1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
Cat Stevens
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Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, humanitarian, and education philanthropist. His 1967 debut album reached the top 10 in the UK, and his albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat were both certified triple platinum in the US by the RIAA. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and his 1972 album Catch Bull at Four spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and fifteen weeks at number one in the Australian ARIA Charts. He earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in 2005 and 2006 for The First Cut Is the Deepest, and his other hit songs include Father and Son, Wild World, Peace Train, Moonshadow, and Morning Has Broken. In 2007 he received the British Academys Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection, in December 1977, Stevens converted to Islam, and he adopted the name Yusuf Islam the following year. In 1979, he auctioned all his guitars for charity and left his career to devote himself to educational. He was embroiled in a controversy regarding comments he made in 1989 about the death fatwa on author Salman Rushdie. He has received two doctorates and awards for promoting peace from two organisations founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. In 2006, he returned to pop music – releasing his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, with that release and subsequent ones, he dropped the surname Islam from the album cover art – using the stage name Yusuf as a mononym. In 2009, he released the album Roadsinger, and in 2014, he released the album Tell Em Im Gone and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. His second North American tour since his resurgence, featuring 12 shows in intimate venues, steven Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Greek Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou, and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman. He had a sister, Anita, and a brother. All family members worked in the restaurant and his parents divorced when he was about eight years old, but they continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it. Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School, Macklin Street, which was closer to his fathers business on Drury Lane. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords. Inspired by the popularity of the Beatles, at 15 he extended his interest to the guitar, persuaded his father to pay £8 for his first instrument, Stevens emphasised that the advent of West Side Story in particular affected him, giving him a different view of life. He attended other local West End schools, where he says he was constantly in trouble and he was called the artist boy and mentions that I was beat up, but I was noticed. He went on to take a course of study at Hammersmith School of Art
3.
Minneapolis
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Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County, and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2015, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor the second-largest economic center in the Midwest, after Chicago. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul. It was once the worlds flour milling capital and a hub for timber, the city and surrounding region is the primary business center between Chicago and Seattle, with Minneapolis proper containing Americas fifth-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies. As an integral link to the economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city. Noted for its music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the award-winning Guthrie Theater and the historic First Avenue nightclub. The name Minneapolis is attributed to Charles Hoag, the citys first schoolteacher, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, and polis, Dakota Sioux had long been the regions sole residents when French explorers arrived around 1680. For a time relations were based on fur trading, gradually more European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Dakota. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired this territory from France, fort Snelling was built in 1819 by the United States Army, and it attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized present-day Minneapolis as a town in 1856 on the Mississippis west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago. It later joined with the city of St. Anthony in 1872. Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River, forests in northern Minnesota were a valuable resource for the lumber industry, which operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes. Due to the hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s. The farmers of the Great Plains grew grain that was shipped by rail to the citys thirty-four flour mills, a father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from the Hungarians by William de la Barre, pillsbury Company across the river were barely a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to immediately use the new methods. The hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable, not until later did consumers discover the value in the bran that Minneapolis
4.
Ardent Studios
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Ardent Studios is a recording studio located in Memphis, Tennessee. Ardent Records/Ardent Music is the in-house label, Ardent Studios was founded by John Fry and was initially a studio in his familys garage, where he recorded his first Ardent Records 45s. In 1966 the operation moved into a new building on Memphis National Street. The original equipment came from the operation, Altec tube console, Ampex 2-track, Pultec EQ. Tom Dowd was consulting with Auditronics on an early multitrack console for nearby Stax Records, next came a Scully 4-track, and the first EMT plate reverbs in the area. In 1971, Ardent Studios moved to its present location on Madison Avenue, followed by the acquisition of 24-track recorders, bigger consoles, Ardent came to have three studios equipped, all with large format Neve and SSL desks alongside Pro Tools rigs. It is managed by Jody Stephens -- an early Ardent group whose first two appeared on Ardent Records label in the early 1970s. All three Big Star albums were named in Rolling Stones Top 500 albums of all time, and “In The Street, ” from their first album, became the theme for “That 70s Show. ”Early on, the studio recorded Sam & Dave, Led Zeppelin, Isaac Hayes, Leon Russell and The Staples Singers, and in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s recorded James Taylor, ZZ Top, R. E. M. George Thorogood, The Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh, to date, Ardent has recorded over 70 gold and platinum albums and singles. Official site Discography of albums recorded at Ardent
5.
