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We are now providing music performed live in our "studio"
in Grand Lake, Colorado at the Singing Elf Ranch!
Each recording is LIVE with just one track and no edits.
Update: January, 2001: if your browser automatically calls up a
Real Audio™ player, you might want to get rid of it unless you have
a very fast Internet connection. Real Audio tries to do "buffering" and
"streaming" and then suddenly cuts off the rest of the song. Its fidelity
is terrible, especially with non-mp3 types of files. After you uninstall
Real Audio, your computer might already have WinAmp or MusicMatch
to take its place. If not, these better players are easy to get.
We are using the new mp3 music format that compresses wave files.
If you need an mp3 player, see www.WinAmp.com. We are recording
at a less than CD fidelity level so that users with a slow Internet connection
can access the songs.
Some computers are setup to play these files directly by clicking
on the song title. You have to first wait for the file to download.
While the file is downloading, you can continue browsing.
The first time you click on an mp3 link you get a window that asks
if you want to "Save this File to Disk". Select the other alternative
"Open ... ". If everything runs smoothly, you can uncheck the "Always Ask"
box the next time this window appears and let the music play automatically.
To play mp3 music you'll first need to have an mp3 player.
If you double click on a file such as song.mp3 saved to your hard drive,
it should play. If your computer can't do this trick, we recommend that you
get the WinAmp player at www.WinAmp.com
Update: March 26, 1999: If you have Windows 98 and can not play
mp3 music, you need to tell your computer that indeed it can. You can
thank Bill Gates for your unnecessary trouble. Here is what Microsoft
failed to do before Internet Explorer 5. Download it from Microsoft or
read on ... Open up any file folder and click on View in the title bar.
At the bottom of the view options, select "Folder Options..." and then
click on the top-right "File Types" tab. Scroll down the alphabetic list
to "Movie Clip". You are going to add "MP3 Music" right below
"Movie Clip" by copying the settings for "Movie Clip". Double Click
on "Movie Clip" or click on it and then click on the "Edit..." button.
In the middle of the "Edit File Type" window you'll see "Play" in bold.
Click on Play, and then click on the "Edit..." button. You'll get a small window
titled "Editing action for type: Movie Clip". The following text will be highlighted
c:\windows\rundll32.exe c:\windows\SYSTEM\amovie.ocx,RunDll /play /close
in a field called "Application used to perform action". Press Control-V
to copy the highlighted text. If you accidentally change it press Cancel and
go back in, or simply copy the code given above. Now press cancel twice
to go back to the "Folder Options" window. Click on the "New Type..."
button. Fill in the "Add New File Type" window as follows:
For Description of type: write MP3 music
For Associated extension: write mp3
You can leave the next field blank.
Now, to add Play to the Actions, click on the "New..." button.
In the "New Action" window, for Action, write Play
For Application used to perform action: press Control-V
and the special code you copied should automatically be pasted in.
If not, copy the code above and paste it in, or type it in manually.
To save your work click on OK.
Close the "Edit File Type" window and you should now see
"MP3 Music" properly added to the Registered File Types
just below "Music Clip". Close this window and you are done.
Netscape users with Windows 98 can benefit from the procedure above,
however, it won't work if they use their browser off-line! For them,
we still recommend that they install WinAmp. It's free and reliable.
You can play music by clicking on a song title and telling Netscape to
"Open It" and to not ask again.
If you cannot get the songs to play automatically or have other
difficulties, read on ... To override autoplay and see if you have a
working mp3 player, do the following: first get an mp3 song onto your
hard drive by holding down your shift key and clicking on an mp3
song title. A window will pop up showing where the song will be saved.
Click on OK and remember where the song has been saved. You can now
go off-line. Open up the file folder with the song you just downloaded.
Double click on the song and see if it plays.
If it does not, you might get a window saying "Unknown File Type".
Click on the button that lets you "Pick" an application to handle it.
Click on Browse and go inside your "Program Files" folder and
into the WinAmp directory. Double click on winamp.exe and it
will automatically be written into a window as
"C:\Program Files\ Winamp\Winamp.exe" "%1".
The %1 is something you have to add yourself.
It's a tip I read on an mp3 for dummies page.
You can tell your computer to always use WinAmp so that you do not
have to repeat the procedure above. If you were not able to follow it,
you have yet to get WinAmp on your machine. Before you can play mp3
music while you are on-line, you must first be able to play it off-line by
double clicking on a mp3 file already stored on your hard drive.
Many of the Netscape or old computer related problems can be overcome
by using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4 or 5. You can install it on your system
and still have Netscape as your primary browser. There is a way in which
you can install IE4 without it disrupting the familiar look and feel of your
system. Near the beginning of the installation, you are asked if you want the
"Windows Desktop Update". Just say, "No"! You can add this new look later.
On March 18, 1999 Microsoft released version 5 of its Explorer. Get it.
If you can play files already stored on your computer, but have
difficulties when on-line getting autoplay to work, read on ...
When you save a file to your computer, Netscape might try to change
its extension from .mp3 to .mp2. Change it back so that the file lands
on your computer as a song.mp3.
Netscape users might receive the files in a garbled format.
See below for a quick fix. Some users will find that when they
click on a song title, a window opens with the coded text of the
music appearing. If this happens, press Stop and backup.
Your computer is not setup to play the song directly.
You can play it by first saving it.
While holding down your shift key, click on the song title.
A window will appear showing which directory the song
will be saved in. Click OK or first specify a preferred directory.
(You can equivalently, right click on the song title
and choose Save Link As ... ).
Suppose you do not have WinAmp, or suppose you do but Netscape
doesn't know it. Then when you tell Netscape to "Open" an mp3 file,
it will download it and then try to play it in its incompatible media player.
You can try to tweak Netscape's "preferences" and force it to use the
WinAmp player by doing the following:
Under Edit, look up the preferences for Netscape
and check under Navigator/Applications
Click on New Type and fill in the blanks as follows:
Description of Type: mp3 music
File extension: mp3
MIME Type: audio/mp3
Application to Use: "C:\Program Files\ Winamp\Winamp.exe" "%1"
"Use this MIME as the outgoing default for these file extensions
Click on OK and OK. You should be done if your WinAmp is correctly specified.
If you are using Netscape Navigator and the sound is garbled,
here is a curious fix. Shift-Click on this tiny program: uncook.exe
and then run it as a DOS program as follows:
Have uncook.exe and the stored garbled song, e.g.
song.mp3 in the same convenient directory.
Next, either restart your computer in DOS mode
or setup a DOS window. Go to the directory that
has uncook.exe and type something like this
uncook.exe song.mp3 songnew.mp3
After exe you write down the name of the garbled
song and then its new repaired name. Press enter
and viola, no garble. The new song will play fine.
Delete the garbled version and rename the new one
as you like.
To clear up the strange text phenomena
we sent the following code to our server:
AddType audio/x-mpeg .mp3
AddType audio/x-mpegurl .m3u
AddType audio/x-mpegurl .mp3url
It is in a file named .htaccess with no additional
txt extension or anything before the period.
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