I know what it means now when I hear the phrase “silence is deafening.”  I’m sitting in front of my computer with my Mircrosoft® Word program open, trying to gather my thoughts and produce a deliberative muse to put to print. 

My concentration is elsewhere at the moment.  Maybe because I have a sick parent in the hospital or maybe because my mind is still lingering vicariously in the latest Marvel® Comic movie I went to see last night. 

I thought that by coming into a nice quiet room, one that is void of all the weekend noise, I could possibly put some words together and create a new and useful piece.  But it’s not so quiet in here at all.  I can hear the constant hiss of the A/C and swoosh of the fan as it circulates the cool air.  Outside, I hear a light rumble from my neighbors’ lawn mower.  The dogs are excited too.  All these sounds are merging together and now I’m adding a squeak from my chair.  Not just any squeak, though, one that adds rhythm to this concert of sounds.  I have put together in my head a deafening opus.

I sit back now and realize that I do this often.  I compile the sounds around me into my very own symphony that provides me with a simple pleasure.  This is music.  And I love music.  Music inspires me.  It allows me to travel to far away places and meet people that I would never meet in my circle of life.  Music expands my circle. 

The great thing about music is I don’t have to be an expert on it.  I don’t have to be a musician to criticize it, I don’t have to be student to understand it, and I don’t have to be a connoisseur to appreciate it.  I only need to enjoy it.  And I do!

Here is a list of my five top sites I visit to listen to, explore, discuss, and download music.

1. http://www.thesixtyone.com/ The sixty one makes music culture more democratic: artists upload their work for review, but, rather than allow a stuffy suit in a boardroom to decide what's good, thousands of listeners do.

2. http://hypem.com/ The Hype Machine follows music blog discussions where thousands of people write about the music they love… and it all ends up here.

3. http://www.laudr.com/ This site makes it easy to find awesome underground music. It was built around the concept of loving some obscure band or artist and wanting to share them with your friends. Join the community and add your own music links and vote for the ones you like.

4. http://skreemr.com/ This is a search engine for locating audio files on the web. They index what already exists on the publicly accessible reaches of the internet. Currently, they index over 6 million mp3 files from over 100,000 web sites.

5. http://cllct.com/ The Collective Family is a community of music lovers (artists and listeners alike) that believe music must be free! Music would rather be heard than sold. Artists upload their releases for all to hear and download. Put the songs on your iPod, burn them to CD, give them to your friends. Music is an art, not a commodity. Music is awesome, and music loves you.