Summer time serenade: from MP3 players to home-studio software, the stuff that musical dreams...

Ever wonder why there are so many great summer songs? "Summer in the City," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "Summertime Blues"--the list goes on. The reason odes to summer prevail while tributes to, say, the fall colors are so rare is that summer and music seem to go together like sand and suntan lotion.

But wanting music with your summer means having to take it with you. If you like your music summery and your summer musical, it's a good time to be alive, because there are all kinds of options for packing up your tunes wherever you happen to be summering. In that spirit,