In web sites just like in many of our daily activities music sets the stage for what you see. I thought I would tell you about some of the music of the web and where to find it and how to use it for your own pages.
First things first; that is what someone told me once so let's go to http://www.liveupdate.com/. This is where you can pick up a Crescendo player. I have found of all the free players on the net, that this one is the one that gives me the best music quality. Another factor is that I have never found a web page yet that I couldn't get the music from it with my Crescendo player. There is a version of this player that you can download for free and it seems to work real well. You can also bye a better player but in all honesty the free one does well. The version that you pay for does have streaming which is very nice. Streaming is when the music starts playing before it is fully downloaded so you get the music from the page faster, but well I guess I am too cheap to worry about something like that. Give me the free version and I will be fine.
Now on to finding those pages where you can get the music you want for your site. The music is called a midi (please don't ask me why, because I have no idea). There are available all over the web. Using my little handy dandy search engine Goto.com, I have already found many music sites. http://www.digitaldanny.com/music.htm, this site is great. I have found many midis that I really like here. As a matter of fact, I got so interested in collecting some new midi files I almost forgot about you, my gentle readers, and this column. This site has midis of every sort. It has rock and roll, classic rock, heavy metal, country, television themes and many others. I believe I could spend an afternoon here.
Hey, in my looking around the Midi file pages I found out what MIDI stands for-"Musical Instrument Digital Interface". I found this on http://members.xoom.com/MIDImarket/. This page is full of information on Midi's and how they came to be. It has a nice collection of downloadable midis also. One can not have a page on midis without mentioning the world famous http://laurasmidiheaven.simplenet.com/. This site was off line for quite a while, and has recently came back with a newer and better site.
The one thing that I must warn you about is that some midis are copyrighted. If you click on one of these to download it or use it on your site, a copyright message will appear and it will ask you if you wish to continue your download. The laws on this have become pretty strict lately, so be careful and only download the ones that don't have a copyright window.
To download a midi, just click on the crescendo player that is playing it, and click on file. The pull down menu will have a part that says, "Save as" click on this and it will save the midi to your machine. Putting midis on a web page is easy also. It just takes an Embed command and for any one wanting to do that give me a call, or send me an e mail for the command.
I hope you enjoy these midi sites and the wonderful music that makes some web pages very special.
Just a new word here. I have designed a new web site called Espoirs Midi Site and you can find lots of good midis there. The address is http://home.beseen.com/internet/expoir55 Until next week, my gentle readers, keep on surfing and turn the volume up!
Christine Dunne, May, 1999
