An important site of multimodal communication in my life would be a music site like Pandora (https://www.pandora.com).  There are several different modes used in combination here that contrast with other, mono-modal media such as radio.   First there is text.   Text is used to help the user navigate the site, to provide different types of information and as a means of indexing music.  The narrow band at the top of the page includes the name of the site “Pandora” which indicates through textual means the particular site on the web where one has landed.  Additional textual elements toward the top of the page indicate the name of the song being played, the performer and the name of the album on which the song appears.  All these instances of text help orient the user to what she is looking at and hearing.  Toward the left side of the page is column of the different “stations” one has created. These are all hyperlinks indicated by text.  They provide a means of categorizing and indexing other music that one has listened to in the past and that one can choose from to listen to in the future. Further down the page are textual sections giving more information: biographical information about the artist(s) of the songs being played, the written lyrics, as well as the names of other artists whose music is in some way similar to that being played.  These latter are also hyperlinks that can take you to music that is performed by the named artists.  At the same time one is reading the information on the site, she is simultaneously listening to different songs of a particular music station.  The songs and text change simultaneously so that when a particular song ends and a new song starts playing, the important text changes to match the new song.  There is also album art that appears with each change in song. In this case, you have a very different experience of a song than listening to it on the radio. 

Multimodal analysis of meaning can be helpful for identifying where modes are complementary in the meanings they convey and where an additional mode communicates something more or different than a single mode.  For example, having written lyrics available concurrent to listening to them via an audio recording can help ensure that the song lyrics are perceived correctly. Sometimes when listening to the radio you will listen to a song and hear lyrics incorrectly and then learn them incorrectly.  With the written lyrics available simultaneously, the chance of this misunderstanding is lessened because you can check the audio against the text. At the same time, text added to audio can enrich the listening experience by providing new information. When listening on the radio you may never have access to the meta-text, the information about the song as an artifact.  On the Pandora site all this meta-information is available.  This information makes it much easier to learn about the artist and musical genre and not just about the song itself.  It also provides the information necessary to locate the song or artist at another time.