1.
Tasmania
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Tasmania is an island state of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is located 240 km to the south of the Australian mainland, the state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands. The state has a population of around 519,100, just over forty percent of which resides in the Greater Hobart precinct, Tasmanias area is 68,401 km2, of which the main island covers 64,519 km2. Though an island state, due to an error the state shares a land border with Victoria at its northernmost terrestrial point, Boundary Islet. The Bishop and Clerk Islets, about 37 km south of Macquarie Island, are the southernmost terrestrial point of the state of Tasmania, the island is believed to have been occupied by Aboriginals for 40,000 years before British colonisation. It is thought Tasmanian Aboriginals were separated from the mainland Aboriginal groups about 10,000 years ago when the sea rose to form Bass Strait. The conflict, which peaked between 1825 and 1831 and led to more than three years of law, cost the lives of almost 1100 Aboriginals and settlers. The near-destruction of Tasmanias Aboriginal population has been described by historians as an act of genocide by the British. The island was part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1854 the present Constitution of Tasmania was passed and the year the state received permission to change its name to Tasmania. In 1901 it became a state through the process of the Federation of Australia, the state is named after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who made the first reported European sighting of the island on 24 November 1642. Tasman named the island Anthony van Diemens Land after his sponsor Anthony van Diemen, the name was later shortened to Van Diemens Land by the British. It was officially renamed Tasmania in honour of its first European discoverer on 1 January 1856, Tasmania was sometimes referred to as Dervon, as mentioned in the Jerilderie Letter written by the notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly in 1879. The colloquial expression for the state is Tassie, Tasmania is also colloquially shortened to Tas, especially when used in business names and website addresses. TAS is also the Australia Post abbreviation for the state, the reconstructed Palawa kani language name for Tasmania is Lutriwita. The island was adjoined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period about 10,000 years ago, much of the island is composed of Jurassic dolerite intrusions through other rock types, sometimes forming large columnar joints. Tasmania has the worlds largest areas of dolerite, with many distinctive mountains, the central plateau and the southeast portions of the island are mostly dolerite. Mount Wellington above Hobart is an example, showing distinct columns known as the Organ Pipes
2.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
3.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
4.
Fingerstyle guitar
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Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking. The term is used synonymously with fingerpicking, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues. Often, the guitarist will play the notes, interspersed with the melodys accompanying chords. Some fingerpicking guitarists also intersperse percussive tapping along with the melody, chords and this enables a single guitarist to provide all of these important song elements. This enables singer-guitarists to accompany themselves, and it enables smaller groups which have only a single guitarist to use one guitarist to provide all of these musical elements. Fingerpicking is a technique on the classical or nylon string guitar. Fingerpicking is less common on electric guitars, except in the metal music virtuoso style of lead guitar playing known as shred guitar. Because individual digits play notes on the rather than the hand working as a single unit. Deep bass notes, harmonic accompaniment, melody, and percussion can all be played simultaneously when playing Fingerstyle, players do not have to carry a plectrum, but fingernails may have to be maintained at the right length and in good condition. It is possible to play multiple non-adjacent strings at exactly the same time and this enables the guitarist to play a very low bass note and a high treble note at the same time. This enables the guitarist to play double stops, such as an octave, a fifth, (an exception to this may be found in the flamenco technique of rasgueado. It is easy to play arpeggios, but the techniques for tremolo and it is possible to play chords without any arpeggiation, because up to five strings can be plucked simultaneously. There is less need for fretting hand damping in playing chords, a greater variation in strokes is possible, allowing greater expressiveness in timbre and dynamics. A wide variety of strums and rasgueados are possible, less energy is generally imparted to strings than with plectrum playing, leading to lower volume when playing acoustically. Playing on heavier gauge strings can damage nails, fingerstyle is more suited to nylon strings or lighter gauge steel strings Nylon string guitars are most frequently played fingerstyle. The term Classical guitar music can refer to any kind of art music played on a nylon string guitar, or more narrowly to music of the classical period, as opposed to baroque or romantic music. The major feature of classical fingerstyle technique is that it enables solo rendition of harmony, the technique is intended to maximise the degree of control over the musical dynamics, texture, volume and timbral characteristics of the guitar. Careful attention is paid to the posture of the player
5.
