When you learn to read guitar sheet music it will be vital in expanding your guitar playing skills. Playing by ear will only get you so far and I am here to help take it to the next step. I will show you some basic tips and tricks to help you learn to read guitar sheet music and hopefully that will make you a better and more versatile guitar player.

I will now give you a list that will show you it is not hard to learn to read guitar sheet music.

Finding the right material

Most guitar books will have some basic sheet music and songs in the front pages that are designed to help you learn to read guitar sheet music quickly. Once you have basic guitar knowledge it is relatively easy to learn to read guitar sheet music. Start in small sections, one chord at a time. Use your guitar and play the chord out loud until you know it sounds correct.

Setting your self up

You will need to be in a small quite room where you will not be distracted by anything when you learn to read guitar sheet music. The only way to know when you get it right is if it sounds right and it can be difficult do that if you have screaming kids in the room with you or loud street noise outside. Concentration is key and this will make it easier to learn how to read guitar sheet music. If you are distracted you may find a whole day can be wasted trying to focus.

Getting started

Remember what I said, be free from distraction! I cannot stress that enough. Now you’re alone and it’s quiet, find a music book with sheet music, try to pick something easy but also try to pick something you are familiar with. It makes it much easier to learn to read guitar sheet music if you are familiar with the tune. Make sure you are confident with one piece before you move on to the next.

Continue practicing

Continue to practice as much as you can, you will find that the better you get the more you will practice. When you enjoy something you will generally apply more time to it. Trying to learn to read guitar sheet music is easy as long as you practice! Once you have mastered reading sheet music then you can attempt to write you own music and that is where the real fun begins! It is essential to make sure you are confident or you will only have to go back and learn to read guitar sheet music all over again.

Article written by real guitar lover. Some of authors articles can be found at:
You Can Learn
Guitar!
Articles to help you learn guitar quick.

Children, like all of us, need help setting goals that won’t run out of track before the end of the journey. The piano journey is no different. There are basically two kinds of goals: Dead goals that simply expire, and Living Goals that never die. What kind of goals do you want your child to reach for? If you want them to achieve living goals you’ll need to show them how to prepare for the future.

Preparing for the future requires having a plan in place. When it comes to planning, however, most people put the cart before the horse.

If you look at planning for a musical dream, however, the same way you would think about investing in a new business, it’s easy to see how one could get lost before they ever got started. For example, would you start to grow a new business by focusing on time management instead of a business plan? What difference would it make how you spend your time if you don’t have a plan with goals to guide you? So why encourage your child in piano lessons to focus on target goals that will achieve their musical goals.

There is no excuse for not having a good plan when it comes to helping your child in piano lessons achieve their musical dreams because it’s so easy. Just start by asking three simple questions.

1. Why do you want to learn to play the piano?

2. What will you need to learn to in order to do that?

3. How will you go about accumulating the resources and knowledge you’ll need?

Help your child start making their list and checking if off and by Christmas they’ll be wishing they’d done this sooner.

For great home piano activities parents can use to help children ages 5 to 11 develop their musical talent, visit Piano Adventure Bears Music Education Resources You’ll find a treasure box filled with piano resources to create an exciting musical adventure for your child - right in your own home! Visit their website and subscribe to their f’ree internet newsletter so you can download f’ree piano sheet music and mp3s of original piano compositions.

These exciting stories, games, piano lessons, and inspirational gifts feature the Piano Adventure Bears, Mrs. Treble Beary and her new piano student, Albeart Littlebud. Young students follow along with Albeart to learn what piano lessons are all about in a fun way that kids readily understand appreciate. Click here to visit PianoAdventureBears.com For a wealth of information about piano lessons, visit tallypiano.com

Metallica is perhaps one of the best known metal bands around. In May of 1951, Lars and James made their first introductions. This meeting was shortly followed by the formation of Metallica just five months later.

On April 23rd of 1982 Metallica appeared as a 5 piece band with Brad Parker on the guitar. After that, Metallica really began to take off.

The man who needs no introduction, Cliff Burton (or just incase you’ve been living on another planet, probably the best bassist ever!) then had his first rehearsal with Metallica in 1982.

At this point Metallica really began to develop as a band and their popularity sky rocketed. In 1983 their growing popularity encouraged their decision to move to San Francisco California to further their careers. It was here that the Whiplash and No Remorse demos were soon recorded.

