Text of
Lecture/Presentation on Internet Resources
for Pianists and Piano Teachers
"www.Cyber_Studio.com"
(Please note: This is only a session title and NOT an Internet Address.)
Presented by Steve Clark
Columbus State University
Clark_Steve@ColState.EDU
to:
World Piano Pedagogy Conference - October, 1997
Georgia Music Teachers Association - November, 1997
Music Teachers National Association - April, 1998
American Matthay Association - June, 1998
Hypertext Outline for
the Session
Hardware anyone? Not thanks, not today.
Just a few terms, not too many.
Network
Clients and Servers
Hosts and Terminals
The magic of TCP/IP
Email
The World Wide Web
Web Search
Usenet
Gopher
Veronica and Jughead
Anonymous FTP
Archie
Mailing Lists
Telnet
Talk Facilities
Internet Relay Chat
Muds and Other Imaginary Places
Okay, Okay, Let's Get to It! The Piano in CyberSpace
How Do We Keep Up with It All?
Go Thou On-Line - Strategies for Web Page Creation
Summary
Suggestions for Further Internet Research
Expanded Text of Lecture Notes for www.CyberStudio.com
Presentation
Introduction:
I’m often asked by those who are just getting started into computers and On-Line stuff, "What is the Internet? It’s as if they want to know where to find it – kind of like the phone company – maybe like AT&T. I get the feeling that it would somehow make some people feel more at ease about the Internet if they could just ride by a building somewhere, point to it and say, "There it is, there’s the Internet."
Well, simply speaking, a working definition for the Internet might be that it is "a massive network of networks made up of millions of computers all over the world which run the TCP/IP protocol suite software". The enormity of the Internet is something which is truly hard to fathom. Not only is the size of the Internet difficult to measure, but its rate of growth at this point is so exponential that estimates are out of date almost as soon as they are given. Furthermore, beyond the general fact that the Internet is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives, it really very difficult to draw specific conclusions based on the size and/or growth rate of the Internet.
Perhaps the best way to think of the Internet is simply to consider it as an extremely large library, full of people engaged in work on almost every conceivable human endeavor – a library which never closes and one which does not charge fines for overdue materials! Access to the resources of this enormous library of information plus the ability to network with other like-minded individuals engaged in music learning, teaching and performing are some of the major benefits of an "on-line" presence for your studio.
If you have a computer which is connected to the Internet, the entrance to this library is there on your desktop. But that, so to speak, is only the front door. Let’s go in now and take a quick look around... As with any library, especially a large one, a bit of orientation is in order, if we are to begin to be able take full advantage of the extent and scope of its resources. So with that it mind, let me attempt provide something of a general orientation and brief tour of the Internet with a few actual examples. A little later we’ll have a chance to look into more of these resources and finally we'll focus some strategies for the creation of some of your own Internet resources.
Hardware anyone? Not today, thanks.
Just one brief detour before we get to the Internet. I’d just like to say a word or two here about hardware.
If you stop and think about it, you will be doing two things on the Internet: 1) working with (reading) the resources and 2) waiting for them to come up on your screen. When considering hardware – you should keep in mind that you want to spend more of your time in the former category than the latter! So my advice on the subject of hardware is to buy as much machine as you can afford. I know you probably hate to hear that, but if you stop to think about it, the result will be that your machine will stay current longer and your level of enjoyment will be greater each and every time you sit down to use it.
Specific advise on hardware matters is really outside the scope of this session. In fact, it's really almost impossible to offer advise on hardware without a complete inventory of one's current hardware situation and full accessment of one's goals and objectives. If you have questions about hardware the best approach would be to find a qualified person in your local area who could look into your particular needs and your current hardware system and offer advice on how best to proceed.
Now when it comes to Internet software many of the same things could be said. We are all using different software programs, which attempt to accomplish similar tasks in many different ways. But the "magic" of the Internet is that its various protocols allow all of our different systems to work together in harmony.
Just a few terms… not too many.
The amount of benefit you derive from the Internet will, no doubt, increase if you have
a basic understanding of Internet terminology. Knowledge of a few common terms will
provide you with a basic orientation to the Internet and will greatly increase your
efficiency on-line. So let’s begin our journey into the Internet by
establishing the definition of a few terms.
The term "network" refers to two or more computers hooked together. There are a number of reasons to connect computers into networks, but the two most important are:
To enable the sharing of resources - and
To allow people to communicate
In the broadest sense, there are only two types of programs running on the Internet: Clients and Servers. Servers are programs which provide resources and Clients are programs that you use to access those programs. The Internet contains millions of computers, cables, telephone lines and satellites. The whole purpose of all of this equipment is to allow the clients and servers to talk to each other. In other words the Internet was constructed so client programs (the ones which you use) can talk to the server programs (the ones which provide resources). Learning how to use the Internet means learning how to use the various client programs which run on your own computer. For example: To access resources on the World Wide Web, you make use of a client program called a "browser" to request and display information from one of the many web servers situated around the Internet. The text you are currently reading, know on the Internet as a file, has been requested by your browser client from my server (earth.colstate.edu) and is now being displayed on your computer's screen by your browser client.
