How about some flamenco for Christmas?

Our Vienna Visits for this issue are to sites built in Venezuela in South America and Indonesia in the West Indies. Flamenco tablature, teaching, wave files, and RealAudio files are awaiting you in one site, while great midi files of Christmas carols will surprise you in the other. So prepare for a warm Christmas treat from these lands near the equator.

Flamenco Guitar (Vienna 6619) -- This site was a pleasant surprise as I was scanning a block of homesteads one evening. Designed for the classical guitarist, beginner or advanced, it features classical songs in "tablature" format, a type of music notation designed especially for the guitar and one that is much easier to read and learn than standard sheet music (unless you already know sheet music).

Gianpiero jamming

Like most sites, this one started out simple, only one page with two tabs for the guitar, and over the past three and a half years it has grown considerably, thanks to the constant efforts of the site's builder, Gianpiero Ciammaricone. Gian is a resident of Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, a South American country north of Brazil.

"Classical guitar music is a beautiful thing, but not one for the masses (at least to play it)," Gianpiero told me in his email reply. "If you wanted to learn a classical song, you would have to learn first to read sheet music, a thing that takes a lot of time. But fortunately, someone came up with the tablature notation, which, being designed specifically for the classical guitar, makes it much easier to learn any song." Unfortunately, tablature was mostly a tool for popular music audiences, so Gianpiero began to work on creating and posting tablatures of classical music pieces that he knew.

Gianpiero's success with his page is demonstrated by the many fellow guitarists he has met around the world, through the Internet. "I have even exchanged tapes, CD's, sheet music, etc. to places like Norway and Australia," Gianpiero said. "There's even a friend from the United States who I met through the page coming next year to visit me. All this makes worthwhile the hard work of making and mantaining the page."

If you can find them, there are RealAudio files of Gian playing the Beatles classic "Eleanor Rigby," as well as a beautiful anonymous tune called "Romance." Even though they're not streaming (yet), the download is quick and the quality worth the wait. (Here's a hint: they're in the Classical Tabs section, Listing by Author, Anonymous Pieces and Lennon and McCartney.)

Dave's Christmas Site (Strasse 2510) -- While surfing around looking for some Christmas music to offer in the zine, I found David A. Sucianto's site and knew I'd found a gold mine of Christmas nuggets. A resident of Bogor in Indonesia, David -- or Jax, as he is known to friends -- each year manages to improve his Christmas offerings of midis he has collected from around the Internet, some of which he augments with "a little improvisation here and there to make them ... 'live' for me."

Sharing the Christmas spirit was David's only goal when building his one-page offering in Vienna Strasse. "Initially, I like to listen to midis, then I wanted to have a collection that I put in the web," David said. And he did.

As it was last month, both sites featured this month exhibit the importance of purpose in the site. One is far-reaching and has many branches, while the other is of a single purpose. Both stick to their goals, however, and that makes for a successful homepage. If you have a goal, a purpose, a desire to make yourself known, having a homepage lets you get the message out. Putting your home in GeoCities gives you the resources of many community leaders, who are ready to help with any design or tool question you might have. In Vienna, simply visit Vienna/9000/blocks.html to see who is the leader in your block. If there is no one listed there yet, ask one of the other leaders.

cl_kaulana is Robert Farley, a long-time community leader who enjoys helping others realize their full Internet community experience. He's ready to answer your questions, and looks forward to finding the next sites to write about in "Visiting Vienna." Visit his website at Strasse 7000, send him your great site information or questions to cl_kaulana@oocities.com. Your site could be the next to wear the beautiful graphic at the right. All you need to become eligible to download it and place it on your site is a mention in "Visiting Vienna."