Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that has six strings. It is played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger/fingernails of one hand, while fretting with the fingers of the other hand; the sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning; the modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, the archtop guitar, sometimes called a "jazz guitar"; the tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber.
The classical guitar is played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive finger-picking technique where each string is plucked individually by the player's fingers, as opposed to being strummed. The term "finger-picking" can refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the United States; the acoustic bass guitar is a low-pitched instrument, one octave below a regular guitar. Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker that both makes the sound of the instrument loud enough for the performers and audience to hear, given that it produces an electric signal when played, that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone using an equalizer and a huge variety of electronic effects units, the most used ones being distortion and reverb. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but solid wood guitars began to dominate during the 1960s and 1970s, as they are less prone to unwanted acoustic feedback "howls"; as with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of electric guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars, which are used in rock music.
The loud, amplified sound and sonic power of the electric guitar played through a guitar amp has played a key role in the development of blues and rock music, both as an accompaniment instrument and performing guitar solos, in many rock subgenres, notably heavy metal music and punk rock. The electric guitar has had a major influence on popular culture; the guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, country, folk, jota, metal, reggae, rock and many forms of pop. Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, a flat back, most with incurved sides." The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and in the Americas. A 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of a chordophone and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing an instrument that has a strong resemblance to the guitar, indicating a possible Babylonian origin for the guitar.
The modern word guitar, its antecedents, has been applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times and as such causes confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα. Which comes from the Persian word "sihtar"; this pattern of naming is visible in setar and sitar. The word "tar" at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means "string". Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. Although the development of the earliest "guitars" is lost in the history of medieval Spain, two instruments are cited as their most influential predecessors, the European lute and its cousin, the four-string oud. At least two instruments called "guitars" were in use in Spain by 1200: the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca; the guitarra morisca had a rounded back, wide fingerboard, several sound holes.
The guitarra Latina had a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers "moresca" or "morisca" and "latina" had been dropped, these two cordophones were referred to as guitars; the Spanish vihuela, called in Italian the "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is considered to have been the single most important influence in the development of the baroque guitar. It had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a cut waist, it was larger than the contemporary four-course guitars. By the 16th century, the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guita
5uu's
The 5uu's were an American avant-rock group founded in Los Angeles, California in 1984 by drummer-composer Dave Kerman. The group released their first album in 1986 and recorded a second in 1988 with Motor Totemist Guild, a similar band from the area; the two groups made two albums. When U Totem split up in 1994, the 5uu went on to make two more albums. In 2000 the band became known as Dave Kerman/5uu's and released a further two albums under this name; the 5uu's were influenced by the European Rock in Opposition movement of the late 1970s and created, along with other groups like Thinking Plague and Hail, an "American version of RIO". While in high school, Dave Kerman formed a garage band with guitarist Greg Conway and bassist Jon Beck, they soon switched to experimenting with noise music. In 1976 the band played at a Greenpeace Festival in San Diego, calling themselves, "Farmer Fred Genuflects to A-440". While their performance did not go down well, one concert goer recognised potential and suggested they listen to Henry Cow and Faust.
These new influences prompted Kerman to explore new compositional techniques and he soon accumulated a collection of experimental songs. He added pop singer Curt Wilson to the band, who ran a recording studio, calling themselves the "5uu's", they began recording Bel Marduk & Tiamat in 1984; the album, based on the concept of Babylonian cosmology, took two years to complete and was released in 1986 on their own label. They released a single, "Bar Code" comprising the songs "Misery Loves Company" and "Hot & Cold Frog". Ex-Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler of the British record label Recommended Records, always on the lookout for new talent and distributed Bel Marduk & Tiamat, giving the band much needed exposure. Interest in the 5uu's resulted in several concert invitations and radio broadcasts in the Los Angeles area. Adding keyboardist Sanjay Kumar to the line-up, the band's first concert in late 1986 took place in Torrance, followed a few months by their first radio broadcast on KXLU college radio.