While most computers with which you may be familiar are set up as single user computers, some computers are made to support more than one computer at the same time. These multi-user computers are referred to as "host" computers. One powerful computer can act as a host for hundreds of users at the same time. With your own computer, you interact using your screen, keyboard and mouse – with a multi-user computer each person interacts via his or her own terminal and all terminals are connected to the host computer which provides the computing power for all. When you access a remote host (a remote host is a computer in another location – no matter if it is in the next room, across town or around the world) your client program allows your own computer's keyboard to emulate any other terminal which is physically in the in the same location as the remote host.
With a telnet client you can connect and run a program on a host computer anywhere in the world, provided you have been granted access and access is often granted to anyone. For example: You might telnet into the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in one moment and over to the library of the Royal Academy of Music in London one minute later. Us "Guys" generally get a huge kick out of this kind of thing.. It’s sort of like the ultimate remote control. Not only are you changing channels, your actually changing whole countries with the flip of a switch :-)
Now that you know about clients, severs, hosts and terminals, there is one more fundamental term which run into if you spend any time on the Internet and that’s the term: TCP/IP. TCP/IP is the common name for a collection of more than 100 protocols used to connect computers and networks of computers on the Internet. The actual name "TCP/IP" comes from two of the most important of these protocols: (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol). TCP/IP allows all the different kinds of computers and systems which are hooked to the Internet to interface together. TCP/IP is sort of like a universal translator and it is truly the glue, which holds the Internet together.
If you want someone to really think you know what you’re talking about when it comes to the Internet you should practice saying these 5 letters until they just roll of the end of your tongue and then casually insert them during the next conversation you get into about the Internet. You could say something like, "Well you know Bob if it weren’t for TCP/IP the Internet would simply be unusable." :-)
The centerpiece of your interaction with the Internet will most likely come from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP is the company that provides you with access to the Internet and generally provides you with a range of client programs which will allow you to interact with the various resource types found there. The current, going rate, at the time of this writting, around the U.S. for unlimited access to the Internet is between $20-27 per month. Unlimited access means you can spend as much or as little time as you want to on-line without worrying about running up additional access charges.
My ISP is MindSpring. The reason that I chose MindSping is because they provide a wide variety of easy-to-use client programs, space on their servers for web pages and local dial-up connections in almost all major metropolitan areas around the U.S. Local dial-up is probably the single most important consideration in selection of an ISP because without it you will also incur long distance telephone charges during the time you spend on-line.
A while back (Saturday, October 4, 1997), I listened to a live piano recital which was presented through www.sunlost.com on the Internet. The recital took place in a private home in Long Island, NY and featured pianist Arnaldo Cohen. The event lasted, as most recitals do, about two hours and it was most interesting. It featured an interview with the artist and some live conversation with the audience during the concert intermission. As a result of my local dial-up, I was able to attend the recital without incurring the expense of a long distance phone call. I would hate to think what a 2 hour phone call to Long Island, New York would have cost.
Unfortunately I was unavailable for the other recitals in the sunlost.com series which were broadcast free over the Internet during this season include:
Joanna Zayas - December 13, 1997
Naomi Niskala - February 14, 1998
David Korevaar - April 18, 1998
For further information on these and other events, point your browser client to: www.sunlost.com
Now, having provided a brief working definition of: networks, clients and serves, host and terminals, TCP/IP and ISP, it's time now to get on with our tour of some of the various resource types of the Internet.
Email - As an Internet user, you can send and receive messages to and from anyone else on the Internet. It should be noted that Email does not have to be personal, text-only messages. Anything that can be stored in a text file can be emailed: pictures, computer programs, announcements, electronic magazines, newsletters, and so on.
Email is becoming so pervasive that, in some circles, the word mail actually means email and the phrase "snail mail" is being applied to those "hard copies" which are still being hand delivered by the post office. "Snail mail": It’s a rather archaic practice, don’t you think? Why there really is no telling how many trees have been saved thanks to email. What little is left of the rain forests probably owe their very existence to the Internet and just think – every time to send email you can congratulate yourself on doing your part for the environment! It kind of makes you feel good, doesn’t it? :-)
The World Wide Web - The "web" as it is often called, is a large system of computers called servers that offer all kinds of information to anyone on the Internet. The information on these servers is stored in files called "pages". Hence the term "web page". Web pages can hold various types of information, text, images, sound and links to other pages. The idea of a page containing links to other pages is called hypertext. The "http" at the beginning of a web address refers to "hyper text transfer protocol". Hypertext Transfer Protocol is one of the members of the fine family of TCP/IP protocols which were discussed earlier.
It’s hard to believe it but hypertext was not even invented until 1992. A forerunner of hypertext was available for Macintosh users as early as about 1987 or '88, but hypertext and the World Wide Web as we know it today did not begin until the early 1990’s! It seems that nearly everything these days is www.this or www.that. Given the completely unimaginable growth in the Internet over the past six or so years, it’s really fasinating to imagine what the next few years may bring! Fasten you seat belts :-)
Although the world wide web is certainly not the oldest part of the Internet, it is for two reasons the most popular part of the Internet: it’s easy to use the information on the world wide web, and it’s easy to create your own information for sharing with others on the world wide web. There are literally millions of web pages out there waiting for you to discover them with more coming on-line daily.
