At the peril of exposing even greater levels of ignorance than I have in the past, does anyone know how to turn off the background music on this O’Carolan site?
http://www.contemplator.com/carolan/complt.html
In the event you wanted to listen to one of the tunes lower down on the page–unfortunately in midi–how do you stop the background tune? I sent an e-mail to the webmistress, but it bounced back as undeliverable.
Thanks,
Tom D.
I assume you’re looking for something more than just muting your PC’s sound system, right? 
When I played one of the midi files, the background music stopped. If I refresh the page, it starts again.
Bob
The problem is in the HTML:
This is a bit of code that automatically plays the selected midi file when the page finishes loading - in this case, ldillon.mid. They didn’t use the code to display payback options like start/stop/pause, so you can’t do anything about it. And they looped it; joy. But if playing another midi file stops the background one, that might be the only way to stop it.
I don’t have the required plugins at the moment so none of the midis play for me. 
What browser do you use? If you use firefox, there’s almost certainly a
setting to disable automatic background music. With Internet Explorer,
probably not so much…
In IE you can press the Stop button on the toolbar (document icon with red X) and background music will stop… until the next time you load the page.
Firefox disables the Stop button once the page is loaded so it won’t allow this. If there’s a setting to disable I can’t find it.
My mistake, it’s an extension:
Thanks everyone. I am using Internet Explorer. When I last went to the site, simply clicking on one of the midis did not stop the background tune, and it showed no sign of letting up which I would attribute to the loop thing. It was especially grating when the selected tune played OVER (or under?) that recurring background tine.
I will try the red X thing. It makes sense, had not occured to me. Had it come to me to try that, I would probably have mistakenly thought that that action would close the site. (Luddite Alert!!)
UPDATE: I tried the red X thing–it is not lit–i.e., is not available for turning off EXCEPT if I hit the refresh arrow, in which case the red X lights up dor a second and that tune–which is starting to get uncomfortably familiar by now–just starts up again.
I think the message here is to avail myself to the various CD’s of O’Carolan tunes I already have (3 come to mind–2 by Derek Bell and one ‘new age-ish’ compilation, plus the O’Carolan tunes scattered throughout various Chieftains CD’s) and just skip the midis altogether.
Norseman’s interesting suggestion would certainly have taken care of the background tune problem, but would also impose intuitively obvious limitations on hearing a selected ‘patron’ tune. Sort of a ‘baby with the bathwater’ thing, which I assume was offered in good natured jest. I think they call that ‘out-of-the-box’ type thinking. Speaking of which, I think it’s it’s time for me to get back into my box…
Tom D.
Tom –
Here’s an alternate website with a Complete O’Carolan:
http://www.oldmusicproject.com/occ/tunes.html
I’m using IE, didn’t notice any background music when I visited.
Judy
Judy:
Thank you for that link. I will never grasp all the subtlties of PCs, IEs, etc.
Tom D.