Music and Covers Section Section Help

The Music and Covers Section presents each piece I have posted with context and detail about that piece. There are also three index buttons at the top of each of these pages as follows:

An alphabetical listing of all of the currently posted MP3 and MIDI files without the context.

Several pages of thumbnail cover images allowing you to access a piece by clicking on the cover image.

A listing with direct links to each of the currently posted lyric files.

The What's New page has the most recent information on where I will be performing or traveling, as well as the most recently posted pieces. The Coming Soon page shows pieces that I am working on and will eventually be incorporated into the site. The Find A Tune link produces a pop-up window that displays a list of all available tunes, of which clicking on one of them will display the appropriate page in the main window.

Each of the non-index pages has individual listings of the pieces. Each listing is divided into two parts as shown in the example below.

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Irving Berlin

- 1911

  This is undoubtedly one of the most popular songs of the Ragtime era, and the one that truly made Irving Berlin famous. Based largely on a bugle call and the Stephen Foster chestnut Old Folks At Home (S'wanee River), the song contains virtually nothing of Ragtime except for the word. Nonetheless, it is evocative of popular song of the time, and was even played on the Titanic's fateful voyage. It further spawned a series of Alexander's band songs over the next decade, including Alexander's Got a Jazz Band Now. I meld in part of an Arthur Fiedler arrangement with some interesting ragtime tricks, and just for fun throw in "S'wanee River played in ragtime". My vocal version includes a full ragtime band at the end. Note that there are several versions of the cover art in circulation, with different shading on the band stand, and several different artists featured in the bottom picture.

The top title band shows piece title to the left. There is usually a speaker next to the title, which indicates a direct link to the MP3 file (sometimes multiples) for that piece. Clicking on this will load and automatially play the file in the browser's native MP3 player, which can be moved anywhere within the browser window. The title is followed by the composer's name and year of publication/copyright. If there is an available biography for the composer, the link cursor will appear and the text will turn red if the mouse is hovered over the name. Clicking on this will display the composer's biography in a separate window, so you will not navigate away from the original page. If there are lyrics, one or more Lyrics icons will also be shown to the far right, which when clicked will present a pop-up window with the lyrics for that particular piece in an easily printable format.

The lower music description area will have one or more thumbnail cover images, if available, and occasionally a related image. Clicking on any of these will present a pop-up window with a larger-sized cover image, demographics for that cover and the piece, a link to where it can be found if applicable, and an embedded MP3 performance if it is available. Hovering the mouse over the thumbnail image will enlarge to image to a more viewable size, and display the piece demographics for a few seconds for quicker access. This partition will also contain some history of the piece, genre, composer, or whatever related information could be found. This is to provide context for the piece so it becomes its own entity rather than just a performance of some rag or song, and perhaps give some insight to its origin as well.