Slide guitar
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Slide guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the manner, an object called a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating smooth transitions in pitch and allowing wide, Slide guitar is most often played, With the guitar in the normal position, using a slide on one of the fingers of the left hand. This same technique is used to play steel guitar and the Dobro resonator guitar used in Bluegrass music. The technique of using a slide on a string has been traced to one-stringed African instruments similar to a Diddley bow, the technique was made popular by African American blues artists. The first musician recorded using the style was Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two solo pieces Guitar Blues and Guitar Rag in 1923, Blues legend Muddy Waters was also very influential, particularly in developing the electric Chicago blues slide guitar from the acoustic Mississippi Delta slide guitar. Texas blues musician Johnny Winter developed his style through years of touring with Waters. Slide player Roy Rogers honed his skills by touring with blues artist John Lee Hooker. John Lees cousin Earl Hooker may have been the first to use wah-wah, the sound has since become commonplace in country and Hawaiian music. The Rolling Stones featured a guitar as early as their 1963 recording of the John Lennon/Paul McCartney song I Wanna Be Your Man. Guitarist Brian Jones played slide in a very blues-oriented style, Jones was also one of the first English guitarists to play slide and during the bands early years, he was considered one of the best slide guitarists in the music world. His successors Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood also displayed their own slide guitar skills while with the band, the album Let It Bleed features Keith Richards on slide guitar for the majority of the album, since the band were in-between guitarists during the making of the album. Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger has also played guitar on occasion. Canned Heats Alan Wilson also helped bring slide guitar to music in the late 1960s. George Harrison experimented with slide guitar during the half of The Beatles career, first using the technique on an early outtake recording of Strawberry Fields Forever. The 1965 songs Drive My Car, and Run For Your Life have slide guitar, Harrison later used slide extensively in his solo career, on songs such as My Sweet Lord, Give Me Love, This Is Love, and Cheer Down. He played slide in the Traveling Wilburys as well as on The Beatles 1995 and 1996 reunion singles Free as a Bird, slides may be used on any guitar, but slides generally and steels in particular are often used on instruments specifically made to play in this manner. Often, the strings are raised a little higher off the fingerboard than they would be for conventional guitar playing—especially if the player isnt going to use the fingers for fretting
6.
Flute
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The flute is a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening, according to the instrument classification of Hornbostel–Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a player, flautist, flutist or, less commonly. Flutes are the earliest extant musical instruments, as paleolithic instruments with hand-bored holes have been found, a number of flutes dating to about 43,000 to 35,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Jura region of present-day Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe. Flutes, including the famous Bansuri, have been a part of Indian classical music since 1500 BC. A major deity of Hinduism, Krishna, has been associated with the flute, the English verb flout has the same linguistic root, and the modern Dutch verb fluiten still shares the two meanings. Attempts to trace the word back to the Latin flare have been pronounced phonologically impossible or inadmissable, the first known use of the word flute was in the 14th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this was in Geoffrey Chaucers The Hous of Fame, today, a musician who plays any instrument in the flute family can be called a flutist, or flautist, or simply a flute player. Flutist dates back to at least 1603, the earliest quote cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, flautist was used in 1860 by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Marble Faun, after being adopted during the 18th century from Italy, like many musical terms in England since the Italian Renaissance. Other English terms, now obsolete, are fluter and flutenist. The oldest flute ever discovered may be a fragment of the femur of a cave bear. In 2008 another flute dated back to at least 35,000 years ago was discovered in Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, the five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a vulture wing bone. The researchers involved in the officially published their findings in the journal Nature. The flute, one of several found, was found in the Hohle Fels cavern next to the Venus of Hohle Fels, on announcing the discovery, scientists suggested that the finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe. Scientists have also suggested that the discovery of the flute may help to explain the probable behavioural and cognitive gulf between Neanderthals and early modern human. A three-holed flute,18.7 cm long, made from a mammoth tusk was discovered in 2004, the earliest extant Chinese 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 and it is fashioned of lacquered bamboo with closed ends and has five stops that are at the flutes side instead of the top
7.