World Wide Web Search Engines - If you know where something is on the web, all you have to do is tell your browser client the address and you’re there in an instant. However, what do you do if you want to find something, but you have no idea where to look? The solution is to use one of the many web search engines.
Search engines are specific sites which keep track of millions of Internet resources around the world allowing you to search their collections for items which are of interest to you. The result of a search on one of these search engines is a custom list of hypertext links, pointing to whatever items the search engine finds that meets your search criteria. To check out an item all you need to do is to click on that link with your mouse and your browser client will connect you to the appropriate server, no matter wherever it may happen to be in the entire world, and do whatever is necessary to display the file on your computer’s screen.
Search engines are free services to users and are provided by "for profit" companies who make their money by charging for advertising which appears on their web site(s). Each of the differenet web search companies has collected information on the location of millions of Internet resources though their own active searching of the Internet and by encouraging submissions of addresses of newly created web sites by the site creators.
Because each web search company employs different methods of information retrieval, their catalogues of web sites differs considerably. Perhaps not so surprisingly then, the exact same search criteria submitted to different search engines will often yield quite different results. This is not only indicative of the fact that the Internet resource colletions themselves are often dissimilar, but also because the methods employed to catalogue resources differs, and also because the number and types of options available for focusing and refining a search varies with each search engine.
Methods of Cataloging: As for methods of cataloging resources, there are basically two; an index and a directory. An index is usually complied automatically by a software program which goes out on to the Internet on a so-called "search and catalogue" mission. It finds keywords, which are then placed in an index along with the address of the site from which they came. Conversely, with a directory someone (a human!) has actually been invloved in making decisions concerning the placement of collected web sites into various categories.
If you are interested in a fairly narrow subject, one which is not likely to have much information available, your best bet would be to use an index. An index will return a reference to each and every single occurance of a word which appears in a database. If you are interested in a broader area, one which is likely to have several natural sub-divisions within it, your best bet would be to employ a directory. Directories are set up to allow you to focus only on that sub-division of your subject matter which you want and to exclude from your search and an area or areas which do not interest you.
Popular Web Indexes: HotBot, Lycos, Web Crawler, Infoseek and
AltaVista
Popular Web Directories: Magellan, Yahoo, and Point
Search options:
The various search engines offer a wide variety of search options to enable you to target your search as nearly as possible to only the items you desire. Of course it's not as easy pressing a button and receiving the perfect list of sites, but in no time at all you'll be able to get the hang of how to draft and how to refine your searches. By far the best place to learn about a specific search engine is to visit the help files located at that site. Typical search options which you'll encounter on the various search engines are:
Keyword Search: Most search engines let you either follow a directory of subject areas or to conduct a search for keywords. If you choose to search by keywords you must keep in mind that this type of search looks for the specific words you specify and not for subject headings or categories which relate to your subject. Success with a keyword search often depends on your ability to state sustinctly the exact subject for which you are looking. If you are looking for information on specific stylistic characteristics present in early Beethoven Sonatas, it may be difficult to express this in one keyword. Additionally, a keyword search for the word "beat" will not return links which use the words "pulse" or "count" for the same rhythmic concept.
Phrase Searching - The ability to enclose more than on keyword inside quotation marks ("piano recital") and conduct a search for those words exactly as they were typed.
Boolean logic operators - A way to combine terms using "AND", "OR", "AND NOT" and sometimes "NEAR". AND requires all terms to appear in a record. OR retrieves records with either term. AND NOT excludes terms. NEAR requires terms to be within a specified number of words of each other. Parentheses may be used to sequence operations and group words.
+Requires / -Excludes - Similar to Boolean Logic insertion of + immediately before a term, with no space, to limit searches to documents containing a term. Insertion of - immediately before a term will exclude this term from yor search.
Sub-Searching - The ability to search only within the results of a previous search. Enables you to refine search results, in effect making the computer read the search results for you selecting documents with terms on which you choose to sub-search.
Results Ranking - The order in which the results appear. Each search engine uses its own distinct method of ranking. Most rank documents with in which more than one term appears before documents in which only one term appears. Some engines such as AltaVista allow the user to specify the order of ranking.
Field Limiting - Ability to limit a search by requiring a word to appear or phrase to appear in a specific field of a document (e.g. title, URL, link)
Truncation - In a search, the ability to enter the first part of a keyword, insert a symbol (usually *), and accept any variant spellings or word endings. from the occurrence of the symbol forward.
Case Sensitivity - Capital letters (upper case) retrieve only upper case. Most search engines are not case sensitive or only respond to initial capitals, as in proper names. It is always safe to key only lower case letters because lower case will always retrive upper case.
Theasurus - In some serch tools the terms you choose can lead you to other terms you may not have considered. Other possible choices are presented in various ways and are derived from the results of your initial search and not actually derived from a thesaurus.
