classes. There's a lot more there than I've been able to properly categorize, especially without an Italian siddur, so the notes below are (and will probably always be) incomplete.
Note: includes Sukkot shacharit and Hoshanah Rabbah musaf, which includes the Hoshanot (called Akafot here)
In Hebrew. This is an institute for the preservation of the traditions of Libyan Jews, and there are TONS of recordings WITH text! Oh, and they're all neatly organized from the side menu.
A RIDICULOUS Mediafire archive of chazzanut. RIDICULOUS. Great cantors, old recordings, many live and of low quality but still, and it's enormous. MANY recordings of Slichot -- more than you'd think exist! Shabbat, holidays, weekdays, you got it. Seriously cool stuff. It is chazzanut, though, mostly in the Golden Age style.
Great site with mp3's of nearly everything. This should always be the first stop. His nusach can be unique, at times, and he has great melodies that are hard to find elsewhere.
This is a big collection of very musical Dutch Jewish nusach, including sheet music in many cases. It covers many services, including weekday, Shabbat, chag, and High Holidays, with multiple versions at times. This is a very extensive resource. The nusach is in large part compatible with the common Eastern European nusach, and a large number of lectures are provided on the subject as well. The sheet music uses Dutch transliteration, however, so it will look funny to English speakers!
In Hebrew. It's a site where users can upload their own recordings of piyutim and make their own piyut-centered pages. There's a ton of stuff on here, in various traditions (emphasis on Moroccan and Yemenite, but there's Ashkenazi as well), with a LOT of non-piyut recordings as well; it's affiliated with Invitation to Piyut, so you know it's good. However, unlike its relative, browsing for anything is an absolute nightmare, since within each occasion, they're ordered by *date*. However, there's much more than just piyutim -- there's laining and tefilah as well, but you have to dig. There's a Google-powered search engine too, which helps.
The site of a Sephardic cantor with a large selection of recordings, including videos of Hoshana Rabbah. Unfortunately, much of it is in Real Audio format.
A surprisingly large collection of audio classes, including model complete seders, songs (including actually teaching the songs) and blessings, stuff like that. It's basically an open directory structure, and it's just filled with stuff. It even has correct laining for Job, Proverbs, and Psalms! I should mention that there's much more in here than I can categorize myself, so if I missed anything, let me know! There are many recordings under Songs that I don't immediately recognize, so if you're looking for something in particular, it could be here. There are also many videos of classes which include songs and nusach at the main site.
A whole bunch of Sephardic recordings. If it's similar to the Liturgical Music of Shaar Hashamayim website, it's because it's made by the same person! The content is different, though, and there's a lot more detail in some of the pages, including texts of prayers and piyutim. Jewish Table Singing is a sister site and features many of the same recordings.
Note: includes several hoshanot
An extensive resource for laining (whole Torah, haftarot, Megillot) as well as some nusach (uses Eastern European pronunciation). Includes chanted psalms. It's currently growing fairly quickly, too, so this ranking may be outdated! The recordings in the Tefillah section don't actually contain melodies but shiurim on the respective prayers, except the one on the Kaddish.
This is really, really cool. It's a very complete resource for London Sephardic nusach. This main site focuses on congregational melodies, but it links to Shaar Hashamayim for the chanting and the London Sephardi Choir Archive for choral recordings. Here, I consider them all together.
A cantor's website with a nice full section of recordings. Most of them are under Ritual Resources, especially under Services, but a few are under Music instead, including motif samples from High Holidays and scanned wedding music. Under Ritual Resources -> Torah -> Special, you can also find the Megilot, including Kohelet.
A very thorough archive of pizmonim from Syria that also explains the maqam system, featuring the standard book of Syrian pizmonim and several auxiliary books, with integrated recordings and even videos.
Note: includes Kohelet (under Shabuot)
An Orthodox shul's recordings of various services, including Hoshanot! Also has a couple of High Holiday melodies and recordings of Yom Tov maariv and shacharit.
Note: includes a few selections from Hoshanot
A partnership Orthodox synagogue in Israel with a few audio files, including Hallel, P'sukei D'zimrah for Shabbat, the Torah service, and Ruth, Esther, Kohelet, and Shir Hashirim.
A Sephardic synagogue in Brookline, MA. There are recordings of Torah reading, both regular and for holidays, and all of the megilot, including Kohelet.
In Hebrew (the English version has the same stuff, but not everything has been translated). Absolutely wonderful collection of piyutim (and regular blessings and psalms too, if you look hard enough) from all over the world. It's no longer updated, with the new site being Atar Hapiyut V'hat'filah. The old content uses Flash, so it might be, well, very difficult to get to it right now.
In Hebrew. This is the remake of Invitation to Piyut and Shituf Piyut. It's more difficult to navigate but has more stuff, and it includes most of the old stuff as well (but not all, for legal reasons).
In Hebrew (the English version is the legacy site, Invitation to Piyut, which is no longer maintained). Absolutely wonderful collection of piyutim (and regular blessings and psalms too, if you look hard enough) from all over the world, run by the National Library of Israel. It's massive, constantly updated, and it takes submissions if you want to send in your own recordings that they don't yet have. It's the successor site to Invitation to Piyut and Shitufiyut, containing (most of) the recordings from both.