Folk rock
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It has also been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain and gave rise to the genre of folk punk. By the 1980s the genre was in decline in popularity. When English bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s defined themselves as electric folk they were making a distinction with the existing folk rock. Folk rock was what they had already been producing, American or American style singer-songwriter material played on instruments, as undertaken by Bob Dylan. They drew the distinction because they were focusing on indigenous songs, the result of this hybridisation was an exchange of specific features drawn from Traditional music and Rock music. For example, electric folk groups, while using traditional material as their source for lyrics and tunes. In the same year, The Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, the Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the Californian band The Byrds, who began playing folk-influenced material and Bob Dylan compositions with rock instrumentation. The Byrds recording of Dylans Mr Tambourine Man was released in April 1965 and reached #1 on the U. S. and UK singles charts, setting off the mid-1960s folk rock movement. The Beatles late 1965 album, Rubber Soul, contained a number of songs clearly influenced by the American folk rock boom, such as Nowhere Man and If I Needed Someone. Folk rock became an important genre among emerging English bands, particularly those in the London club scene towards the end of the 1960s. Like the American revival, it was often overtly left wing in its politics, most important among their responses were the foundation of folk clubs in major towns, starting with London where MacColl began the Ballads and Blues Club in 1953. These clubs were usually urban in location, but the songs sung in them often hearkened back to a rural pre-industrial past, in many ways this was the adoption of abandoned popular music by the middle classes. This meant that there were, by the later 1960s, a group of performers with musical skill and knowledge of a variety of traditional songs. The result was an interpretation of the song A Sailors Life. The rapid expansion of electric folk that followed in the wake of Liege, five Hand Reel a band formed out of the remnants of Spencers Feat proved to be one of the more successful and influential folk rock bands. Releasing 4 albums with Topic/RCA records they were popular in Europe. He then quit that and eventually formed the Albion Country Band, later the Albion Band, a much smaller group of English bands were formed in emulation of existing electric rock bands. Fiddlers Dram were often dismissed as one hit wonders for their single Day Trip to Bangor, most of their career, from that point until they disbanded in 1979, was one of declining profile and sales
6.
Electronic musical instrument
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An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronics. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical signal that ultimately drives a loudspeaker. An electronic instrument might include a user interface for controlling its sound, often by adjusting the pitch, frequency, all electronic musical instruments can be viewed as a subset of audio signal processing applications. Simple electronic musical instruments are called sound effects, the border between sound effects and actual musical instruments is often hazy. Electronic musical instruments are now used in most styles of music. Development of new musical instruments, controllers, and synthesizers continues to be a highly active. In the 18th-century, musicians and composers adapted a number of instruments to exploit the novelty of electricity. The former instrument consisted of an instrument of over 700 strings. The latter was an instrument with plectra activated electrically. However, neither instrument used electricity as a sound-source, the first electric synthesizer was invented in 1876 by Elisha Gray. The Musical Telegraph used steel reeds oscillated by electromagnets and transmitted over a telephone line, Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, which consisted of a diaphragm vibrating in a magnetic field. A significant invention, which later had an effect on electronic music, was the audion in 1906. This was the first thermionic valve, or vacuum tube and which led to the generation and amplification of signals, radio broadcasting. Other early synthesizers included the Telharmonium, the Theremin, Jörg Magers Spharophon and Partiturophone, Taubmanns similar Electronde, Maurice Martenots ondes Martenot, only two models of this latter were built and the only surviving example is currently stored at the Lomonosov University in Moscow. It has been used in many Russian movies—like Solaris—to produce unusual, Hugh Le Caine, John Hanert, Raymond Scott, composer Percy Grainger, and others built a variety of automated electronic-music controllers during the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1959 Daphne Oram produced a method of synthesis, her Oramics technique, driven by drawings on a 35 mm film strip. In 1897 Thaddeus Cahill patented an instrument called the Telharmonium, using tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis, it was capable of producing any combination of notes and overtones, at any dynamic level. This technology was used to design the Hammond organ
7.