It was during these concerts that the 5uu's became acquainted with a band not unlike themselves, Motor Totemists Guild from Orange County, led by James Grigsby. The two bands collaborated on the 5uu's's next album, released on Motor Totemists Guild's own label, Rotary Totem Records in 1988, it was released on Recommended Records. After recording Elements, the 5uu's and Motor Totemists Guild merged in 1988 to form U Totem to play at the Frankfurt Art Rock Festival in Germany. U Totem went on to make two albums for Cuneiform Records; when U Totem split up in 1994, Kerman reformed the 5uu's with Kumar and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer Bob Drake from Thinking Plague, they recorded Hunger's Teeth, released in 1994. In 1995 Kerman and Drake moved into an old unoccupied farm house in Caudeval in southern France owned by Chris Cutler and ex-Henry Cow sound engineer EM Thomas. Cutler and Thomas had purchased the farm a few years earlier with a view to using it as a recording studio. Kerman and Drake undertook the task of renovating and converting the farm house, it was named Studio Midi-Pyrenees, with Drake the resident engineer/producer.
There the 5uu's recorded Crisis in Clay, released in 1997. In 1995 the band, with Thinking Plague guitarist Mike Johnson, undertook two live tours in Europe. Kerman returned to the United States in 1999, the 5uu's, now Kerman, bass player Keith Macksoud and Thinking Plague vocalist Deborah Perry recorded Regarding Purgatories, released in 2000; as this was a solo effort by Kerman the album was credited to "Dave Kerman/5uu's". In 2000 Kerman relocated to Tel Aviv in Israel. In Koomran's house between November 2000 and January 2001, Kerman and Perry, recorded Abandonship, released in 2002 and credited to "Dave Kerman/5uu's". In May 2004, Dave Kerman/5uu's regrouped again in Israel, this time comprising Kerman, Cutler, Perry and Janet Feder on prepared guitar. At the Ginger Studio in Tel Aviv they recorded three tracks, "Bulldozer", "Resolve" and "Community", making extensive use of the studio to manipulate and cut-and-paste sounds. "Bulldozer" included news commentary from Israel's incursion into the Palestinian territories and a real bulldozer played the final solo.
"Resolve" used cut-up and resequenced words that Perry had sung on their previous album, Abandonship. The three tracks were released as an online download-only EP entitled "Tel Aviv Construction Events 1–3"; the band's name was taken from the nomenclature of a defunct Los Angeles street gang whose graffiti appeared on buildings throughout much of the city at the time. The dates below indicate the years. Dave Kerman – drums, guitar, vocals Greg Conway – guitar Jon Beck – bass guitar Curt Wilson – vocals Randy Coleman – guitar Chuck Turner – keyboards Ken Ando – guitar Scott Brazieal – tour keyboards Mike Johnson – tour guitar Mark Smoot – tour guitar Keith Macksoud – bass Sanjay Kumar – keyboards Bob Drake – guitar, bass guitar, violin Deborah Perry – vocals Udi Koomran – sound Dror Feiler – contrabass saxophone Chris Cutler – electronic drums Bel Marduk & Tiamat Elements Hunger's Teeth Crisis in Clay (1997, CD, R
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, except with a longer neck and scale length, four to six strings or courses. The four-string bass is tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar, it is played with the fingers or thumb, or striking with a pick. The electric bass guitar has pickups and must be connected to an amplifier and speaker to be loud enough to compete with other instruments. Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary from one style of music to another, the bassist plays a similar role: anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. Many styles of music include the bass guitar, it is a soloing instrument. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, an "Electric bass guitar a Guitar with four heavy strings tuned E1'-A1'-D2-G2."
It defines bass as "Bass. A contraction of Double bass or Electric bass guitar." According to some authors the proper term is "electric bass". Common names for the instrument are "bass guitar", "electric bass guitar", "electric bass" and some authors claim that they are accurate; the bass guitar is a transposing instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds. In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally; the 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's electronic musical instrument company, featured his "Model 736 Bass Fiddle", a four-stringed, solid-bodied, fretted electric bass guitar with a 30 1⁄2-inch scale length, a single pick up. The adoption of a guitar's body shape made the instrument easier to hold and transport than any of the existing stringed bass instruments; the addition of frets enabled bassists to play in tune more than on fretless acoustic or electric upright basses.
Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period. Audiovox sold their “Model 236” bass amplifier. Around 1947, Tutmarc's son, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L. D. Heater Music Company wholesale jobber catalogue of 1948. However, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success. In the 1950s, Leo Fender and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar; the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass in October 1951. The "P-bass" evolved from a simple, un-contoured "slab" body design and a single coil pickup similar to that of a Telecaster, to something more like a Fender Stratocaster, with a contoured body design, edges beveled for comfort, a split single coil pickup; the "Fender Bass" was a revolutionary new instrument for gigging musicians. In comparison with the large, heavy upright bass, the main bass instrument in popular music from the early 1900s to the 1940s, the bass guitar could be transported to shows.
