Here are some music websites I've found useful over the years.  It isn't meant to be comprehensive.  I'm not given to aimlessly wandering through cyberspace, occasionally stumbling on something useful.  These are sites I tend to visit over and over.  Some of them act as portals through which you can reach the vast amount of music-related stuff that's further on out there.

ïThis beautiful image is a map of the Web (I think as it was in 1998, so it must be vastly bigger now).  Source.
 

Theory, practice

For general theory, masses of practical advice and examples, a lot of amusing on- and off-topic discussion, occasional bouts of trolling, flaming and vigorous debate and plenty of links to lead you onward to the wider world of music online, you can't beat Scot Ranney's Learn Jazz Piano site (it isn't just for pianists).

A major contributor to LJP is Jeff Brent, aka 7, teacher, performer, comedian, ethnologist, world traveller and all-round renaissance man.  His own website has lots of really useful material on it and he has the gift of demystification which has certainly helped me several times.  For example, his beautifully simple approach to fingering scales on the keyboard is an object lesson in turning a dry academic issue into something that connects with everyone's physical experience.

Another LJP stalwart is Barry Dallman, a thoughtful and stylish player and an all-round sound fellow. He runs a really nice blog on all aspects of playing jazz, which you can access by following this link.

Aaron Garner's site has lots of excellent material from the Jazz Studies course at Sacramento State University.  In particular, the Jazz Improv and Jazz Piano pages are full of helpful approaches to analysis and performance.

Marc Sabatella's Outside Shore has been a web resource for jazz learners for many years.

Pete Thomas's (no relation) site has a lot of nice stuff, including sections on theory, improvisation, practice routines and arranging.

Ricci Adams's site is not jazz-focused but has useful lessons, teaching aids and utilities.

The Barry Harris/David Baker approach, based on bebop scales, can help make sense of some of the trickier aspects of harmony and chord substitution.  There's a well-illustrated guide to this system in Howard Rees's Jazz Workshops.

There's an interesting account of lydian dominant theory on Norm Vincent's site.  I think I probably agree with most of what he says, though I've arrived at these conclusions by a different route.  The Zen Master tells us it matters not which path you take, as long as it leads upwards.
 

Changes, analysis

I'm an admirer of Ralph Patt's approach to the jazz standards repertoire and particularly his masterly classification of harmonic motifs, which he very neatly relates to his must-have compilation, the Vanilla Book.  If you have a laptop or a PDA that you take to gigs, having the Vanilla Book pdf loaded up might just save your life.

Dave Luebbert has been running Songtrellis for years.  It's a unique online resource for chord changes, though the quality of harmonic analysis is pretty patchy.  An early port of call when trying to hunt down the elusive progression for that half-remembered standard.

Extracting a chord sequence from a song or a performance is an important jazz skill.  It's reasonably easy to do it if you have a midi version of the piece - just play it through something like the vanBasco program and look at the notes.  It's trickier with audio files, but Transcribe!, a relatively inexpensive utility, enables you to slow the performance down and identify the notes making up each chord.
 

Midi, audio, digital stuff

VanBasco is a free midi player that shows a keyboard with the notes playing in real time.

Doug McKenzie is a great pianist who has generously put a large archive of his own performances online in midi form. He has annotated many of them, making this one of the most revealing resources for learning what goes on in an accomplished musician's mind during the act of creation.  Some streaming audio featuring Doug can be found here.

Norbert's site TheJazzPage has lots of interesting material, including many jazz midi files.

Here's an extensive collection of jazz midi files.

The best magazine on audio technology is Sound on Sound.  Their website is a good resource, and even better if you subscribe.
 

Friends and their bands

Here are just a few links to people I know/knew and play/have played with and who between them have taught me much more than I could ever have discovered by sticking with my navel-contemplating hermit inclinations.

Mojas is a band that includes fellow Western Arc personnel Pete Stacey and Ajijo.  They play a joyful melange of jazz and world music.

Pete Canter  is a dynamic and dedicated saxist who has energised the jazz scene in the Southwest of England, (having done the same for Wales in the time he lived here).

Tomos and Daniel Williams left mid-Wales to find fame and fortune in the urban south, where they have played with the best (and sometimes even me too) and carved a niche with their mixture of hard-bop, contemporary and Welsh folk styles.  Their new album Alawon, by their new band Burum, also features the legendary sibling drum'n'bass team of Mark and Chris O'Connor.

Sam Christie appears in many places on this website.  He's a great drummer, connoisseur and creator of some of the most challenging music around and is dynamically moving into studio services and radio production.  Also you should check out his radio show - two hours of the best music broadcast anywhere in the UK, streamed every Sunday evening, 19:00 to 21:00 UK time.

In 2007 Sam introduced me to Maggie Nicols.  She divides her time between The World and her rural retreat not too far from where I live.  Here she hosts a monthly event called The Gathering, to which all manner of people gravitate to spend an evening of unbroken improvisation.  Being buttoned up and a bit sniffy about "free" music, I was doubtful about attending, but Sam said I'd find it inspirational and he was right.  Subsequently I was honoured to be part of Maggie's band for a local gig and greatly enjoyed the novel experience of music that was simultaneously structured and open.  What's more, Maggie is a heartbreakingly beautiful singer.  And a recording artist of world significance.  Oh, and a gentle, caring soul too.

Una May is an extraordinary singer who spent several years here as a student but, frustratingly, I never got the chance to perform with her at that time.  Recently we played together at a wedding and I got a glimpse of what might have been.  Check out her very interesting album Pilgrimage, which combines her interests in jazz, gospel, world and choral music.

Frannie Verney is an amazing singer who works with her equally amazing old man, guitarist Pete Kershaw, in a number of exciting bands responsible for fine albums and roof-raising live performances.  The Big Idea played at my half-century birthday party - what a great night.

Paula Gardiner is probably the pivotal figure on the Welsh jazz scene and a musician of international importance.  I've had the privilege of playing with her several times and always come away having learned something new.

My friend Richard Garrett lives up a mountain with Heather and Sean.  He's an inventive composer of ambient, algorithmic and electronic music with a strong environmental theme.  His latest project, Weathersongs, is based on meteorological data collected in his eyrie.  He also cuts loose with jazz and blues guitar now and then.

The doyouinverts are...extraordinary.  Don't blame me.

Some other chums can be seen here.
 

Australasia is the place

I discovered there's a site (much more hi-tech than this one) called Spoonbill.  The music is really quite interesting and Jim Moynihan (Mr Spoonbill) looks like an entertaining character.

I met Robert Davidson in Durham at the Music and Evolutionary Thought conference in June, where he gave one of the most stimulating talks, all about the musicality of natural speech.  His band Topology is something special.

Michael Norris was also at the conference and presented another of the most fascinating papers, in this case on the use of L-systems for musical composition.  L-system modelling is big business in the plant science world too, so it's another very satisfying example of the two cultures crossing over.