Technical Requirements

Computer and Connection Requirements

Your computer configuration must meet these minimum hardware and connection requirements:

Windows 2000 and MAC OS 9.1 are the minimum operating systems for this course.

Windows XP are recommended and Mac OS-X are recommended.

Older computers and operating systems are not compatible with the required software and students should not take this course unless they have reliable access to a suitable computer. The computers in the Music Lab (Room 202) on the Aptos Campus have all the required software for this course.

Internet access with broadband or high speed modem. Students with dial-up service will experience extremely long download times of web pages due to their rich media content.

An internet browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox

A functioning email account. Free email accounts are available at Yahoo.com and Hotmail.com.

Course Software Requirements

You must have the following software installed on your computer:

You must purchase Practica Musica, Student Version software, which is only available from the Cabrillo bookstore. If you cannot purchase it in person, you can order it online from them at http://cabrillobooks.net/. You are buying a copy of Practica Musica for your own permanent use. It is a piece of licensed software supporting only one non-transferable user. The software cannot be transferred or sold to another student. DO NOT BUY A USED COPY! You will not be able to use it, complete or receive credit for any of the required homework for the class.

About 80% of your assignments are based on activities within Practica Musica or on the Practica Musica WebStudent site for this course. IMPORTANT! PC users must be using Windows 2000, XP or Vista to run this program. MAC users must be using Max OS 9.1 - 10.4. The program will not run on older operating systems.

You must install both of the following free software packages on your computer for viewing, listening to and composing music.

Click on the links and follow the instructions for downloading the programs.

1. FINALE NOTEPAD 2008 is a REQUIRED program and is used for important homework assignments in this class.

2. SIBELIUS SCORCH BROWSER PLUG-IN There are hundreds of musical scores and examples imbedded in web pages of this course. To open, view and play them you need this plug-in in your browser.

Some of the pages in this course use an embedded MP3 player; both the Apple QuickTime plug-in (available for PCs and Macs) and the Windows Media Player plug-in (for PCs) can be used to play sounds. If your browser doesn't already have a plug-in installed to play these files, the browser should ask you to allow it to be installed.

You must be able to view PDF files. You can download the free Adobe Acrobat reader at http://www.adobe.com/downloads. If you have a scanner, you will also find it useful to create PDF files for submitting some of your handwritten homework assignments online in Blackboard You can download the free PDF reDirect V2 at http://www.exp-systems.com/.