Language - With some search tools you
may choose to limit your search to one of more language(s) or you may choose to search the
web in all languages.
There are lots of search tools out there. A short list of
these would include the following:
Alta Vista
Disinformation
Excite
HotBot
Infoseek
Infomine
Lycos
Magellan
Northern Light
Planet Search
WebCrawler
Yahoo
- - -
Meta-searching: Meta-search is a method of searching the
databases of the major search engines all at once. Depending on your topic,
meta-searching can be a particularly time saving method of searching the Internet.
Unfortunately, meta-searching offers few options to refine a search since not all search
engines support the same types of search options. Therefore, as a search moves from
engine to engine the advanced search criteria will yield satisfactory results on those
engines which support that criteria and garbage on those which do not.
The most popular meta-search tools and the search engines
they search:
I. Meta Crawler - (AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler and Yahoo)
II. Dogpile - (AltaVista, Excite Search, Excite Subject Guide, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Lycos a2z, Magellan, PlanetSearch, WWW Worm, WWW Yellow Pages, WebCrawler, What-U-Seek and Yahoo)
III. Inference Find - (AltaVista, Excite Search, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler and Yahoo)
IV. Metafind - (AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, OpenText, and WebCrawler)
General advise on searching the world wide web.
If you are interested in accessing the full resources of the web, you must make use of
more than one search engine. Some knowledge of how these Internet resources are
collected by and organized within each of the various search search engines is helpful in
determining the best method to search for the information you desire. Beyond
directories or indexes, familiarity with the various search options available on your
search engines of choice should allow you to determine how best to focus and refine your
search.
As a general rule, if you plan to research a topic fairly throughly you will to do the
following:
Before beginning - Analyse the scope of your topic so as to take best advantage of
various search tool features.
First Pass: Try one of the meta search engines.
Second Pass: Explore the search engines with the most power to focus your searches
(those with Boolean logic).
Third Pass: Look for "webliographies". These are sites with lots of
links to your subject of interest.
Fourth Pass: Try finding a specialized search tool which is dedicated to your subject.
More? - Try a few more more search tools with Boolean logic.
Even More?! - Go into databases and other resources not findable through keyword
searching along.
A first searching the web may seem a bit complicated, but as you develop familiarity
with a few search engines you'll soon be able to find anything out there. And
remember: While getting there may be half the fun, it should not take half your time.
Return to Outline
Usenet – As we come to Usenet we begin to get into the networking portion of the Internet. Usenet is a system of discussion groups in which individual articles are distributed throughout the world. Usenet has literally thousands of different discussion groups each devoted to discussion of some a particular topic.
Until you've made use of Usenet for a while it is difficult to understand why it is so important. Suffice to say that Usenet is really one of the main reasons people use the Internet.
The name "Usenet" is a contraction of the phrase "Users Network". Originally, Usenet was set up to provide an electronic bulletin board service on which news articles were posted. For this reason, many of the words used to talk about Usenet refer to news. For example, discussion groups are often referred to as "News Groups" and many people refer to Usenet as "Netnews". Messages posted to Usenet groups are referred to as "articles".
To participate in Usenet, you use a client program called a "newsreader". Using your newsreader client, you can select articles to read, save articles to a file, respond to an article, or send in an article of your own. All articles are dated and typically remain available on the bulletin board for viewing for about two weeks following which they are deleted.
Try launching your Usenet client and checking out several different news groups. There are literally thousands, but here's a few you might find of special interest.
rec.music.bluenote.
rec.music.classical.contemporary
rec.music.classical.performing
rec.music.classical.recordings
rec.music.compose
rec.music.early
rec.music.makers
rec.music.theory
To locate other Usenet group(s) of interest to you try searching Usenet at the following location:
Gopher - The Gopher system is similar to the web in that you use a client to connect to servers all over the world. The totality of information available through this system is called "Gopherspace".
The difference in the web and gopherspace is the way in which the information is organized. With Gopherspace, information is presented in a series of simple menus - a main and several submenus. Menus can point to a variety of different types of resources: text files, pictures or other Internet resources, and so on. When you select a resource, your gopher client will do whatever is appropriate to display that resource on your computer's screen,
Gopher technology is older and not quite as rich as the web technology. However, gophers are simple to use, fast and easy to locate. Moreover, there are high quality text-based gopher clients that - unlike popular web browsers - do not require a graphical user interface (GUI).
The gopher system was developed in 1991 by the Department of Computer and Information Services at the University of Minnesota. The name gopher comes from the coincidence of several things. The idea of a cute little gopher animal borrowing through the Internet in search of information on your behalf, the slang expression "gofer" which is the title of someone who runs errands for others and, of course, the name of the sports teams from the University of Minnesota – "The Golden Gophers"!
A typical gopher menu (from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.) may be viewed at the following address:
To make effective use of the Internet, you need to be familiar with both the web and
Gopherspace.
