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
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer, but instead of generating new sounds with voltage-controlled oscillators, it uses sound recordings of real instrument sounds, excerpts from recorded songs or other sounds. The samples are recorded by the user or by a manufacturer; these sounds are played back by means of the sampler program itself, a MIDI keyboard, sequencer or another triggering device to perform or compose music. Because these samples are stored in digital memory, the information can be accessed. A single sample may be pitch-shifted to different pitches to produce musical scales and chords. Samplers offer filters, effects units, modulation via low frequency oscillation and other synthesizer-like processes that allow the original sound to be modified in many different ways. Most samplers have Multitimbrality capabilities – they can play back different sounds simultaneously. Many are polyphonic – they are able to play more than one note at the same time.
Prior to computer memory-based samplers, musicians used tape replay keyboards, which store recordings on analog tape. When a key is pressed the tape head plays a sound; the Mellotron was the most notable model, used by a number of groups in the late 1960s and the 1970s, but such systems were expensive and heavy due to the multiple tape mechanisms involved, the range of the instrument was limited to three octaves at the most. To change sounds a new set of tapes had to be installed in the instrument; the emergence of the digital sampler made sampling far more practical. The earliest digital sampling was done on the EMS Musys system, developed by Peter Grogono, David Cockerell and Peter Zinovieff at their London Studio c. 1969. The system ran on Digital Equipment PDP-8's; these had a pair of fast D/A and A/D converters, 12,000 bytes of core memory, backed up by a hard drive of 32k and by tape storage. EMS equipment was used to control the world's first digital studio, their earliest digital sampling was done on that system during 1971-1972 for Harrison Birtwistle's "Chronometer" released in 1975.
The first commercially available sampling synthesizer was the Computer Music Melodian by Harry Mendell, while the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer was the Australian-produced Fairlight CMI, first available in 1979. These early sampling synthesizers used wavetable sample-based synthesis. Since the 1980s, samplers have been using pulse-code modulation for digital sampling; the first PCM digital sampler was Toshiba's LMD-649, created in 1981 by engineer Kenji Murata for Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra, who used it for extensive sampling and looping in their 1981 album Technodelic. The LMD-649 played and recorded PCM samples at 12-bit audio depth and 50 kHz sampling rate, stored in 128 KB of dynamic RAM; the LMD-649 was used by other Japanese synthpop artists in the early 1980s, including Chiemi Manabe and Logic System. The E-mu SP-1200 percussion sampler, upon its release in August 1987, popularized the use of digital samplers within hip hop music in the late 1980s.
Akai pioneered many processing techniques, such as crossfade looping and "time stretch" to shorten or lengthen samples without affecting pitch and vice versa. The Akai MPC60, released in 1988, went on to become the most influential sampler in hip hop music. During the 1980s, hybrid synthesizers began to utilize short samples along with digital synthesis to create more realistic imitations of instruments than had been possible. Examples are the Korg M1, Roland U-110, Yamaha's SY series, the Kawai K series of instruments. Limiting factors at the time were the cost of physical memory and the limitations of external data storage devices, this approach made best use of the tiny amount of memory available to the design engineers; the 2010s-era music workstation uses sampling, whether simple playback or complex editing that matches all but the most advanced dedicated samplers, includes features such as a sequencer. Samplers, together with traditional Foley artists, are the mainstay of modern sound effects production.
Using digital techniques various effects can be pitch-shifted and otherwise altered in ways that would have required many hours when done with tape. A sampler is controlled by an attached music keyboard or other external MIDI controller or source; each note-message received by the sampler accesses a particular sample. Multiple samples are arranged across the keyboard, each assigned to a note or group of notes. Keyboard tracking allows samples to be shifted in pitch by an appropriate amount in semitones and tones; each group of notes to which a single sample has been assigned is called a "keyzone", the resultant set of zones is called a keymap. For example, in Fig 1, a keymap has been created with four different samples; each sample, if pitched, should be associated with a particular center pitch. The first sample is distributed across three different notes, G2, G#2, A2. If the note G#2 is received the sampler will play back the Violin G#2 sample at its original pitch. If the note received is G2 the sampler will shift the sample down a semitone while the note A2 will play it back a semitone tone higher.
If the next note is input the sampler will select the Violin B2 sample, playing it a semitone lower than its center pitch of B2. In gene
Essex
Essex is a county in the south-east of England, north-east of London. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, London to the south-west; the county town is the only city in the county. For government statistical purposes Essex is placed in the East of England region. Essex occupies the eastern part of the ancient Kingdom of Essex, which united with the other Anglian and Saxon kingdoms to make England a single nation state; as well as rural areas, the county includes London Stansted Airport, the new towns of Basildon and Harlow, Lakeside Shopping Centre, the port of Tilbury and the borough of Southend-on-Sea. The name Essex originates in the Anglo-Saxon period of the Early Middle Ages and has its root in the Anglo-Saxon name Ēastseaxe, the eastern kingdom of the Saxons who had come from the continent and settled in Britain during the Heptarchy. Recorded in AD 527, Essex occupied territory to the north of the River Thames, incorporating all of what became Middlesex and most of what became Hertfordshire.
