Redneck Tale # 56 – Redneck musical dummies can win afterall

Some folks are actual musicians. They sing, they play instruments, they perform  with orchestras and small ensembles, and they understand all about sounds and musical notes and instruments.

Others can be like me – musical illiterates and ignoramuses.

Although that is the way things are, even we musical dummies enjoy listening to the stuff. I particularly like to hear good guitar playing and especially enjoy "classical" music generated from acoustic guitars by the sensitive fingers of the experts. Folk music of all sorts is also to my great enjoyment. My problem has been that I don’t know enough about any kind of music to be able to judge the contents of an album of music by the look of its cover. Album covers have suckered me more times than I have ever been rewarded by their promises.

Today I decided to see what the Internet might offer me in the way of downloadable music of my personal toleration. I found pages of listings, and some of the music sources listed on them were actually available free of charge. That, good friends, seemed to be a perfect fit for an impoverished musical know-nothing.

One entry was of great interest. It boasted of having about 40,500 albums of musical pieces available for listening on the Web and downloading to the home computer if what you listened to seemed to be something you would like to keep and to share with others. The site had, to a musical know-nothing like me, a strange enough name – Jamendo. Until some reader comes along and tells me what that name might mean in the world of music or any other world, I will simply assume that it is some person’s name or the name of an organization in the music proliferation business.

It turned out that the Jamendo Web site was everything that it promised to be. I signed up (free) and logged in (easy enough). There were all sorts of music albums available, and some of them were in the classical guitar category.

Because the holiday season is almost upon us, I went for one called "Christmas Bells." The guitarist is James Edwards, a musician I had not heretofore encountered. It turned out that James Edwards had gifted fingers and knew when and how to handle the strings of his ever so pleasant sounding guitar. I listened and liked. That caused me to download the 22 or so minutes of album music to my download flash memory deal. Here’s what I recorded:

Coventry Carol, Deck the Halls, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, I Saw Three Ships, Wassail Song, We Three Kings, A Merry Christmas, Silent Night, Christmas Bells, and Greensleeves.

So much for my musically limited likings. However, you might want to take a look at this free and easy to use, yet music-rich Web site. Getting to enjoy its musical offerings online and to download the selections of your choosing from it are fast and easy steps for you, just as they were for me. You can click here to get to Jamendo. (HubPages informed me [May 6, 2011]that I must remove this helpful link to Jamendo's site. To get there now you must use a search engine, like Google, to get the link. I don't understand why HubPages believes Jamendo to be a prohibited site, for Jamendo gives all of its music away for free - but that's the way HubPages can be sometimes.)

If you like, and if Jamendo.com permits your entry to it, here is the direct link to the album of holiday music I downloaded. (Same comment as above... you will have to locate the Jamendo site using a search engine tool.)

Well. I am sure that it takes more than reading a "how to do it" eBook to help a person learn how to play really great guitar music. I remember when my brother-in-law, Bobby Gates, tried to teach me some things about chording a guitar. (He did not succeed in the least!) However, I went out there this evening onto the Internet and searched out a prospective instruction manual for anyone who wants to learn more about guitar playing. I found one, and it seemed to be affordable. The author, Craig Bassett, promises much. In return, I would hope a whole lot. that If someone can take Bassett's eBook training and turn it into music such as the guitar music I found on Jamendo, then I will be happy to have passed this link to Bassett's eBook promotion on to you. Click here. (As you might guess, HubPages never did say if they were banning a link [May 6, 2011] to Jamendo or to Craig Bassett's guitar-playing lessons website. Google will find both of them for you. Sorry about that, folks. They banned these things many, many months after they had been successfully posted to help readers find some useful information. If you have any questions, ask them of HubPages.)