Music is an incredible thing. Scientists have proven it to have unique healing abilities and the power to bring forward emotions we have never felt before. Music helps us learn, teaches us about the world and is, of course, a fun experience to listen to. The sooner we get into music, the sooner we can open the doors to a new world of emotion, excitement and wonder.listen.grooveshark.com is a great way to begin your musical journey.
Grooveshark promises to always be free, but does offer extra services for a small monthly charge. The free service allows you to listen to music, create playlists and connect with other music enthusiasts with similar taste to yours. It is a great way to listen to new songs before downloading them. Another website to listen to music on is of course www.youtube.com Youtube is the supreme ruler of the online video and music world. They have everything from the chart-topping hits to the most obscure songs. Some people have also posted entertaining parodies and instrumental versions of the most popular songs out there.
If you prefer the randomness of not knowing what song is coming up next, the radio is also available online. Popular stations such as ‘The Edge' and ‘ZM' offer live online streaming of their shows. Head to www.theedge.co.nz/Listen.aspx or www.zmonline.com to listen live.
Once you find those songs you can't seem to get over, you can download them to your computer for easy offline access and to add them to devices such as mp3 players. The best website to do this on is iTunes, which you can download from www.apple.com/itunes This website is 100% legal and a percentage of the money goes to the artists of the songs.
Unfortunately there is a charge per song. Some websites do offer the download of songs for free, but this is not recommended. Free music websites are riddled with viruses and often violate copyright making them illegal. As well as being a shop, iTunes is a music library, which is a great way of organising and listening to your music collection.
If you're interested in local music, www.amplifier.co.nz is a website dedicated to New Zealand music. Here you can download songs by New Zealand artists and support your local music industry. One of the downsides of listening to music is getting that annoying song stuck in your head, and there is nothing worse than having just one line on constant repeat because you don't know the rest of the words. www.lyrics.com claims to have the largest searchable online music lyric database and looking at their collection, I have to say I believe them.
Whether you're planning on your own performance of your favourite songs, or you just want to have more than a line playing nonstop in your head, lyrics.com has the words to thousands of songs old and new. Another good website is www.smartlyrics.com Their tagline is "because you're not stupid”, so for some great song lyrics and a little confidence boost, head to this website.
Once you have the lyrics to your favourite songs, you're going to want some accompaniment. If you're a guitar player, look no further than www.ultimate-guitar.com This website has the tablature to virtually every song out there and sometimes even has more than one version in case you are unhappy with the first one. For instruments with standard music notation such as piano, www.1001sheets.co.uk and my-piano.blogspot.com have large collections of sheet music.
With music genres such as Pop and Rock dominating the music charts, we sometimes forget where this all originated. Classical musicians such as Beethoven and Mozart are being forgotten and replaced by Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus. www.classicsforkids.com takes a unique and fun approach to educating children about the ancient greats of the musical world. If you just want to have fun with music, tinyurl.com/3vgbrkm has a selection of games orientated towards music, from designing guitars to hitting up the dancefloor to making your own music.
Whether you're a metal head, a rock ‘n' roll junkie or the latest victim of ‘Bieber Fever', the most important thing is to enjoy music. Find your own sound and favourite bands, connect with people with similar taste to you and try to endure the ‘music' played by your parents.