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Historical background :The piano is a musical instrument which is played by means of a keyboard. Widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. How It Works :Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a felt covered hammer to strike steel strings. The hammers rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency.These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a sounding board that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration. Pianos are sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. The Pitch Range:Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions. The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. Music written for the instrument :Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours. Picture of the instrument:
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Historical background :The piano is a musical instrument which is played by means of a keyboard. Widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. How It Works :Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a felt covered hammer to strike steel strings. The hammers rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency.These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a sounding board that couples the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration. Pianos are sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. The Pitch Range:Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions. The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. Music written for the instrument :Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today. Even the music of the Romantics, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos substantially different from ours. Picture of the instrument:
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About The GuZheng:
What is a Gu Zheng?
The guzheng, also spelled gu zheng or gu-zheng ,
is a traditional Chinese musical instrument. It belongs to the zither family of string instruments.
The modern-day guzheng is a plucked, half-tube zither with movable bridges and 21 strings,
although it can have anywhere from 15 to 25 strings
The Pitch Range :
The Gu Zheng's scale is tuned to Do, Re, Mi, So and La,
but Fa and Ti can also be produced by pressing the strings to the left of the bridges.
Picture of the Instrument
About the Flute :
What is a flute?
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind group.
The first flute dates back to almost 43,000 years ago.
It was made of a vulture wing bone.
A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a flute player,
a flautist, or a flutist.
Historical Background :
The earliest extant transverse flute is a chi flute discovered in the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at the Suizhou site,
Hubei province, China. It dates from 433 BC,
of the later Zhou Dynasty.
It is fashioned of lacquered bamboo with closed ends and has five stops that are at the flute's side instead of the top.
Chi flutes are mentioned in Shi Jing, compiled and edited by Confucius according to tradition.
The Pitch Range :
The standard concert flute is pitched in the key of C and has a range of three octaves starting from middle C.
This means that the concert flute is one of the highest common orchestral instruments,
with the exception of the piccolo, which plays an octave higher.
Flutes of the world :
Flutes
Diple
Duduk
Irish flute
Palendag
Piccolo
Pipe and tabor
Tin whistle
Tumpong
Washint
Picture of the instrument:
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About Clarinets :
What is a clarinet?
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family.
The name derives from adding the suffix -et meaning little to the Italian word clarino meaning a particular type of trumpet,
as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet.
The Pitch Range.
Clarinets have the largest pitch range of any common woodwind.
Unlike other woodwinds, all three registers have characteristically different sounds.
The chalumeau register is rich and relatively quiet.
The clarino register is bright and sweet, like a trumpet heard from afar ("clarino" means trumpet and is the root word for "clarinet").
The altissimo register can be piercing and sometimes shrill.
Historical Background :
The clarinet has its roots in the early single-reed instruments or hornpipes used in the Middle East and Europe since the Middle Ages,
such as the albogue, alboka, and double clarinet.
Clarinets were soon accepted into orchestras.
Later models had a mellower tone than the originals.
Mozart liked the sound of the clarinet and wrote much music for it,
and by the time of Beethoven ,
the clarinet was a standard fixture in the orchestra.
Picture of the instrument
Ska
Ska originated in the late 1950s in Jamaica. Some of the first songs identified as ska were "Manny-O" by Joe Higgs (1958), "Easy Snapping" by Theophilus Beckford (1959), and "Oh! Carolina" by the Folkes Brothers (1960). "Simmer Down", a huge ska hit, was recorded by The Wailers in 1963.[3][4] Perhaps the best-known of the original ska bands were The Skatalites, whose career spanned decades and transcended Jamaican musical genres. The Skatalites' music launched the careers of Tommy McCook, virtuoso trombonist Don Drummond and tenor saxophonist, and fellow Alpha Boys School graduates Roland Alphonso, Jackie Mittoo, and Lester Sterling.