Electronic music
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In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer. During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for instruments were composed. Musique concrète, created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds, Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953. Electronic music was created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s. An important new development was the advent of computers for the purpose of composing music, algorithmic composition was first demonstrated in Australia in 1951. In America and Europe, live electronics were pioneered in the early 1960s, during the 1970s to early 1980s, the monophonic Minimoog became once the most widely used synthesizer at that time in both popular and electronic art music. In the 1980s, electronic music became dominant in popular music, with a greater reliance on synthesizers, and the adoption of programmable drum machines. Electronically produced music became prevalent in the domain by the 1990s. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Today, pop music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments and these initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments, while some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium accurately synthesized the sound of orchestral instruments. It achieved viable public interest and made progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments, ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery. They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises, developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified, and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin, ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s, from the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger to adopt them
8.
Polyphony and monophony in instruments
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Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple notes simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic, instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic. A monophonic synthesizer or monosynth is a synthesizer that produces one note at a time. Well-known monosynths include the Minimoog, the Roland TB-303, and the Korg Prophecy, duophonic synthesizers, such as the ARP Odyssey and Formanta Polivoks built in the 1970s and 1980s respectively, have a capability to independently play two pitches at a time. These synthesizers have at least two oscillators that are controllable, and a duophonic keyboard that can generate two control voltage signals for the lowest- and highest-note. When two or more keys are pressed simultaneously, the lowest- and highest-note will be heard, when only one key is pressed, both oscillators are assigned to one note, possibly with a more complex sound. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were built in the late-1930s, but the concept did not become popular until the mid-1970s, harald Bodes Warbo Formant Orguel, developed in 1937, was an archetype of a voice allocation polyphonic synthesizer. Novachord by Hammond Organ Company, released in 1939, is a product of frequency divider organs. It uses octave divider technology to generate polyphony, and about 1,000 Novachords were manufactured until 1942, using an octave divider a synthesizer needs only 12 oscillators - one for each note in the musical scale. The additional notes are generated by dividing down the outputs of these oscillators, to produce a note one octave lower, the frequency of the oscillator is divided by two. Polyphony is achieved so long as one of each note in the scale is played simultaneously. One notable early polyphonic synthesizer was the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, six-voice polyphony was standard by the middle 1980s. With the advent of synthesizers, 16-voice polyphony became standard by the late 1980s. 64-voice polyphony was common by the middle 1990s and 128-note polyphony arrived shortly after, there are several reasons for providing such large numbers of simultaneous notes, Even with only ten fingers, it is possible to play more than ten notes at once. Notes may continue to sound even after a key is released, the synthesizers resources may still be in use to produce the sound of the previously struck notes tapering off, especially when a sustain pedal is used. A sound may be generated by more than one oscillator or sound-source to allow more complicated sounds to be produced, a synthesizer with 16 oscillators may be capable of 16-note polyphony only when simple, single-oscillator sounds are produced. If a particular patch requires four oscillators, then the synthesizer is only capable of four-note polyphony, synthesizers may be configured to produce multiple timbres, particularly necessary when sounds are layered or sequenced. Multitimbral instruments are always polyphonic but polyphonic instruments are not necessarily multitimbral, some multitimbral instruments have a feature which allows the user to specify the amount of polyphony reserved or allowed for each timbre
9.