Kirk Hammet was then called to join the band in April of 1983. He was a big success but there were internal problems and Dave Mustaine was kicked out of the band just days later.

Without Mustaine, Metallica ended up signing with Megaforce Records in May of 1983. Over the next 20 years Metallica became one of the most famous and adored bands in the heavy metal community. However in recent years the quality of their work has come into question. A combination of missing members and rehab programs has led to a change in style that many of the die hard fans feel doesn’t match up the older stuff. This isn’t an opinion piece, but I’d have to agree.

Want to talk about this article? I just registered over at the Metallica Forum where Metallica and other topics can be discussed in detail.

Let’s face it. Nothing compares to the beauty and attractiveness of a baby grand piano. The curves, the strings, the way the whole thing looks just makes you want to go over and play.

Baby grand pianos give the serious musician with limited funds the ability to own something that one can be proud to play and that will last for years and years.

While not as deep and rich sounding as their grand piano counterparts, the baby grand piano is perfect for students who are serious about music and who invest substantial time and energy into playing.

Small, yet not small in sound, baby grand pianos offer something the upright and grand does not, affordable elegance. There’s something about the way an instrument looks that either makes you want to play it or not. While an upright is fine for beginners and amateur pianists, it just doesn’t inspire those who need that certain aesthetic touch a baby grand provides.

And let’s not forget about the fact that a baby grand can fit into most living rooms as well. Many are 5 feet or less and can make a boring living room into a grand concert stage. It is the centerpiece of many musical homes and deservedly so! Houses with pianos in them seem to have more life. As soon as you enter the room and see a beautiful baby grand, you either want to play or hear it.

Expect to pay anywhere from $2000 to $10,000 or more for a decent instrument but also expect to get many, many years of enjoyment as well!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

How To Construct Basic Chords on the Piano

The easiest way to start learning how to build chords is to practice their constructions in the key of C Major. You’re just playing all white keys.

All you have to do is play every other white key to create a 3-note chord. A 3-note chord is called a triad. A 4-note chord is called a 7th chord. And a 5-note chord is called a 9th chord.

Now you have the option of playing your chords in one hand or you may use both hands! It depends upon the sound you want to produce.

How to Improvise Melodies

There’s something irresistible about a real melody. If you can convince the listener that they’re hearing a melody when you improvise, they will stay riveted to every note.

Well, you can - and it’s not really that difficult. The one element that is common to almost all good melodies is: repetition.

To your success,

Mr. Ron
http://www.mrronsmusic.com

Repetition. Repetition and more repetition. I’m referring specifically to the repetition of ideas (motifs, as they are often called). Sometimes the idea is repeated exactly as it occurred the first time, as in the Holiday tune “Jingle Bells.”

More often, the motif occurs higher or lower than it did originally. The notes are different but the rhythm and the shape of the line remain intact, as in “Happy Birthday.” This type of repetition can be defined as “pitch-shifting.”

What I’m describing here is a process often called motific development: the spinning out of ideas through the use of repetition, pitch-shifting, and extension.

So that’s it… if you want your improvisations or solos to sound like a melody, you need to use a lot of repetition.

Ironically many musicians avoid using repetition for fear of sounding repetitious, i.e., boring. You bore a listener if you try to elicit the same emotional reaction from him/her two or three times in a row, but that’s not what you’re doing when you repeat an idea.

When you first introduce an idea, it’s new. The listener waits with open anticipation to hear how the idea spins itself out. But when you repeat the idea, their reaction is very different. Now they can gain a certain sense of control, by connecting what they’re hearing to what went before.

Just listen to some of your favorite songs, and you will definitely hear repetition!

Ron Worthy is the owner of http://www.mrronsmusic.com. He is a Music Eductor and Performer. His site offers online piano instruction for all ages. He specializes in Rock, Pop, Blues and Smooth Jazz Piano disciplines.

MP3 stands for MPEG layer 3 audio, where MPEG stands for a form of compression used both in video and audio. The reason why compression is used, why not just capture digitally? The reason is size, in this case, size of captured files is a WAV file (the standard for CD) which produces massive files which even with the event of broadband connections are just too big, for example a 1 minute file equates to 10mb of storage.

