Tips for Downloading the Practice Files

The chorus practice pages offer individual downloads for each sound recording. You may right-click the down arrow ↓ next to any of these individual audio files to download them one by one, and organize the downloads as best suits your needs.

However, if you wish to download all the sound files for a chorus part, you will want to use the download buttons located at the bottom of each operetta's chorus practice page. Once downloaded and unzipped, you can play them on your computer's audio player application, load them into your smart phone or tablet, or burn them off to audio CD. Here are some tips to make sure the sound files are saved in such a way that the playlists included in the zip file will work properly.

• Click one of the buttons (or links) near the bottom of each page to download a .zip file containing all the files for one choral part.
• Also download the Tutti .zip file for that operetta (strongly recommended!) and save it into the same directory where you saved the part .zip file.
• Then unzip each .zip file into that same parent folder in such a way that the unzip creates a new subfolder for that part. For example in Windows, right click each .zip file and select "Extract all..." from the pop-up menu. This should create a new subfolder under the current folder with the same name as the zip file (tutti,soprano, alto, etc.). The part and tutti folders should both reside as "sibling" folders under the same parent folder.
• Once the files are unzipped, you can play each .mp3 file individually if you wish by double-clicking its file name in a directory listing.
• Or you may use one of the .wpl playlist files included in the part folder (or a Tutti playlist in the Tutti folder) to load a set of .mp3 files into your audio player all at once. For example in Windows when you double-click the .wpl file, your Windows Media Player program will open and start playing a list of .mp3 sound files (unless some other audio player such as Quicktime has taken over this functionality). Some of the playlists include Tutti sound files, which must be downloaded separately into the neighboring tutti directory as described above so that the playlist can find them.
• If you download .zip files from more than one operetta, they should not be mixed into the same parent folder, since each parent folder can only contain one "tutti" subfolder, one "soprano" subfolder, etc. You could create a separate folder for each operetta, and save and unzip the relevant zip files for that one operetta together. For example, if you are a 2nd Soprano studying both The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, you might create a "practice" folder with a "pirates" and "mikado" folder under it, and place the downloaded files under their respective operettas, like this:
  
  

To create this example directory structure on a Windows computer:

1. Create the /practice directory (i.e., practice folder) in any convenient parent directory.
2. Within /practice, create the subdirectories for /mikado and /pirates.
3. On the Mikado web page, download the soprano2.zip and tutti.zip files into /practice/mikado.
4. In the /practice/mikado directory, right-click soprano2.zip and "Extract all...." Similarly, right-click tutti.zip and "Extract all..".
5. On the Pirates web page, download the soprano.zip and tutti.zip files into /practice/pirates.
6. In the /practice/pirates directory, right click soprano.zip and "Extract all..." Similarly, right click tutti.zip and "Extract all...".

You can do similarly for other operettas and choral parts by generalizing from this example. If you study multiple parts for the same operetta, you will only need to download that operetta's tutti files once. For example, The Mikado's soprano1.zip and alto.zip files could also be downloaded and unzipped into the /practice/mikado directory. They will share the same tutti files with the soprano2 part.