Return to Outline
Veronica and Jughead - Like the web, gopherspace is large and full of more items than you could ever find on your own. To help find things in gopherspace you would make use of Veronica. Veronica is a tool which keeps track of an enormous number of gopher menus items from all over the Internet. A related tool, known as "Jughead", does the same thing for a specific group of gopher menus: say, all the menus at a particular university or in a certain company or governmental agency.
If you are beginning to wonder how they ever came up with the names of these things, let me just ask you to bear with me for a moment. Once you see how they developed, I think it will begin make a little more sense to you.
The result of a Veronica or Jughead search will be a new menu containing the items matching the criteria of your search. To access these items you simply select them and your gopher client will take care of all the details of connecting to the remote server, determining the resource type (text, picture, whatever) and displaying it on your computer's screen.
Veronica's index contained about 10 million items from approximately 5500 gopher servers as of June 1994. The number is significantly increased as of this writing.
An example of a Veronica may be seen by clicking on the "Other Gopher and Information Servers" link and then on the link entitled " Search all the Gopher Servers in the World". You might also want to check out the link entitled "Search Titles in GopherSpace using Veronica".
Search GopherSpace using Veronica
An example of Jughead may be viewed by selecting the link to "Search LC Marvel Menus" and then choose the link to "Search LC Marvel Menus using Jughead".
Search the Library of Congress using Jughead
How to conduct a search of Gopherspace using Veronica:
Veronica finds gopher resources by searching for words which occur in
the titles of resources as they appear on the menu of its home gopher server.
Veronica does NOT do a full-text search of the contents of resources. As with any other
kind of search engine, veronica searches are conducted by entering keywords and operators
into a dialoge box and pressing the return key on your keyboard. When the search is
finished, the results will be presented on your screen as a normal gopher menu and you may
select from those resources as you would any other gopher menu.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS with VERONICA
I. Veronica provides two basic types of searches:
1) ALL TYPES of resources whose titles contain your
specified word(s).
or
2) only Gopher directories which contain your specified
word(s).
II. Veronica queries are not case sensitive. The following three keyword searches would be equivlent:
MUSIC
music
MuSiC
III. Multiple word queries will find only those items which contain ALL (both) of the specified words. It is, therefore, usually best to be as specific as possible. Multiple word queries do not require that words be adjacent in the title, nor that they appear in any particular order. The following will yield the same result:
Ludwig Beethoven
Beethoven, Ludwig
IV. Veronica servers will, generally, provide only the first 200 items which match your query. You may request more or fewer items though use of the "-mX" command with your query. X is the number of items you wish and if X is omitted ("-m"), there will be no limit to the number of items delivered. For instance:
"piano" will provide 200 items
"piano -m500" will provide 500 items
QUERY LOGIC, BOOLEAN SEARCHING, and WILDCARDS:
Veronica searches understand the logical operators AND, NOT, OR (, and ). If you use a simple multiple-word query, it is the same as using AND between the words. OR should be used sparingly because of its tendency to produce a large number of hits. It is usually best to use OR in conjunction with other operators, for example:
Chopin and (Liszt or Schumann)
As asterisk ("*") at the trailing end of a query word acts
as a wildcard and will match any possible ending for that word. For example a search
for: "Sonat*" would match Sonata, Sonatas, Sonatina or Sonatinas. The
"*" can only be used at the end of a query word and not at the begining or
middle or a word.
SEARCHING FOR A PARTICULAR TYPE OF RESOURCE:
The "-t" operator may be used to search for a certain type of resource by addng the ("-tX" option to your veronica query. There follows an list of official gopher types which may be requested:
0 - Text File
1 - Directory
2 - CSO Name Server
3 - ERROR
4 - Mac HQX file
5 - PC binary
6 - unencoded file.
7 - Full Text Index (Gopher Menu)
8 - Telnet Session
9 - Binary File
s - Sound
e - Event (not in 2.06)
I - Image (other than GIF)
M - MIME multpart/mixed message
T - TN3720 Session
c - Calendar (not in 2.06)
g - GIF Image
h - HTML, HyperText Markup Language
The following query requests veronica to retrive only sound files:
"Debussy -ts"
"-ts Debussy"
You may also search for more than one type of resource at the same time. A query phrased as follows:
"Mozart -tsg0"
would search for sound files, GIF images and text files which have to
do with Mozart.
SUMMARY OF VERONICA OPTIONS:
-t Limit the search to itmes of a specific type
-m specify the maximum number of items to find
-l create a file of links for the discoved resources. (Not all
veronica servers support this option.)
Options may be combined by using separate hyphens as follows:
"Brahms -t0 -m25"
The above search would be for no more than 25 texts files related to Brahms.
Gohperspace is one of the oldest parts of the Internet. It is organized very
simply and logically. While locating resources though Veronica and Jughead may seem
a little complex at first, especially if you've just waded through the above description
for the first time, but it's really very easy once you've tried it a few times.
Return to Outline
Anonymous FTP - An FTP client allows you to copy files from one computer to another. FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol", and it’s another one of the many protocols of the TCP/IP family.
If you have an account on two computers that are both on the Internet, you may, if you so choose, decide to copy files from one to the other. From the first computer, you can use an FTP client to connect to the second computer. Once your password has been validated and the connection is established, you can begin copying files in either direction.