Chapman Stick
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The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords. Designed as a fully polyphonic chordal instrument, it can cover several of these musical parts simultaneously. A Stick looks like a version of the fretboard of an electric guitar. It is, however, considerably longer and wider than a guitar fretboard, unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings, rather than plucking them. Instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking, both hands sound notes by striking the strings against the fingerboard just behind the appropriate frets for the desired notes. For this reason, it can sound many more notes at once than some other stringed instruments and this arrangement lends itself to playing many lines at once, and many Stick players have mastered performing bass, chords and melody lines simultaneously. Typically, the Chapman Stick is held via a belt-hook and a shoulder strap, the player hooks the instrument onto the belt and places the head and dominant arm through the shoulder strap. The instrument then settles into a position approximately 30 to 40 degrees from vertical, the player then hammers onto the strings with the fingertips in the same way that one would strike a piano key. The technique is similar to that of the piano inasmuch as the player covers both bass and melody notes together with both hands, and each note is struck with one finger of one hand. Typically, one plays the melody on the treble strings. In recent years, a playing position has become somewhat popular wherein a cross-member is laid upon the knees of the seated player. In 1969, jazz guitarist Emmett Chapman developed the two-handed tapping technique, at the time, Chapman was playing a 9-string long-scale guitar, but decided to design and develop a new instrument for use with free hands to use the methods full potential. The Chapman Stick took five years to design and develop, during which Chapman also opted to set up a business to launch it as a commercially produced instrument. The first production model of the Stick was shipped in 1974 – on October 10 of the same year, former Weather Report bassist Alphonso Johnson was among the first musicians to introduce the Chapman Stick to the public. He would also use it with Liquid Tension Experiment and in sessions for bands including Pink Floyd, recently, Levin formed the band Stick Men, consisting solely of one drummer and two Stick players. Recordings that have been influential on Stick players include the 1981 King Crimson album Discipline, amy Grants hit single Angels also featured a Stick solo. The piece being played in the scene is from Emmett Chapmans recording of his original song Back Yard from a cassette recording, wayne Lytle, creator of Animusic, commented that on his piece Stick Figures, his inspiration for the semi-anthropomorphic bass guitar was the Chapman Stick
8.
Banjo
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The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
9.
Dobro
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The word Dobro is, in popular usage, the generic term for a wood-bodied, single cone resonator guitar. It is also an American brand of guitar, currently owned by the Gibson Guitar Corporation. The Dobro was originally made by the Dopyera brothers when they formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company and their design, with a single inverted resonator, was introduced in competition to the patented Tricone and biscuit designs produced by the National String Instrument Corporation. The Dobro name appeared on other instruments, notably electric lap steel guitars and solid body electric guitars, Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired the Dobro trademark in 1994. Although the name Dobro is generically associated with the single-inverted-cone design, the name originated in 1928 when the Dopyera brothers, John and Emil, formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company. Dobro is both a contraction of Dopyera brothers and a word meaning goodness or goodwill in their native Slovak, an early company motto was Dobro means good in any language. The Dobro was the third resonator guitar design by John Dopyera, the inventor of the resonator guitar, unlike his earlier tricone design, the Dobro had a single resonator cone and it was inverted, with its concave surface facing up. The Dobro company described this as a bowl shaped resonator, the Dobro was louder than the tricone and cheaper to produce. In Dopyeras opinion, the cost of manufacture had priced the resonator guitar beyond the reach of many players and his failure to convince his fellow directors at the National String Instrument Corporation to produce