The World Wide Web has hundreds of thousands of music files freely available in a format called MIDI. These files store music in a very compact format (typically less than 20K in size).

You can use any MIDI file with Holiday Lights. They need to be converted from raw MIDI format to QuickTime format for use on the Macintosh, but the latest version of Holiday Lights can do this automatically.

To download MIDI files, first visit a Web site that offers free MIDI files. Yahoo has a list of sites offering Christmas MIDI files, as well as classical and jazz files. Yahoo also has a more general list of all MIDI-related sites.

When you get the the Web site, find the song you want to use, then save it to your disk. If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer, simply click on the song name. If you're using Netscape Navigator, click and hold the mouse button on the song name until a menu appears, then choose "Save this Link as...", as shown.

When the download has finished, you'll see a new file with a name ending in ".mid" on your disk. (If you want to give the song a more Mac-like name, you can simply rename the file.) Move this file into the Holiday Lights "Music Files" folder, inside your Holiday Lights folder.

Finally, quit the Holiday Lights program if it's running, then open it again. Holiday Lights will automatically convert the file from raw MIDI format to QuickTime MIDI format for you.

Choose "Music Box" from the Settings menu, and the new song should appear in the list! If the song doesn't appear, see the topic below for information.

 
See also:
I've downloaded a MIDI file from a Web site, but it won't play.