This is handy if you have accounts on more than one computer, which most of us don't. However, millions of Internet sites have files of public interest that they would like to make available to anyone on the Net. To do this they use the system called "Anonymous FTP". Anonymous FTP allows anyone to use a guest account to connect to their computer and copy files, which are stored in special public access areas. I recently came across an estimate in an older book (1996) on the Internet which claimed there was approximately one terabyte (1000 Gigabytes) of free software and files available to anyone on the Internet and I’m sure there’s much more than that by now.
Note: If you are having a little trouble with the idea that a publication which dates from 1996 is actually out of date in 1998, you should know that, on the Internet things change very quickly. It's probably about right at this point in time to consider that three months on the Internet as equal to about one year of normal time. By this I mean that things are changing so quickly on the Internet that the equivilent of one year's growth and change in the "normal" world is accomplished in about three months on the Internet. It's sort of like the concept of "dog years" - One "human year" equals seven years in a dogs life. Therefore, a book about the Internet which was written in 1996 is actually 8-12 years old. So be extremely carefull to check and evaluate the date of all sources on information you come across on the Internet.
For security reasons you can not copy files from one computer to another on the Internet unless you can log on to the remote computer. By convention, when you use your FTP client to connect to a public site, you can access the system by using the user identifcation (userid) of "Anonymous" (Hence the name Anonymous FTP.). In such cases, you will not need a password.
Anonymous FTP is one of the most important Internet services. Virtually every type of data is stored somewhere, on some computer, and its all available to you for free. You can find electronic magazines, archives of Usenet discussion groups, technical documentation, and much, much more.
I do a fairly large amount of work on the Internet with email. One of the most effective email clients, which I have ever found, is Pegasus mail. It is available in both Windows and DOS versions and the program is available to anyone completely free via ftp. I also recently obtained copies of Microsoft’s new web browser "Internet Explorer 4.0". This will, no doubt, turn out to be one of the most popular browser clients on the Internet and it is available completely free right now via ftp.
For free download of the Pegasus email client program, visit the following site:
Download the Pegasus Email Program
For free download of MicroSoft's Internet browser client, Internet Explorer 4.01, go to the following site:
Download MicroSoft's Web Browser "Internet Explorer 4.01"
For an example of another typical FTP site try the following:
For those interested, in a very well done history of the Internet, from its earliest beginning (the ARPANet), there is a document called "A Short History of the Internet" by Bruce Sterling available at the following FTP site:
Another Example of an FTP Site
Once there, you can move easily through the submenus to the document you want by
clicking on "Internet", then "History", then "Sterling Text"
in successive screens.
As a full-fledged Internet user, you'll become heavily dependent on File Transfer
Protocol (FTP).
Archie (search engine for FTP files) - There are literally thousands of Anonymous FTP servers around the world offering more files than you can imagine, literally terabytes (1000 Gigabytes) of files. The role of Archie is to make the entire system manageable by helping you to find what you need. There are a number of Archie servers around the Net, each of which contains a database of most of the files, which are publicly available through Anonymous FTP.
You can use an Archie client to connect to an Archie server and search for files. An Archie search will return a list of addresses of some of the Internet sites that have files, which match the parameters of your search. Once you know where to look for a file, it's a simple matter to use Anonymous FTP to download (or transfer) a file to your own computer and begin using it.
What's in a name?
Now, perhaps, some of these terms (names) are beginning to sound a little more familiar. Actually, since FTP is an older part of the Internet than gopherspace. The name Archie is a personalized contraction of the phrase "Archive Server". You may have noticed that Archie provides a service for Anonymous FTP, which is similar to that which Veronica and Jughead do for the gopher system. When it came time to select a name for the program designed to search gopherspace, the programmers chose the name "Veronica" because in the Archie comic series, Veronica is Archie's companion. Similarly, Jughead, the program that searches a small part of gopherspace, was named for Archie's little buddy.
An example of an Archie Search Client is available at:
Mail lists – An Internet mailing list is a group of people, which are sent, and may also send if they choose to do so, email messages pertaining to a particular topic. People on a list are referred to as subscribers. Participation on a mail list is an excellent way to gain information on a topic and, because of their interactivity, one can initiate or respond to specific discussions, referred to as "threads", which are of interest to you.
As with other Internet services, mailing lists are free services. There are literally thousands of different mailing lists - each with someone in charge who administers the list. You can subscribe to or unsubscribe from a list by sending the proper email message to the appropriate Internet email address.
There are several different types of email lists which you will run into on the Internet. Some mail lists are "closed", meaning that subscriptions are available only to certain individuals. An example of this type list would be:
NGCSA-L
This list is designed for use by administrative directors of schools affiliated with the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. Participation on this list is limited to administrative directors of Guild affiliated schools.
