Generally, this page is designed for those of you who want to
view the words and music playing along with the song. This used to be accomplished
with a plugin, but in its wisdom, Microsoft "fixed" the Internet Explorer
so that it no longer could do that, and so we have had to do something
for those of you stuck with IEx so that you can enjoy the music the same
way that Opera or Mozilla users do.
The first order of business is to get the free Noteworthy Viewer from their web site here and install it on your computer. (You could, and I recommend highly that you do, buy the Noteworthy Composer software, which is quite reasonably priced and will not only allow you to hear and see the music play, but you can also EDIT the play so that you can change instruments, volumes, speeds, whatever.) When that is done you will have a player which "reads" the .nwc files contained in the compressed zip files below, rendering them as a kind of "bouncing ball" musical experience---as the song plays the notes and the syllables in the lyrics change color to show where you are in the song as it plays.
How does this work for you non-nerds who want to listen to some good music? First you have to know WHERE on your computer you want to put the zip file you download. Each zip for each category contains all the .nwc music files for that category, and you will then have to figure out how to decompress the zip file---if you don't have a compression utility like WinZip, then Windows later versions will do it for you, and you have again to decide on a folder for each category of songs . . . probably the best way to keep track would be to have C:\music\ folder which contains subfolders for each category of download, i.e. barbershop, ellington, gershwin, etc., and then you can just download the gershwin.zip to the c:\music\gershwin\ folder and then decompress the file into all of the .nwc music files it contains. Then, when you want a particular song (the filenames are specific like american-in-paris.nwc) you open your Noteworthy Viewer software and use File, Open to go find the song---example C:\music\gershwin\american-in-paris.nwc--and if this is too complicated for you, then you really don't want to be involved in it. I mean, if you aren't prepared at least to learn where the files are on your computer and how to open them with applications, then you need an Apple, and this stuff isn't for you anyhow.
Assuming you have learned how the computer works to store folders and files well enough to proceed, then the next project is to download one of the zip files named below. All you have to do is click on the category (Artists or Barbershop or Cole Porter or whatever), and a dialog box will appear on your screen asking you what to do with this file. Tell it to SAVE it (not run it) to your hard drive, and send the file (as above) to a folder where you can find it later to play the individual songs.
Click one of the page/category links to download a zip file containing all the .nwc files for that page:
[NOTE: You MUST have either the player or the
composer software as shown in the second paragraph above BEFORE you can
use the .nwc files contained in the zips below.]