Techno
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Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States during the mid-to-late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno in reference to a genre of music was in 1988. Many styles of techno now exist, but Detroit techno is seen as the foundation upon which a number of subgenres have been built. Added to this is the influence of futuristic and fictional themes relevant to life in American late capitalist society, pioneering producer Juan Atkins cites Tofflers phrase techno rebels as inspiring him to use the word techno to describe the musical style he helped to create. This unique blend of influences aligns techno with the referred to as afrofuturism. To producers such as Derrick May, the transference of spirit from the body to the machine is often a central preoccupation, in this manner, techno dance music defeats what Adorno saw as the alienating effect of mechanisation on the modern consciousness. Stylistically, techno is generally repetitive instrumental music, oftentimes produced for use in a continuous DJ set, the tempo tends to vary between approximately 120 to 150 beats per minute, depending on the style of techno. The creative use of production technology, such as drum machines, synthesizers. Many producers use retro electronic musical devices to create what they consider to be an authentic techno sound, drum machines from the 1980s such as Rolands TR-808 and TR-909 are highly prized, and software emulations of such retro technology are popular among techno producers. The Electrifying Mojo was the first radio DJ to play music by the Detroit techno producers Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Mojo refused to follow pre-established radio formats or playlists, and he promoted social and cultural awareness of the African American community. In exploring technos origins writer Kodwo Eshun maintains that Kraftwerk are to Techno what Muddy Waters is to the Rolling Stones, the authentic, the origin, the real. Juan Atkins has acknowledged that he had an enthusiasm for Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder, particularly Moroders work with Donna Summer. Atkins also mentions that around 1980 I had a tape of nothing but Kraftwerk, Telex, Devo, Giorgio Moroder and Gary Numan, and Id ride around in my car playing it. Regarding his initial impression of Kraftwerk, Atkins notes that they were clean, Derrick May identified the influence of Kraftwerk and other European synthesizer music in commenting that it was just classy and clean, and to us it was beautiful, like outer space. Living around Detroit, there was so little beauty, everything is an ugly mess in Detroit, and so we were attracted to this music. May has commented that he considered his music a direct continuation of the European synthesizer tradition and he also identified Japanese synthpop act Yellow Magic Orchestra, particularly member Ryuichi Sakamoto, and British band Ultravox, as influences, along with Kraftwerk. In 1980 or 1981 they met with Mojo and proposed that they provide mixes for his show, which they did end up doing the following year. These young promoters developed and nurtured the local music scene by both catering to the tastes of the local audience of young people and by marketing parties with new DJs
10.
Hip hop music
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It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements, MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records, while often used to refer solely to rapping, hip hop more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. Hip hops early evolution occurred as sampling technology and drum machines became available and affordable. Turntablist techniques such as scratching and beatmatching developed along with the breaks and Jamaican toasting, rapping developed as a vocal style in which the artist speaks or chants along rhythmically with an instrumental or synthesized beat. The Sugarhill Gangs 1979 song Rappers Delight is widely regarded to be the first hip hop record to gain popularity in the mainstream. The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the genre developed more complex styles, prior to the 1980s, hip hop music was largely confined within the United States. However, during the 1980s, it began to spread to scenes in dozens of countries. New school hip hop was the wave of hip hop music, originating in 1983–84 with the early records of Run-D. M. C. The Golden age hip hop period was a period between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. Notable artists from this era include the Juice Crew, Public Enemy, & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions and KRS-One, EPMD, Slick Rick, Beastie Boys, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest. Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop that often focuses on the violent lifestyles, in the West Coast hip hop style, G-funk dominated mainstream hip hop for several years during the 1990s. I. G. In the 1990s, hip hop began to diversify with other regional styles emerging, such as Southern rap, at the same time, hip hop continued to be assimilated into other genres of popular music, examples being Neo soul and nu metal. Hip hop became a pop music genre in the mid-1990s. The popularity of hip hop music continued through the 2000s, with hip hop influences also increasingly finding their way into mainstream pop, the United States also saw the success of regional styles such as crunk, a Southern genre that emphasized the beats and music more than the lyrics. Starting in 2005, sales of hip hop music in the United States began to severely wane, during the mid-2000s, alternative hip hop secured a place in the mainstream, due in part to the crossover success of artists such as OutKast and Kanye West. Creation of the hip hop is often credited to Keith Cowboy, rapper with Grandmaster Flash. However, Lovebug Starski, Keith Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was known as disco rap. Cowboy later worked the hip hop cadence into a part of his stage performance, the first use of the term in print was in The Village Voice, by Steven Hager, later author of a 1984 history of hip hop