Other lists, referred to as "open" lists, encourage participation by anyone, as long as they adhere to the stated topic of the list. Of course a certain amount of "drift" in the dialogue is to be expected from time to time but, in the interest those who are seeking dialogue on the stated list topic, discussions which have permanently strayed from the topic of the list should be discontinued. An example of an "open" mail list is:
Pno-Ped-L
Pno-Ped-L is open to anyone and is devoted to wide-ranging discussion of issues related to the field of piano teaching.
Some lists are "moderated", which means that someone decides which
material will be accepted for distribution.
Other lists are "unmoderated" and will accept and send out any and all
messages which are posted to the list.
An example of a open, moderated mail list which is devoted to discussion of the life and works of Chopin is:
Chopin-L
An example of an open, unmoderated mail list which is devoted to discussion of medical issues for pianists is:
Pno-Med-L
All of the above mail lists reside on the same server. Applications to any of these lists, except NGCSA-L, which is a closed list, may be obtained as follows: Send the following message in the body of email to: Majordomo@earth.ColState.EDU
subscribe <listname>
Use only lower case letters and do not include your name, email address or any additional information with your request. You will recieve confirmation of the acceptance of your subscription in the form of a welcome message to the list.
If you're interested in locating other mail lists, try searching for your area of interest using the following search engine which is devoted to mail lists.
If you’re feeling lonely or ignored, subscribing to a handful of mail lists is sure to keep your electronic mailbox filled to the brim :-)
Telnet (remote connection) – One of the major reasons for the invention of the Internet was to allow people to work on remote computers. Telnet is the Internet service, which makes it possible to log on to a remote computer and access it’s services and programs through emulation of a local terminal. In other words, when you are "telnetting", as they call it, it is as if you are actually there on the site of the remote computer and your computer’s keyboard "emulates" or imitates the input of a local terminal
The Telnet client allows your computer keyboard to interact with a remote computer exactly as with one of its own terminals. Thus, using a telnet client is just like using a local terminal to work with a remote host. It's just that you can be physically located anywhere in the world.
With some systems, you will need to enter a user name and a password in order to start a work session. That process is called "logging in". But with thousands of sites around the world access is open to all with no passwords required. Unless you have a some special need you may never have an account on a remote computer. However, as a public service, many Internet hosts are set up to allow anybody to log in using a special guest account. When you log in, you will have special privileges and will probably be able to run one or more specific programs.
Professor Dr. Howard Gardner, of Harvard University, is an extremely influential writer in the field of educational psychology with particular reference to various forms of human intelligence. Access to the Hollis library at Harvard to search for Dr. Gardner's writings may be found by using your telnet client to connect to the following address:
hollis.harvard.edu
An example: Show a quick telnet session to earth.colstate.edu, Hollis Harvard for Howard Gardner’s books and tell about the RAM in London for Matthay’s writings
hollis.harvard.edu
The famous, pedagogue, Tobias Matthay, taught piano for many years at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. Telnet access to the library of the Royal Academy of Music to search for his writings may be had by connecting via your telnet client to the following address:
lib.ram.ac.uk How to Access a Telnet Client in Windows:
To access a telnet client through the Windows operating system, click the "Start" button, scroll up to "Run" and type in the word "telnet". You will be connected to the telnet start screen. From there click on the "Connect" button and then type in the address you to which you desire to telnet (lib.ram.ac.uk). Once you arrive at the site of your choice you will be given directions as to how to log in and what password, if any, is required. From there you will find complete directions for searching or running any public access program(s) on that site.
Talk facilities - With talk facilities we come to the more "friendly" side of the Internet. Some might even say a little too friendly. A talk facility allows you to communicate with other people on the Net in real time, either by typing messages back and forth, or by actual voice conversation. Of course, to use voice transmission, you need a computer with a microphone and sound capability.
There are a large number of talk facilities on the Net, all of which are set up as client /server systems. Once you have the proper client program, you can talk to anyone else using the same system.
Just about every variation exits, you could talk to one person at a time, you could talk to a defined group of people or you could have a public discussion with whoever happens to drop into the talk facility.
Internet relay chat - usually called "IRC", is a public talk facility, which can be used by anyone on the Net at anytime. Within IRC there are many, many conversations going on at any time, many of which are organized around a specific topic or idea. Each IRC is carried on a specific channel. To join an existing conversation, all you need to do is tell your IRC client that you want to join such-and-such a channel. You can create a new channel whenever you want and use it as long as you want. Once the last person leaves a particular channel, it vanishes automatically. As you might imagine, IRC is widely used by a great number of people around the world. There are many who have made IRC friends, which they talk to, on a regular basis.
Warning: If you find yourself spending large amounts of time using IRC, you should remind yourself that you are talking to the type of person who spends large amounts of time using IRC. The phrase "Get a Life" comes to mind.
Muds and other imaginary places - The Internet supports a large variety of interactive virtual environments. These are places where you can interact with people and situations which offer an imaginary setting of some type.
For example you might spend some time exploring countryside based on the myth of King Arthur and his knights. During your visits you would use various commands to walk around the town, visit the pubs, talk to other people, get into fights, look for treasure, and so on. Some of the time the people you encounter will be real people who have adopted a particular persona. For instance you may encounter someone who is a wizard like Merlin, or a rogue who sneaks around stealing things, or a giant who runs around killing monsters. You yourself might be a travelling knight who visits various towns looking for adventure.