CD’s provide a high quality recordings that faithfully reproduce the music but in ones and zeros (digits). It does this by sampling 44,100 times a second and storing the value of each sample. This is a from of compression and it means that the whole analogue signal is not stored but the human ear can’t really tell the difference between a sampled version. Plus digital recordings do not suffer from noise or degradation which allows copies to be made without losing quality much to the annoyance of the music industry. Peer-to-Peer file sharing softwares such as Kazaa, Morpheus, iMesh, Grokster, and Blubster or widely used Macintosh file-sharing programs like Poisoned, LimeWire, and mlMac are used to share music files on the Internet.

Consumers can now get music online via a range of payment methods, including paid-for downloads and subscription, from online sites such as MSN Music Club, Virgin Downloads, Tiscali Music Club, HMV Digital Downloads, Fnac, TDC musik, Karstadt and MTV. Demand for these services, powered by the pan-European distributor OD2, rose sharply in 2003.
There are now many websites that offer music downloads, usually in the MP3 format. This is convenient because it takes up lesser space and therefore is downloaded faster by the customers. Many go to search sites like google.com to search for music and land up on different sites where that particular music is found. These sites usually have free mp3 download written all over it, but usually it does not work. Nothing comes for free, especially. when the Internet is being controlled more strictly. Usually most sites will offer you a sample, 20-30 seconds, of the song that you want to download. Then it is up to you to buy it.

Jeffrey Meier offers more information on MP3 music at http://www.betterconcerts.com which is part of Jam727 Enterprises http://www.jam727.com your source for Information Articles.

If we were to trace back to the original roots of the Blues, Gospel, R&B, Jazz and Rock’n’Roll in America, it would be around 1619 when the first twenty Negroes were sold into slavery from a ship arrived in Virginia. Thus began one of the ugliest eras of our history – and a harrowing experience for the original African-Americans. To keep their oral traditions alive and lift their spirits in the face of this immense suffering, they turned to the music that had been an integral part of their everyday lives in Africa – and which was, itself, steeped in magical ritual and voodoo.

In West Africa, the “professional” music-makers had been known as the Griol. They related the ancestral tales and served as the keepers of the tribes’ myths and history. Their function was much like that of the Medicine Men of the Native Americans. And like the Shamans of our own continent, their art was associated with magic and healing.

Because the slaves had brought nothing with them from their old world, they were obliged to draw on their own memory to re-create their music, and to utilize everyday items to craft new instruments. The banjo, for example, was modeled after a West African gourd guitar. The white men, with their guns and whips, had the power, so the slaves had to vent their anger and frustration in their music. Their songs found homes in churches, juke joints, downtown squares, and amongst prison gangs.

With the evolution of the Delta Blues, a sound inspired mainly by suffering and despair, the musicians found a lyrical formula to mirror the voodoo implications that had always lived within the music itself. Consider Robert Johnson, who recorded such songs as “Me and the Devil Blues” and “Hellhound on my Trail.” Johnson, who will always remain an enigma amongst music scholars, was himself influenced by older songs such as Skip James’s “Devil Got My Woman”. (Remember that one from Ghost World?)

Along with the songs went the classical delta blues myth: a midnight meeting with the Devil at an abandoned crossroads, selling your soul for musical greatness. If the white men of the time who kept these people in shackles worshipped God, is it any wonder that an artist like Johnson would have felt more “sympathy for the Devil”?

Which brings us to rock’n’roll, that ungodly sound that owed so much to the blues. To my knowledge, Jim Morrison was the first musician to describe rock’n’roll as a ritual with the audience playing the part of the tribe and the singer the Shaman (or “erotic politician”). Morrison often referred to a Doors concert as a séance, a coming together for the purpose of purging demons and raising spirits with the power of music. This is exactly what the original black musicians in America were attempting to do. It could be argued that they – and Morrison – succeeded.

Who else in rock’s pantheon has believed in music as a kind of incantatory magic? The list is legion, but I’ll provide a sketch. There’s Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and his fascination with the magician Aleister Crowley. A favorite performer and dabbler in the occult of mine is Glenn Danzig. His forays into voodoo intensified with his second band Samhain and such songs as “Halloween”, with its refrain of “metamorphosis…lycanthropy”. Another song, entitled “The Shift”, was even more explicit, describing in detail the changes one undergoes whilst transforming into a werewolf. It’s a convincing first-person narrative, at that.