When amplified, the bass guitar was less prone than acoustic basses to unwanted audio feedback. In 1953 Monk Montgomery became the first bassist to tour with the Fender bass guitar, in Lionel Hampton's postwar big band. Montgomery was possibly the first to record with the bass guitar, on July 2, 1953 with The Art Farmer Septet. Roy Johnson, Shifty Henry, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from upright bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957; the bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, many early pioneers of the instrument, such as Carol Kaye, Joe Osborn, Paul McCartney were guitarists. In 1953, following Fender's lead, Gibson released the first short-scale violin-shaped electric bass, with an extendable end pin so a bassist could play it upright or horizontally. Gibson renamed the bass the EB-1 in 1958. In 1958, Gibson released the maple arched-top EB-2 described in the Gibson catalogue as a "hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics".
In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass. The EB-0 was similar to a Gibson SG in appearance. Whereas Fender basses had pickups mounted in positions in between the base of the neck and the top of the bridge, many of Gibson's early basses featured one humbucking pickup mounted directly against the neck pocket; the EB-3, introduced in 1961 had a "mini-humbucker" at the bridge position. Gibson basses tended to be smaller, sleeker instruments with a shorter scale length than the Precision. A number of other companies began manufacturing bass guitars during the 1950s: Kay in 1952, Hofner and Danelectro in 1956, Rickenbacker in 1957 and Burns/Supersound in 1958. 1956 saw the appearance at the German trade fair "Musikmesse Frankfurt" of the distinctive Höfner 500/1 violin-shaped bass made using violin construction techniques by Walter Höfner, a second-generation violin luthier. The design was known popularly as the "Beat
Bob Drake (musician)
Bob Drake is an American multi-instrumentalist musician and recording engineer. He was a founding member of the avant-rock band Thinking Plague in the early 1980s, a member of the 5uu's, Hail and The Science Group, he formed his own band, Bob Drake's Cabinet of Curiosities in 2007. Drake's engineering credits include mainstream artists like Ice Cube, Tina Turner and Engelbert Humperdinck. Drake has released a number of solo albums, all written and recorded by himself. François Couture at AllMusic described each successive album as "a more twisted aural journey than the previous one". Bob Drake was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 6, 1957, spent his youth in Watseka, Illinois. There he taught himself how to play guitar and drums, but after hearing Yes's Fragile in 1972, Drake decided he wanted to be a bassist and bought himself a Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar, which he still uses today. Henry Cow had a big influence on him: "hey were doing something I felt was a lot closer to what I was imagining I'd like to do –'complex' intricate songs and arrangements, noisy things going on which fit organically in the music, less emphasis on'perfect' studio overcooked impersonal perfection."Drake experimented with recording techniques and "warped rock", but soon found that no one was interested in "new and strange music" in his rural Midwestern home town.
He moved to Denver, Colorado in 1978 where he worked for a while as a sound engineer on B horror movie sets. He spent time recording local underground bands and playing bass guitar and drums with some of them. Drake put an advertisement at a local music store requesting a guitar player "into Henry Cow, Yes …", met up with experimental rock guitarist and composer Mike Johnson. Drake and Johnson played in a few cover bands before forming Thinking Plague in 1982. By 1990 Thinking Plague had recorded three albums and established a name for themselves in progressive circles. In the late 1980s the Denver music scene "just evaporated" as musicians seeking "greener pastures" moved elsewhere. Drake, "flat broke" at the time, moved to Los Angeles. There he established a name for himself working with several mainstream artists like Ice Cube, Tina Turner and Engelbert Humperdinck. During this time he formed an alternative rock group, Hail with ex-Thinking Plague's singer Susanne Lewis, joined Dave Kerman's avant rock group, the 5uu's.
Hunger's Teeth, the 5uu's' third album was praised for its "challenging music" and "production values", made Drake a "sought-after engineer and collaborator". Drake released his first solo album, What Day is It? in 1994. It was a limited edition self released record, he made five more solo albums, which were all released on ex-Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler's UK independent record label, Recommended Records. In 1994 Drake and Kerman moved to an old farm house owned by Cutler and Henry Cow's sound engineer EM Thomas in Caudeval, southern France, they converted it into a studio. Drake worked with Cutler on a number of projects for Recommended Records, including the remastering of several albums and box sets, for example The Art Box and The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set, he joined Cutler's avant-rock band The Science Group in 1997, in which he played and engineered/produced the group's two albums. Drake continued to work off in the 2000s with Thinking Plague and the 5uu's. In 2007 he formed his own group, Bob Drake's Cabinet of Curiosities to perform material from his solo albums live on stage.