Aside from other people who are pretending, you might encounter whole villages of people - which have been completely created by the host computer. You may even enter an area based on Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of OZ where you can meet all the characters of these books.
You may already be familiar with environments in which people adopt an imaginary identity – especially if you've ever participated in any type on a role-playing game such as Charades - or spent any time in a singles bar :-)
OK, OK, Let’s get to the Internet.
Now let’s see if we can take a little closer look at some of
these resources types as they would apply to the studio. The Piano in CyberSpace
music.colstate.edu/resources/cyberpiano
I’ve designed and created a web a page called the "Piano in CyberSpace". This web site attempts to divide the overwhelmingly large subject of piano and piano teaching into categories and seeks to provide some possibilities from the various Internet resource types in each of those categories. Although the page does focus primarily on piano, it is by no means limited to that in its application. In no way, should this web page be thought of as comprehensive or containing all the resources of the Internet which apply to any of these categories. In fact, that was definitely not my intention. My purpose was simply to orient the musician to the Internet, get them started with a few examples, and to provide a suggestion or two for further inquiry. Perhaps the best way to think of this web page then is as a "helpful gateway" into the vast resources of the Internet.
The following categories are represented on the Piano in CyberSpace:
Lecture Notes
Performance and Literature
Pedagogy
Theory and Analysis
Music History and Musicology
Jazz Piano
Recordings
Competitions and Festivals
Artists
Composition
Collaborative Performance
Sheet Music
Copyright
Composers
Acoustic Piano
Keyboard Technology
Historical Keyboards
General / Miscellaneous
Associations and Societies
Internet Tutorials
Search Engines
E-Mail
How Do We Keep Up with It All?
Partly because we are all so forgetful and partly because it’s so easy to make a mistake while typing an Internet addresses, most client programs have some type of feature which allows one to save the an Internet address (known as URL for "Uniform Resource Locator") in a special file for ease in future reference.
For most of us, our major experience with the Internet will come through our web browser client. All web browsers have a feature called "bookmarks" or "favorites". This will allow you to keep a running list of your own personal favorite Internet locations and save them from session to session. As you go through the Internet, you should make a point of using your bookmarks feature to create a list of your own favorite sites for future reference.
Guidelines for Creating Your Own Web Site.
I have written an article which discusses reasons for and strategies for creation of a web page for one's self or one's teaching studio. This article is now a part of the "Piano Pedagogy Forum", a web site which is sponsored by the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and is edited by Dr. Jane MaGrath, Univ. of Oklahoma, Dr. Scott Price, Univ. of south Carolina and Dr. Barbara Fast, Univ. Northern Iowa. The Forum is devoted academic discussion of all aspects of the field of Piano Teaching. To see this article, which is entitled, "Go Thou "On-Line" scroll to the bottom of the opening page of the Forum and click on the link entitled "Keyboard Technology". The address for the Piano Pedagogy Forum is as follows:
My main purpose with The Piano in CyberSpace and these notes was to make us more aware of the extent of the resources of the Internet. I hope you may be beginning to see that there’s really much more to the Internet than just the World Wide Web. There’s email, Usenet, Gopherspace, FTP, Mailing lists, Telenet, Internet Relay Chat and many other interesting and beneficial services available for Musicians and Music Educators on the Internet.
In closing just let me say that I hope to see you in cyberspace!
Suggested Terms for Further Internet Seraching: (Try these in your favorite search engines)
Piano Manufacturer
Musical Ear Training
Rhythmic Dictation
Harmonic Rhythm
Atonal Music
Piano Concerto
Piano Sonata
Musical Form
Piano Nocturne
Piano Ballad
Piano Pedagogy
Music Theory
Music Analysis
Schenker
Dodecaphonic
Twelve-Tone
Composition
Polyphonic Music
Clavichord
Harpsichord
Musical Style
Musicology
MTNA
Piano Pedaling
Piano Voicing
World Piano Pedagogy Conference
Piano Life Magazine
American Liszt Society
American Matthay Society
Performance Practice
Sandra Rosenblum
Frederic Chopin
Franz Liszt
Keyboard
Piano Purchase
Piano Repairs and Tuning
Piano Technician
Electronic Keyboards
MIDI
Musical Notation
CodaMusic.com
Cakewake.com
Notation Programs
Musical Scales and Chords
Major Scales
Minor Scales
Music History
Piano Technique
Piano Practice
Piano Memorization
Vladimir Horowitz
Sergi Rachmaninoff
Alfred Cortot
Arthur Schnabel
Theodore Lesititchky
Howard Gardner
Menacham Pressler
Piano Duo
Piano Trio
Piano Quartet
Piano Quintet
Piano Ensemble
Piano Duet
Two Piano
Piano Repertoire
Piano Accompanying
Collaborative Performance
Copyright Laws
Jazz Piano
Ragtime
Piano Methods
Piano Teaching
Keyboard Sequencing
Alfred Music
Kjos Music
Henle Music