Black Sabbath has a song on their first album, “N.I.B”, which recounts a curious tale: Lucifer falling in love with a mortal woman. Another favorite of mine is an early Iron Maiden song called “Prodigal Son” which is a Faust-like story. The narrator is beseeching his love Lamia, telling her that he’s fooled around too long with mysticism and magic and now he fears for his soul.

Music does not, of course – nor should it – always reflect the darker underside of man’s nature. I think that it DOES to the extent that society tries to preserve an artificial sunny image. This is what the slaves rebelled against, as they were being portrayed in pictures as dancing joyfully to banjo music in the barn whilst the reality of their lives was much more appalling. And this is how kids nowadays rebel when they realize that what our society teaches them does not prepare them for life.

There has to be another answer, a way to access deeper passion and inspiration, and music has always provided us with one route to get there.

Seth Mullins is the author of “Song of an Untamed Land”. Visit his complete blog at http://www.writingup.com/blog/seth_mullins

While composers had already begun to write music for the clarinet, such as Mozart with the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet, it was the 19th century that saw an explosion of use of the clarinet in the music of most composers of the day. This was mainly due to two factors.

Firstly, the further development of the clarinet by Iwan Műller in the first half of the century had resulted in a more reliable and agile instrument, which was later combined with the Boehm fingering system, adopted from the flute. Also, the tonal qualities suited the Romantic era, able to express a gamut of emotions as music moved from the formality of the Classical era to the Romantic.

As with Mozart, many composers of the Romantic era were inspired to write their great clarinet music by virtuosic clarinetists of their day. Carl Maria von Weber wrote two concertos and a concertino for the great clarinet player Heinrich Baermann, including some of the most technically difficult passages yet written for the clarinet.

Brahms wrote some sublime chamber music for the clarinet when inspired by another great clarinetist, Richard Muhlfield, who is credited with inspiring Brahms to compose again when he had claimed to have retired. Other composers who used the clarinet to great effect were Berlioz and Rossini.

The 20th century continued the popularity of the clarinet, which was now used in jazz as well as ‘art’ music. One of the most famous orchestral pieces of the 20th century, Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, begins with a memorable clarinet glissandos, perhaps the most well known instance of a clarinet used in orchestral music.

Written by Marc Hofkens - if you are interested in finding hundreds of articles about the clarinet go and find it at 1st-clarinet-music.

Lots of sheet music for the clarinet to download!

Welcome to the wonderful world of music. As you begin reading this Music Mini Course it is fun to realize that you are also participating in a very important cultural aspect from around the world which has been going on for centuries. Did you know that pianos in some form have been around for over 500 years? Some of the first instruments of this kind were created in the late Medieval Period and were called clavichords. They had a very light, metallic sound because the small hand-pounded ‘hammers’ were made of very light weight metal-like material. These hammers struck strings of varying lengths to create different tones or pitches. The next cousin to the clavichord was the harpsichord invented by Cristofori in Italy around 1450 A.D. This keyboard instrument had a mechanism in it called the plecktrum which ‘plucked’ the strings and produced a slightly stronger sound than its predecessor. Whether you are playing an acoustic instrument, which is the closest relative to the history just mentioned, or an electronic keyboard, you are now participating in a centuries old musical art form.

SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS: PIANO OR KEYBOARD?

Does it matter if you apply the information in this course to a keyboard or a piano? Certainly not. The only real difference is that a full size piano has 88 keys (counting both the white and black keys). Keyboards come in several different sizes. Some have 60 keys, some even less. There are also 88 key electronic keyboards and digital pianos that produce very realistic acoustic sounds. Whatever size your instrument may be, remember that the ARRANGEMENT of the keys and the ORDER of the KEY NAMES is the same on both instruments. Rest assured that your basic knowledge of the fundamentals of music can be done very effectively either on a keyboard or a piano.

Musical Terms

Begin your musical study by becoming familiar with these very important musical terms:

BAR LINE - A vertical line which separates notes into groups

DOUBLE BAR LINE - A set of two (2) vertical lines which stand for the end of a piece of music

REPEAT SIGN - Double bar with two dots at the end of a section or piece of music which indicates that section will be played twice.

MEASURE - The distance between two bar lines.

TREBLE CLEF - The S-shaped symbol which stands for notes played with the right hand. This is also referred to as the G cleff since this inner curve of the symbol rests on the G line.

BASS CLEF - The reversed C-shaped symbol which stand for notes played with the left hand. This clef is also referred to as the F cleff since the two dots beside the clef surround the F line.