Weekday nusach and high holiday recordings. The site is Flash-based and will not work with a Flash blocker. Interestingly enough, the menus at the top of the page are somewhat inconsistent, and a set of recordings for their junior congregation is difficult to find but present. That set has plenty of Shabbat, festival Amidah, and Hallel recordings as well as a large number of Torah readings, though the recordings are in alphabetical order.
Note: includes the nusach for Hoshanot and Hoshia Et Amecha
Interesting melodies from an Iraqi tradition, for a variety of texts including Kol Nidrei, Shabbat piyutim, etc.
A few songs from different communities and languages.
A few digitized music collections from the JTS library. It includes field recordings of laining (examples from most books of the Tanach, at least) from 1936-8 Israel, which are naturally very scratchy and whose titles are in Hebrew, some music from Cochin, India, and Jewish art music manuscripts. The interface, I should warn, is horrendous, as sadly befits a library website.
Note: includes several bits of Kohelet, though the actual verses are not always in the title
An Orthodox synagogue with a few, sadly, quite outdated recordings of (complete) S'lichot, Hoshana Rabah, and Chanukah; there's even a musical havdalah with Neshama Carlebach. The plugins no longer work in modern browsers, but the .wma files are still there and can be downloaded.
In Hebrew. A site with Moroccan videos and such. Most are on YouTube, but it's fairly extensive. There are bakashot, Shabbat piyutim, etc.
An Egyptian synagogue in New York. There are many recordings and videos here. Many. There are several years' worth of Seder Tawhid, an Egyptian Jewish celebration on Rosh Chodesh Nisan. Three years of Slichot plus selections from a fourth. Several High Holiday tunes. Several kinot. Havdalah in a whole bunch of different maqamat. Torah and haftarah trope according to the Egyptian minhag. All of Esther. Under R' Yosef Hamaoui Media there are even more recordings, including all of Psalms and a wedding service.
A site dedicated to the memory of Ronny Horvitz and his melodies from Frankfurt. Contains taamim for Torah and haftarah, some Esther,
A wealth of Spanish and Portuguese melodies (and some chazanut), including parts of Hallel, S'lichot, festival liturgy, Shabbat, and a whole bunch of stuff, along with a bit of info on each melody.
A synagogue's site with a whole bunch of files. Unfortunately, they're .wma's, so it takes some hacking to get them to play on my Mac! Highlights include a great Kabbalat Shabbat service, a fairly complete Shabbat morning service from Shochen Ad, weekday afternoon (weekday evening is broken), and trope for many things.
What it says on the tin. Also has trope for high holidays and chag services, but it does not cover Kol Nidrei. Very good mp3 recordings, with directions. One of my top high holiday sources.
Note: Hallel includes special Sukkot tune for start of Ps. 118
In Hebrew. This is a big Judaism site that also has a bunch of recordings. Many are actually samples from Harav Levi Sudri, in the Moroccan tradition, but there are some weekday shacharit recordings as well in both Sephardic and Ashkenazic nusach. There's some sheet music as well; in particular, you can find [sheet music for z'mirot](http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/shabat/zmirot/tohen-2.htm) at some of these pages.
A Modern Orthodox shul's with a whole bunch of recordings of Shabbat and holidays.
In Hebrew. A website about Yemenite traditions. There are videos about how to read Torah and haftarah in the Yemenite way, for example, but the bulk of the recordings are here, organized by date. There you'll find, among other things, a Yemenite Birkat Hamazon.
Note: includes some of Kohelet
In French. A Sephardic (Tunisian and Moroccan) synagogue in Paris that includes, among other things, a course on chazanut and piyutim, with a website containing quite a few recordings in Tunisian, Egyptian, and Yerushalmi traditions. There are a lot of bakashot, some Haggadah recordings, and a few other items.
In French. A website with information about observances of Francophone Jews; it includes a few recordings and videos under their respective holidays and under Radio Tv.
Note: includes Shlomit Bonah Sukah
The gold standard in trope websites, as far as I'm concerned. There's Torah, haftarah, high holiday, Eicha, Esther, and Shalosh Regalim (Shir Hashirim, Ruth, Kohelet) trope, and with musical notation to make it even easier.
This is the website of the Karaite Jews of America, which is a group of Jews that follows a very different tradition from Rabbinical Jews. This particular Karaite community uses an Egyptian nusach. There are some YouTube videos at the site, as well as two recordings that appear to be complete Saturday morning services. The plugin was giving me difficulty, but you can find the link by looking at the source pretty easily. You can also find a complete Karaite Haggadah, a count of the Omer (only the first day so far), and various holiday songs at the Holidays section of the site.
Contains some rather interesting items, like recordings of the Megillot (Esther, Eicha, Shir Hashirim, some of Kohelet) with trope in English.
A zemirot project with an interesting selection. Unfortunately, it's the kind of thing that Chrome makes you download rather than opening in the browser.
Note: includes Harachaman Hayakim
A Modern Orthodox synagogue; hidden well within the website are a sizable collection of Simchat Torah songs (and two Sukkot songs as well).