At first primarily instrumental, ska's rhythms generally didn't lend well to vocal stylings. However, some popular singers such as Desmond Dekker, Toots Hibbert and Bob Marley got their start by singing in this style. This new style was widely embraced by Jamaican youths, and soon became popular in the United Kingdom and around the world. In 1963,Chris Blackwell brought teenage singer Millie Small to Great Britain. She exploded on the scene with My Boy Lollipop, which climbed the charts to #2 in both Great Britain and the United States.
Live touring bands launched the careers of many ska, rocksteady and reggae artists. Tommy McCook had been part of the band of Aubrey Adams based at the Courtleigh Manor hotel in Kingston before becoming one of the founding members of the Skatalites.[5] Drummer Lloyd Knibb, also of The Skatalites, had done the hotel circuit playing for the Val Bennett, Len Hibbert and Cecil Lloyd bands.
During the 1960s, one of the most successful musical groups in Jamaica was Billy Vernon and the Celestials, the resident band at the Yellow Bird Club in Montego Bay. They toured many of the island's leading hotels. Their work was a blend of ska, mento and jump up, and featured hits such as "Ska Suzanna," "Yellow Bird," and "Wings Of A Dove". A number of artists, including "Errol "E.T." Webster," also known as "Errol T," got their start in the music business with Billy Vernon and the Celestials."
Rocksteady
Rocksteady was the music of Jamaica's rude boys by the mid-1960s, when The Wailers and The Clarendonians dominated the charts, taking over from pioneers like Alton Ellis (who is believed to have invented rocksteady). Desmond Dekker's "007" brought international attention to the new genre. The mix put heavy emphasis on the bass line, as opposed to ska's strong horn section, and the rhythm guitar began playing on the upbeat. Session musicians like Supersonics, Soul Vendors, Jets and Jackie Mittoo (of the Skatalites) became popular during this period.
During the 1980s, the most popular music styles in Jamaica were dancehall and ragga. Dancehall is essentially speechifying with musical accompaniment, including a basic drum beat (most often played on electric drums). The lyrics moved away from the political and spiritual lyrics popular in the 1970s and concentrate more on less serious issues. Ragga is characterized by the use of computerized beats and sequenced melodic tracks. Ragga is usually said to have been invented with the song "Under Mi Sleng Teng" by Wayne Smith. Ragga barely edged out dancehall as the dominant form of Jamaican music in the 1980s. DJ Shabba Ranks and vocalist team Chaka Demus and Pliers proved more enduring than the competition, and helped inspire an updated version of the rude boy culture called raggamuffin.
Dancehall was sometimes violent in lyrical content, and several rival performers made headlines with their feuds across Jamaica (most notably Beenie Man versus Bounty Killer). Dancehall emerged from pioneering recordings in the late 1970s by Barrington Levy, with Roots Radics backing and Junjo Lawes as producer. The Roots Radics were the pre-eminent backing band for the dancehall style. Yellowman, Ini Kamoze, Charlie Chaplin and General Echo helped popularize the style along with producers like Sugar Minott.
The 1980s saw a rise in reggae music from outside of Jamaica. During this time, reggae particularly influenced African popular music, where Sonny Okusuns (Nigeria), John Chibadura (Zimbabwe), Lucky Dube (South Africa) and Alpha Blondy (Ivory Coast) became stars. The 1980s saw the end of the dub era in Jamaica, although dub has remained a popular and influential style in the UK, and to a lesser extent throughout Europe and the US. Dub in the 1980s and 1990s has merged with electronic music.
Reggae fusion
This emerged as a popular sub-genre in the late 90s and is a mixture of reggae and/or dancehall with different influential elements of other genres whether it be hip-hop, R&B, jazz, rock 'n roll, Indie etc.It is recognized as a subgenre or fusiongenre of reggae and dancehall music and is closely related to ragga music. It is also used to describe artists who frequently switch between the ddancehall and reggae genres and other genres, mainly rap and r&b. It originated in Jamaica, North America and Europe.
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