STAFF - The five lines and four spaces of both the bass and treble clefs.

QUARTER NOTE - Musical symbol with solid note head and stem which gets one count of sound.

QUARTER REST - Musical symbol resembling a sideways W which gets one count of silence.

HALF NOTE - Musical symbol with hollow note head and stem which gets two counts of sound.

HALF REST - Solid half block sitting on third line of the staff which gets two counts of silence.

DOTTED HALF NOTE - Musical symbol with hollow note head, dot and stem which gets three counts of sound.

WHOLE NOTE - Musical symbol resembling a circle on the staff which gets four counts of sound.

WHOLE REST - Solid half block hanging from the second line on the staff which gets four counts of silence.

CHORD - Two or more notes played at the same time.

BLOCKED CHORD - Two or more notes from the same chord played at the same time.

BROKEN CHORD - Two or more notes from the same chord played in sequence.

INTERVAL - The distance between two notes on the musical staff.

FINGERING - Refers to which finger number is used to play a particular note (See Chapter Two: Fingering)

CURVED FINGER - Refers to playing with a rounded finger and on the tip of each finger. This is the best position of the fingers for playing piano or keyboard because it develops finger strength and independence.

INTRODUCTION TO THE WHITE KEYS

There are only seven (7) letter names used on the piano: A B C D E F G. It is interesting to note here that no matter what instrument you play, whether it is piano, tuba or violin, ONLY the seven letter names above are used in the entire realm of music! There are two very easy ways to visualize and remember the names of the white keys on your piano and keyboard. Remember, the note names on an electronic keyboard are the same as on the acoustic piano.

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B

Understand that the ‘CDE’ note groups are always located directly underneath the two black note group. The letter name ‘D’ in the white key always located directly in between the two black key note groups. ANY TWO BLACK NOTE GROUP on the piano has the letter name ‘D’ as the white key located in between them.

KEYBOARD EXERCISE:

Go to your keyboard NOW and start to play all of the C-D-E groups from the lowest (bottom left) to the highest (top right) on your keyboard. Say C - D - E as you play each key. The F - G - A - B note groups above are located directely beneath each three black note group on any piano or keyboard. Simply locate any three black note group on your piano or keyboard and realize that the F-G-A-B white keys are located directly beneath them. Directly outside of the three black note groups are ‘F’ on the left hand side of the three black note group and ‘B’ on the right hand side of the three black note group. Just fill in the outer ‘F’ and ‘B’ with G and A and you are done!

KEYBOARD EXERCISE:

Go to your piano or keyboard NOW and find all of the F-G-A-G white keys underneath each three black note group. As above, play slowly and evenly saying the letter names as you play the F-G-A-B groups from the bottom of the piano or keyboard (low left hand end) to the top of your piano or keyboard (top right hand end). Congratulations! You now know ALL of the white key names on the piano!

TREBLE AND BASS CLEF NOTE NAMES

Both the Treble and Bass clefs each have five lines and four spaces. Learning the actual note names of each line and space (the spaces between each line) is very simple. Please memorize the sentences below for the Treble Clef Line and Space Notes: Treble Clef Line Notes (starting from the bottom line and moving up) E G B D F Every Good Boy Does Fine (the first letter of each word helps you remember the order of the notes)

Treble Clef Space Notes (starting from the first space and going up): F A C E Just remember that the treble clef spaces spell the word ‘FACE’.

Bass Clef Line and Space Notes are as follows: Bass Clef Line Notes: G B D F A Great Big Dogs Fight Animals Bass Clef Space Notes: A C E G All Cars Eat Gas

Now you know all the names of the white keys on your piano or keyboard. You have also learned the actual letter names of each line and space on both the treble and bass clefs. You are now on your way to the next level of piano education. Be sure to memorize the information above and you will be ready to begin to learn to read music notation on the piano or keyboard.

Jan Durrant, Publisher and Music Teacher
http://www.MakingMusicNow.com
muz@MakingMusicNow.com

Okay, it’s time for me to finally say goodbye to my portable disc player, and join the online and portable music revolution. Okay, the revolution isn’t so new any more, nor is my computer, but as I wade through the sea of options for how to download music, listen to and buy online tracks, I grow more eager to get my feet wet and eventually suit up to take the plunge. But I happen to be a bit more practical than that. So, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last few weeks trying to determine what’s best for my lifestyle, my wallet and my computer.

