Google Scholar provides a simple way to search broadly for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
You may be able to access some of these through full text databases at your local library.
For example, In Wisconsin, Badgerlink provides access to many full-text databases through the EBSCO platform.
Check with your local librarian to see if you can get the article full text.
Also - through Google Scholar, you may find articles that are listed as being in the historical journal database JSTOR. In 2011, JSTOR released free access to all content in the database that is in the Public Domain. This means that any journal article published in the United States prior to 1923 and anything published in Europe prior to 1870, is available for you. Details are available here http://about.jstor.org/service/early-journal-content-0
If you find something that you want that is not available full text you can use WorldCat.org to find out if there is a copy near you or use the information to make an InterLibrary Loan request for it.
As a response to the prices many publishers are charging for access to their journals, there are groups now publishing scholarly journals available for free to the general public. This is called 'open access' and the the Directory of Open Access Journals is available here http://www.doaj.org/
This is a sample of the sorts of things you'll find there
Journal of Research in Music Performance
Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy
Dissertations are another relatively easy source of scholarly research to access. One excellent source for information on music-related ones is
American Musicological Society (AMS) Dissertation database – looking up dissertations is free. This then provides the information needed to order them through your local library's InterLibrary Loan office or if you want to own your copy, buy them from Proquest for a fee.