The group comprised Drake, David Campbell and Jason DuMars. They played at NEARfest in Pennsylvania in June 2007 with guests Olivier Tejedor and Lynnette Shelley. Drake recorded six solo albums between 1994 and 2005. Musician and writer Dominique Leone at Pitchfork Media described them as "idiosyncratic to a fault", with songs unlike anything else he has heard. Drake plays all the instruments himself, the music has elements of progressive rock, country/blues and "bizarro pop". Drake said that his first album, What Day is It? was influenced by "the climate, the deserts, the dusty hills around L. A.", that his next one, Little Black Train an instrumental album, was "dirtier and messier" than the first. Medallion Animal Carpet consisted of different musical ideas strung together around a "medley of noisy country-ish songs", The Skull Mailbox and Other Horrors, recorded in a barn, was a collection of little "horror songs" played on a nylon stringed classical guitar and a "cheap little organ". Leone described Skull Mailbox as a "folk-horror-avant-semi-classical hybrid", a "mix of psychological stress, garage-symphony grandeur and folk-ish retelling of familiar horror stories".
He described The Shunned Country as a "rural horror story", saying that the 40-minute album contains 52 brief tracks that "employ as tight a form into the most compact space as possible". Banjos feature prominently that sound like "macabre-sentimental fanfares, Deliverance in the hands of Hitchcock". What Day is It? Little Black Train Medallion Animal Carpet The Skull Mailbox and Other Horrors 13 Songs and a Thing The Shunned Country Bob's Drive-In Lawn Ornaments...come at once, ANTIQUITIES! – box set contain
Vibraphone
The vibraphone is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family. It consists of tuned metal bars, is played by holding two or four soft mallets and striking the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a vibraharpist; the vibraphone resembles the xylophone and glockenspiel, one of the main differences between it and these instruments being that each bar is paired with a resonator tube that has a motor-driven butterfly valve at its upper end. The valves are mounted on a common shaft, which produces a vibrato effect while spinning; the vibraphone has a sustain pedal similar to that on a piano. With the pedal up, the bars produce a shortened sound. With the pedal down, they sound for several seconds; the vibraphone is used in jazz music, in which it plays a featured role and was a defining element of the sound of mid-20th-century "Tiki lounge" exotica, as popularized by Arthur Lyman. It is the second most popular solo keyboard percussion instrument in classical music, after the marimba, is part of the standard college-level percussion performance education.
It is a standard instrument in the modern percussion section for orchestras and concert bands. The first musical instrument called "vibraphone" was marketed by the Leedy Manufacturing Company in the United States in 1921. However, this instrument differed in significant details from the instrument now called the vibraphone; the Leedy vibraphone achieved a degree of popularity after it was used in the novelty recordings of "Aloha'Oe" and "Gypsy Love Song" by vaudeville performer Louis Frank Chiha. This popularity led J. C. Deagan, Inc. in 1927 to ask its Chief Tuner, Henry Schluter, to develop a similar instrument. However, Schluter didn't just copy the Leedy design, he introduced several significant improvements: making the bars from aluminium instead of steel for a more "mellow" basic tone. Schluter's design was more popular than the Leedy design, has become the template for all instruments now called vibraphone. However, when Deagan began marketing Schluter's instrument in 1928, they called it the vibraharp.
The name derived from similar aluminum bars that were mounted vertically and operated from the "harp" stop on a theatre organ. Since Deagan trademarked the name, others were obliged to use the earlier "vibraphone" for their instruments incorporating the newer design; the name confusion continues to the present, but over time vibraphone became more popular than vibraharp. By 1974, the Directory of the D. C. Federation of Musicians listed 3 vibraharp players; the initial purpose of the vibraphone was to add to the large arsenal of percussion sounds used by vaudeville orchestras for novelty effects. This use was overwhelmed in the 1930s by its development as a jazz instrument; as of 2015, it retains its use as a jazz instrument, is established as a major keyboard percussion instrument used for solos, in chamber ensembles, in modern orchestral compositions. The use of the vibraphone in jazz was pioneered by Paul Barbarin, the drummer with Luis Russell's band, his playing can be heard on recordings by Henry "Red" Allen from July 1929, Barbarin played on the first recordings by Louis Armstrong to feature the instrument – "Rockin' Chair" and "Song of the Islands".