First thing I realized when searching all of the music services is that things seemed to work a lot smoother with a broadband connection (and most services seem to point that out from the get go). Just like my CD Walkman, the time had come for me to lose my ancient dial-up connection to the online experience. It actually turned out to work in my favor as my cable company gave me a good deal on high-speed, and also threw in a discount on my existing costs for cable TV.

Now that I was “connected” at an acceptable speed to the Web, I had to determine, what I was trying to get out of the online music experience. After some intense melodious soul searching, I realized that the only thing the separated me from the perpetually hip is perhaps the types of music I was searching for, and the amount of time I wanted to spend online searching for music.

The guy who sits next to me has a 60 GB iPod, and is complaining that it is almost full. That’s over seven thousand songs. I don’t know that I would even live long enough to listen to that many songs. My needs were simpler. I had an MP3 player still in the box from two Christmas’ ago, and it promised to hold over 500 songs. That would be perfect for me, at least in the short term.

Next, what was I looking for in my new online music experience? Did I want to listen to music on my PC, in my car or on my MP3 player? Yes to all three. Did I want to listen to the radio while I was on my PC? Again, yes. Did I want to trade music with others online in a peer-to-peer Napster-like environment? Eh, that one scared me a little, and I decided that opening up my files to strangers made me feel dirt, so I put that one on hold.

My next stop in determining how I would “music online” was price. I searched dozens of sites and services, but narrowed my sights to three of the big guys: AOL Music Now, iTunes and Rhapsody Music Service (provided by Real Networks).

I already had AOL, so I signed up for their Music Now product for $8.99/month (that’s in addition to their monthly fee as an ISP). I was able to download songs, listen to them while “offline” and burn them to CD or move them over to my MP3 player for an additional fee per song. That seemed to be standard across most of the services. Music Now was a follow up to the original AOL Music Net, which I actually liked better because it ran locally on machine and the new Web-based Music Now takes much longer. AOL also has a partnership with iTunes, so you can be on AOL, but iTunes will launch and then you’re actually in the iTunes application. It’s confusing. If I want to move my downloaded songs to my MP3 player, the monthly fee jumps to $14.95 per month, and if I want to put them on a CD, I pay and additional 99 cents per track. This is too much money for me. I typically buy one or two CD’s a month, and that would be cheaper than this online service. Not to mention you have to be an existing AOL member (more money per month) in order to even use the product. I’m passing on AOL Music Now.

On to iTunes. Okay, so there is no monthly fee for iTunes. Love that. And I can purchase songs for 99 cents per track. Love that too. But wait. I don’t have an iPod, and iTunes has songs in their proprietary MP4 format. Ugh. The cheapest iPod out there is around $99 (so much for no monthly fee), and it’s not the model I would select. I like my MP3 player. If I already had an iPod, this may be the route I would go, but Apple tends be very inflexible, and I hate to be tied to one provider, player and format. There is also a limit to how you can share the songs on your home network. I feel like even though I own the song, I’m being watched on what I do with it. Good bye big brother.

Rhapsody Music Service from Real Networks. So far they are the least expensive. $9.99 per month and that’s with unlimited access to over 1.3 million songs. I do have to have pay the additional 99 cent fee if I want to burn to CD or transfer to my MP3, but that is the industry standard for paying the artists, and the monthly fee is five dollars less per month than AOL. The music comes over in the more widely supported MP3 format and the songs are mine to rip transfer or share with my other computers on my home network. Like the other two, I can listen to live radio on my pc, but I like the freedom I get with Rhapsody Music Service. I’m not being watched, and the music is mine.

Now that I know how to download music and have chosen Rhapsody Music Service, I’m on my way to joining the new world of portable digital music. I’ve already burned several CD’s for my car, albeit with an older man’s twist on today’s favorites, and transferred those same songs over to my little antiquated MP3 player for those long weekend walks.

Now I’ve got to start looking for a replacement for my VCR. Onward and upward!

Scott Parks is a freelance writer living just outside of Boston, who has spent the last 15 years working in the high tech and telecommunications industries. The majority of his career has been spent focused on the project management and development of corporate Internet, intranet and portal sites for XO Communications and Lucent Technologies. His present client list includes such companies as Brand Digital, Digital Promotions, in Washington and Choice Hotels in, Maryland.