- Windows Vista Home
- The Community
- Community Articles
- Make Beautiful Music with Windows Vista
- Community Articles
- The Community
Make Beautiful Music with Windows Vista—at Home or On the Go
By S. E. Slack
I'm a music-holic, if there is such a word. Music relaxes me, and it puts me in better mood when I'm feeling cranky or sad. It's also nice to have music drown out the rest of the world once in awhile! But until Windows Vista came along, I wasn't a big fan of using the music features on my computer. It just seemed too complicated and time-consuming. But with the combination of Windows Media Player 11 and Microsoft Windows Media Center in Windows Vista Ultimate, it's easy to have a good music experience on the computer. My music collection can grow and change as I do, and I can take it with me anywhere I go.
Check Out the Music Library
Whatever you want to do with music can be done with Windows Vista: The simple-to-use interface lets you organize your digital music, burn CDs, rip music from CDs, copy music to a portable device, and even shop for and download music from online stores. The Music Library—the heart of your music collection—stores all your music, which you can access from programs like Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center in Windows Vista.
To start the Library, open Windows Media Player 11, and then click the Library tab. Click Music on the address bar; on the far left, you'll see the navigation pane that lets you select music from the Library, a playlist, or URGE, an online shopping tool.
You've got to try out the Music Library: It can turn you into a DJ with your own jukebox. You can easily search for and mix music by genre, artist, album, song, or year. There is even a ratings system that you can apply to your tunes. I usually search by playlist, artist, or song, and then double-click the music I want to listen to. My music instantly plays, and I'm off and doing other things while the tunes roll.
Figure 1: The Music Library in Windows Media Player 11 stores all your music for easy access.
Note: You can access the Music Library from Windows Media Center in Windows Vista, if you have that.
By the way, if you have a multi-disc CD player, you won't need it anymore. By copying the music into your Music Library, you can set up playlists, which are preset combinations of songs or albums that you create for your own personal musical experience.
Playlists is a feature that you'll use often. A single playlist can contain any combination of songs you want, and you can use playlists to play different combinations of music in your library, burn grouped items to a CD (more about that later), or sync to a portable device so that you can take you music with you on the road. A simple click-and-drag process pulls the music you want from the Music Library into the playlists, and you can place the music wherever you want.
When I need perking up, I'll start my "Energy" playlist. But when I need some soothing music, I'll start "Mellow Music." Each playlist has songs in it to match my moods, but I can swap the music on any playlist at any time, so when I get bored with certain songs, I just find new ones.
Figure 2: A playlist can contain any combination of songs.
You can listen to your music with Windows Vista in another way: through Windows Media Center in Windows Vista, which is available with Windows Vista Ultimate. It accesses the same Music Library as Windows Media Player with the addition of cool visualizations that you can turn on. Windows Media Center in Windows Vista works with your television and uses media extenders to send sound throughout your home. The visualizations play on the television or computer display as the music plays . . . sort of a high-tech laser light show dancing to your tunes.
If you want to let your friends in on the fun, give them your Windows Media Center in Windows Vista remote control, and let them choose the songs they want to hear. You might be pleasantly surprised at the combinations they come up with, and your parties can go from ho-hum to rockin' in just a few minutes.
Rip Music from Audio CDs
"But how," you might be asking, "do you get the music onto the computer in the first place?" Simple. One way is to rip (copy) the music from the CDs you like. The process turns the music from your CD into a file on your computer that you can then access through the Music Library.
Simply insert the CD you want to copy into your CD-ROM drive, and click the Rip tab in Windows Media Player. By default, the copying process starts automatically; you can measure its progress by status bars next to each song being ripped. A typical CD takes about a minute to rip to your hard disk, and the music is automatically placed in your Music Library, from which you can play it, put it in a playlist, or copy it to a portable music device.
Figure 3: Ripping music to your hard disk is quick and simple.
The second way to get music is by shopping directly from online stores through a service called URGE. Before you can use URGE, however, you must download the software. When that's accomplished, you'll have access to stores that offer a variety of music downloading options, including playing, downloading to your computer, buying, burning, and synchronizing the content to a portable music player.
I use URGE to find new releases of albums, and I sometimes download playlists that URGE has created. The built-in Digital Media Mall offers the choice of another 10 online stores to shop from, such as Napster. You can even listen to online radio stations through a Media Guide that provides hundreds of choices. Just moved from Miami to Los Angeles? Check the Media Guide: Chances are, your favorite station is online and can be playing in your home now.
Figure 4: URGE is an online music shopping destination that offers everything from single songs to playlists to full albums.
Take Your Music with You
Taking music with you is easy, too. You can burn your music to an audio CD for use in your car, for example, or synchronize (copy) music to a portable music device, such as an MP3 player or Zune player. My 19-year-old babysitter is a whiz at using the Sync feature to drop new music onto her MP3 player. She just plugs her MP3 player into the USB port, clicks Sync in Windows Media Player, and uses the click-and-drag feature to pull music from the Music Library onto the MP3 player. In just seconds, she's deleted old music from her MP3 player, pulled new music onto it, and hit the road. I sometimes wonder if access to the music on my computer is the only reason she likes to baby sit for us!
Burning an audio CD is equally quick and painless. I do that all the time so I have updated music in the car for those long trips with my two-year-old. There's nothing like the Wiggles to help pass the time on an endless drive. I just drop a CD into the drive, click the Burn tab in Windows Media Player, and drag songs from the hard disk into the Burn list pane. Burning a CD takes just a few minutes, so I always have time to burn something new before I head out.
Figure 5: Burn a CD to take with you on the road.
Take some time to explore how you can make beautiful music with Windows Vista. You'll quickly be organized and sharing your digital music in a whole new way—yours! Your music collection will grow and go with you, whether you're at home or on the road. That's a beautiful thing!
Article published January 24, 2007.