The first classical composer to use the vibraphone in one of his pieces was Alban Berg, who used it prominently in his opera Lulu from 1937. Outside of the United States, the Premier Drum Company of London, after experimenting with a variety of aluminum bar instruments more related to the glockenspiel that were called variations of “harpaphone”, moved to the production of the Schluter vibraphone design. Bergerault, of Ligueil, France began manufacturing vibraphones in the 1930s. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, each manufacturer attracted its own following in various specialties, but the Deagan vibraphones were the models preferred by many of the emerging class of specialist jazz players. Deagan struck endorsement deals with many of the leading players, including Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson; the Deagan company went out of business in the 1980s. Yamaha continues to make percussion instruments based on Deagan designs. In 1948, the Musser Mallet Company was founded by Clair Omar Musser, a designer at Deagan.
The Musser company continues to manufacture vibraphones as part of the Ludwig Drum Company. The standard modern instrument has a range of three octaves, from the F below middle C. Larger three-and-a-half or four octave models from the C below middle C are becoming more common. Unlike its cousin the xylophone, it is a non-transposing instrument written at concert pitch. However, composers write parts to sound an octave higher. In the 1930s several manufacturers made soprano vibraphones with a range C4 to C7, notably the Ludwig & Ludwig model B110 and the Deagan model 144. Deagan made a portable model that had a 2 1⁄2 octave range and resonators made of cardboard; the major components of a vibraphone are the bars, damper mechanism and the frame. Vibraphones are played with mallets. Vibraphone bars are made from aluminum bar stock, cut into blanks of pre-de
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, carillons, which are housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term keyboard refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may be used to control dynamics, shading and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Another important use of the word keyboard is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be established. In the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, the early piano were in competition, the same piece might be played on more than one. Hence, in a phrase such as "Mozart excelled as a keyboard player," the word keyboard is all-inclusive.
The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ, invented in the third century BC. The keys were balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from the reference in a Latin poem by Claudian, who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu... intent, “let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty roarings with a light touch”. From its invention until the fourteenth century, the organ remained the only keyboard instrument; the organ did not feature a keyboard at all, but rather buttons or large levers operated by a whole hand. Every keyboard until the fifteenth century had seven naturals to each octave; the clavichord and the harpsichord appeared during the fourteenth century—the clavichord being earlier. The harpsichord and clavichord were both common until widespread adoption of the piano in the eighteenth century, after which their popularity decreased; the piano was revolutionary because a pianist could vary the volume of the sound by varying the vigor with which each key was struck.
The piano's full name is gravicèmbalo con piano e forte meaning harpsichord with soft and loud but can be shortened to piano-forte, which means soft-loud in Italian. In its current form, the piano is a product of the late nineteenth century, is far removed in both sound and appearance from the "pianos" known to Mozart and Beethoven. In fact, the modern piano is different from the 19th-century pianos used by Liszt and Brahms. See Piano history and musical performance. Keyboard instruments were further developed in the early twentieth century. Early electromechanical instruments, such as the Ondes Martenot, appeared early in the century; this was a important contribution to the keyboard's history. Much effort has gone into creating an instrument that sounds like the piano but lacks its size and weight; the electric piano and electronic piano were early efforts that, while useful instruments in their own right, did not convincingly reproduce the timbre of the piano. Electric and electronic organs were developed during the same period.
More recent electronic keyboard designs strive to emulate the sound of specific make and model pianos using digital samples and computer models. Each acoustic keyboard contains 88 keys. Weighted keys, found on electronic keyboards, are designed to simulate the resistance of a key on an acoustic keyboard, via pressurization. There are 4 types of weighted keys. Keybeds, or non-weighted keys place the weights within the base of the keyboard; the second type, Semi-weighted uses springs, the third type is hammer keys. Most electronic keyboards use the fourth type: graded simulate keys. Weighted keys are made of wood, or metal/wood substitute. Enharmonic keyboard Musical instrument Orchestrina di camera Piano Symphony Young, Percy M. Keyboard Musicians of the World. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1967. N. B.: Concerns celebrated keyboard players and the various such instruments used over the centuries. ISBN 0-200-71497-X The general keyboard in the age of MIDI Renaissance Keyboards on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Pianofortes of Bartolomeo Cristofori on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