a single-cone version was part of his motivation for leaving. Since National had applied for a patent on the single cone, in the following years both Dobro and National built a wide variety of metal- and wood-bodied single-cone guitars, while National also continued with the Tricone for a time. Both companies sourced many components from National director Adolph Rickenbacher, by 1934, the Dopyera brothers had gained control of both National and Dobro, and they merged the companies to form the National-Dobro Corporation. From the outset, wooden bodies had been sourced from existing guitar manufacturers, Dobro had granted Regal a license to manufacture resonator instruments. By 1937, it was the manufacturer, and the license was officially made exclusive. Regal continued to manufacture and sell resonator instruments under many names, including Regal, Dobro, Old Kraftsman, however, they ceased all resonator guitar production following the United States entry into World War II in 1941. Emil Dopyera manufactured Dobros from 1959 under the brand name Doperas Original before selling the company, Moseley merged it with his Mosrite guitar company and manufactured Dobros for a time. Meanwhile, in 1967, Rudy and Emil Dopyera formed the Original Musical Instrument Company to manufacture resonator guitars, however, in 1970, they again acquired the Dobro name—Mosrite having gone into temporary liquidation. The Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired OMI in 1993, along with the Dobro name and they renamed the company Original Acoustic Instruments and moved production to Nashville. Gibson now uses the name Dobro only for models with the design that the original Dobro Manufacturing Company used
10.
Launceston, Tasmania
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Launceston is a city in the north of Tasmania, Australia at the junction of the North Esk and South Esk rivers where they become the Tamar River. Launceston is the second largest city in Tasmania after Hobart, with a population of 86,633, Launceston is the twelfth-largest non-capital city in Australia. It is the inland city in Tasmania. Settled by Europeans in March 1806, Launceston is one of Australias oldest cities and is home to historic buildings. Like many Australian places, it was named after a town in the United Kingdom – in this case, Launceston, the city has a temperate climate with four distinct seasons. Local government is split between the City of Launceston and the Meander Valley and West Tamar Councils, the first inhabitants of the area of Launceston were largely nomadic Aboriginal Tasmanians believed to have been part of the North Midlands Tribe. The first white visitors did not arrive until 1798, when George Bass and they originally landed in Port Dalrymple,40 kilometres to the north-west of Launceston. A few weeks later, the settlement was moved across the river to York Town, the name still survives in the tiny hamlet of Patersonia 18 kilometres north-west of Launceston. Paterson himself also served as Lieutenant-Governor of northern Van Diemens Land from 1804 to 1808, by 1827, Launcestons population had climbed to 2,000 and the town had become an export centre, mainly for the colonys northern pastoral industry. Small hotels and breweries began to emerge in the 1820s, before larger, sporting groups, political groups, churches and schools were often established in these hotels, however, they also hosted plays, musical soirees and readings, until theatres were built. Newer popular team sports such as cricket and football failed to be sustained in Launceston before the population grew substantially, the sports were initially middle class recreations, as the working class found it difficult to participate after a six-day working week. Nevertheless, a demand for facilities lead to the upgrade of the Northern Tasmanian Cricket Association Ground amongst other sporting facilities in the 1860s, not long beforehand, Tasmania played Victoria in Australias first first-class cricket match at the NTCA Ground in 1851. Tin was discovered at Mount Bischoff in 1871 in north-western Tasmania, gold mining commenced approximately 50 kilometres away in Beaconsfield in 1877. During the following two decades Launceston grew from a town into an urban centre. In 1889, Launceston was the town in Tasmania to be declared a city. Launceston is at 41°26′31″S 147°8′42″E in the Tamar Valley, Northern Tasmania, the valley was formed by volcanic and glacial forces over 10 million years ago. The city is approximately 45 kilometres south of the Bass Strait, with its closest neighbour-city being Devonport, Launceston combines steep ridges and low-lying areas. As a result, areas of Launceston are subject to problems, while others are liable to poor drainage
