icon. You will then see a screen as follows ;
A Guide to Saving and Playing Files
If you are relatively new to using a computer you may not have had much experience of playing sound files, or saving files to your hard disk. This guide attempts to explain the process and show you how to do this. The examples in this guide are for a PC running Windows XP, and using Internet Explorer. If you are using a different type of computer, operating system or web browser, then the screens that you see may differ slightly, but the basic principles remain the same.
Read through this page, or click on one of the following headings to skip to that section in the page.
You download files from the Lessons page. The example shown is for the Free Sample Lesson for the Banjo, where I am downloading the Learning Tempo file 'With Banjo Easier'. You get to this page by selecting Free Sample Lesson, and then Banjo. To start the download click on the icon. You will then see a screen as follows ;
Open the file without saving
We recommend that you always save the file before playing, if possible, and this is explained in more detail later. However, you do not have to save the file in order to play it. You might choose to do this if you are not using your own computer - for example, you might be at work, in an Internet cafe, or on a friend's PC. If you just want to play the file, select the Open option. The file will then be downloaded to a temporary area on your computer, and will then start paying using whatever player is installed on your computer. For Windows PCs, this is usually the Windows Media player. If nothing happens, you have probably not got a suitable player installed. In this case, the best thing to do is to save the file first, and then install our recommended player - all of this is dealt with in more detail in the following sections.
Saving Files - Create a Download Directory
If you decide to save the file to your computer's hard disk, the first thing to decide is where to put it. You can save the files anywhere, but its always a good idea to set up some structure on your machine. on a Windows PC, there is already a place called My Music, and our recommendation is that you create some folders here. To do this, open Windows Explorer and find My Music, which is located within My Documents. You can then create a sub folder here by selecting File from the top menu bar and then option New followed by option Folder, as shown below. As an example you can create a folder with the same name as the lesson (e.g. Will You Be Lonesome Too).
When you get the option to Open or Save your file, as shown earlier, select the Save option. You will then get the following screen displayed. Use this to navigate to the directory or folder where you want to store your file. This will probably be the folder that you have created in the earlier step.
Once the file has been saved, you can then open it whenever you want, as many times as you want. To open the file, use Windows Explorer to navigate to the location, and then double click on the file. If nothing happens, it may be that you do not have a suitable player installed. If you are having problems playing the file, we recommend that you install Audacity for the sound files, and VLC for the movies. There are more details of these players, including links to the places where you can download them, in our help pages.