"But I Just Want to Listen to the Songs!"

A few weeks back I shared with you my feelings about sharing unauthorized copies of music recordings as a way to learn our music. But I know that listening to finished performances is a great way to get familiar with the music. So I want to encourage you - and resource you - in providing yourself with this learning tool.

If you're reading this, you must have a computer with access to the Internet. Yay! It's only a short step further to download the songs from this repertoire that you would like to hear and listen to them whenever you wish.

If you have never done this before, you need to make sure your computer has the necessary software. There are lots of choices. Since I'm a Mac and iPod user, I prefer iTunes - which is available for free from Apple. It works on both Mac and PC. PC users may find that they already have Windows Media Player or the Real Player installed. Both of these packages can accomplish the same thing.

The next step is to find and download the songs. If your using iTunes, the iTunes Store is a very easy place to do this. I also use Amazon's site for digital music downloads - but they require that you use their downloading software, which is another step (it's free). For either place you'll need to set up an account using a credit card (although you may already have one on Amazon!). The cost per song is between .69 and 1.29.

For much of this repertoire, you'll probably find multiple versions to consider buying - and the sites will let you listen to about sixty seconds of any selection to give you a "taste."
Once you have the songs in your computer, you can listen to them there, sync them to your MP3 player (iPod, etc.) or burn them to a CD to carry around and play on CD players. For those using iTunes, HERE is a tutorial (video and text) showing how to burn a CD. Note that in iTunes you must first arrange your songs the way you want them in a playlist, and then iTunes makes the CD from the playlist.

There's an old adage: give a person a fish and they eat for the day; teach them how to fish and they can eat for a lifetime! While downloading music from the Internet probably doesn't rank up there with eating (for most of us, anyway!), I hope you explore this new way of acquiring music for listening if it is new to you. Have an adventure!

See you soon! -GREG