In Los Angeles, 105.1 FM used to be a station called K-Mozart. It was light classical, without any opera, unlike the other classical station, KUSC (boooooooo). However, KMZT was not very profitable and its owners decided to replace it with a country music station, forcing us to listen to KUSC. KMZT can still be found on 1260 AM, but let's not kid ourselves: the quality sucks.
What I miss most about KMZT is something called the morning Sousalarm. Every weekday at 7:15, they would play a Sousa march to rouse sleepy listeners. Sure, most of us were awake by then, but it was still fun.
I sorely missed that Sousalarm. So I made my own.
iPods have this wonderful feature enabling them to act as an alarm clock that plays music. However, it's kind of difficult to find, which is why I'm making this guide. You need an iPod (god I hope you figured that out by this point) and a decent set of speakers. Now, load as many Sousa marches as possible onto the iPod. If you have Sousa CDs, great. If you're going to download them from the internet, that's okay too. I promise I won't tell.
Once they're loaded, make a playlist for the Sousa songs (or whatever the heck it is you want to hear when you wake up). You can do this in iTunes or by highlighting the artist's folder and then holding the centre button (which makes a playlist called "On the Go" followed by a number). For some reason, the iPod alarm clock can only play a beeping noise or songs from a playlist.
Anyway, go back to the topmost menu, and select Extras > Clock. Here, you can pick any of the clocks shown. Then, go to Alarm. Set Alarm to "On" and Sound to the name of the playlist with the songs. Then, set Time to 7:15 am. It's not a Sousalarm if it doesn't go off at 7:15 am. Hook the iPod up to the speakers, make sure it's at a reasonable volume, and turn the iPod off. At 7:15, it will turn itself on and start playing music. If you don't want to hear the songs in the same order, setting Shuffle to "All Songs" will also randomise the order of your morning playlist. Sweet deal.