Its territory was restricted to lands east of the River Lea. Colchester in the north-east of the county is Britain's oldest recorded town, dating from before the Roman conquest, when it was known as Camulodunum and was sufficiently well-developed to have its own mint. In AD 824, following the Battle of Ellandun, the kingdoms of the East Saxons, the South Saxons and the Jutes of Kent were absorbed into the kingdom of the West Saxons, uniting Saxland under King Alfred's grandfather Ecgberht. Before the Norman conquest the East Saxons were subsumed into the Kingdom of England. After the Norman conquest, Essex became a county. During the medieval period, much of the area was designated a Royal forest, including the entire county in a period to 1204, when the area "north of the Stanestreet" was disafforested; the areas subject to forest law diminished, but at various times they included the forests of Becontree, Epping, Hatfield and Waltham. Essex County Council was formed in 1889. However, County Boroughs of West Ham, Southend-on-Sea and East Ham formed part of the county but were unitary authorities.
12 boroughs and districts provide more localised services such as rubbish and recycling collections and planning, as shown in the map on the right. A few Essex parishes have been transferred to other counties. Before 1889, small areas were transferred to Hertfordshire near Bishops Stortford and Sawbridgeworth. At the time of the main changes around 1900, parts of Helions Bumpstead, Sturmer and Ballingdon-with-Brundon were transferred to Suffolk. Part of Hadstock, part of Ashton and part of Chrishall were transferred to Cambridgeshire and part of Great Horkesley went to Suffolk; the boundary with Greater London was established in 1965, when East Ham and West Ham county boroughs and the Barking, Dagenham, Ilford, Romford and Wanstead and Woodford districts were transferred to form the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Waltham Forest. Essex became part of the East of England Government Office Region in 1994 and was statistically counted as part of that region from 1999, having been part of the South East England region.
In 1998, the boroughs of Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock were granted autonomy from the administrative county of Essex after successful requests to become unitary authorities. Essex Police covers the two unitary authorities; the county council chamber and main headquarters is at the County Hall in Chelmsford. Before 1938, the council met in London near Moorgate, which with significant parts of the county close to that point and the dominance of railway travel had been more convenient than any place in the county, it has 75 elected councillors. Before 1965, the number of councillors reached over 100; the County Hall, made a listed building in 2007, dates from the mid-1930s and is decorated with fine artworks of that period the gift of the family who owned the textile firm Courtaulds. The highest point of the county of Essex is Chrishall Common near the village of Langley, close to the Hertfordshire border, which reaches 482 feet; the ceremonial county of Essex is bounded to the south by its estuary.
The pattern of settlement in the county is diverse. The Metropolitan Green Belt has prevented the further sprawl of London into the county, although it contains the new towns of Basildon and Harlow developed to resettle Londoners after the destruction of London housing in the Second World War, since which they have been developed and expanded. Epping Forest prevents the further spread of the Greater London Urban Area; as it is not far from London with its economic magnetism, many of Essex's settlements those near or within short driving distance of railway stations, function as dormitory towns or villages where London workers raise their families. Part of the s
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
Gretsch White Falcon
The Gretsch White Falcon is an electric hollow-body guitar introduced in 1954 by Gretsch. This guitar was created as a "showpiece" to exhibit the craft of Gretsch's luthiers and demonstration representative, Jimmie Webster, who created it for the 1954 NAMM Show; the guitar went on sale the following year. Since it has undergone various changes and is still being made today; as of 2013, Gretsch offers a number of guitars in its "Falcon" series, including a custom-built replica of the original, priced in the US at $12,000. The White Falcon's distinctive appearance is owed to its 17-inch size and its hardware -- Jimmie Webster's 1954 version had triple binding, gold-plated hardware, an ebony fretboard with mother-of-pearl inlays, an eye-catching "Cadillac G" tailpiece. In early 1954, Jimmie Webster sought to design a guitar to improve upon the Gibson Super 400, he wanted a "Dream Guitar," and gained his inspiration by walking through the Gretsch factory watching the construction of the many diverse musical instruments the company produced.
From the banjo production line, Webster recalled the engraved pearl inlays that adorned the fretboard and headstock. Many of Gretsch's drums were covered with thick sparkly gold plastic that could be used as binding on guitars; the White Falcon was unveiled at the NAMM show in July 1954. It was displayed as "the guitar of the future," but Gretsch had no plans to manufacture the model, it was supposed to be a showpiece, much like GM's Motorama "Dream Cars" of the day. The high interest from sales representatives led Gretsch to rush the guitar into production, the first White Falcons were sold in 1955, identified as the model 6136; as the company's new high-end guitar, Gretsch marketed it as "the finest guitar we know how to make – and what a beauty!" The White Falcon cost $600. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Gretsch tweaked the Falcon; the block inlays on the ebony fretboard were replaced with half-moon shaped inlays in 1957, the original single-coil DeArmond Dynasonic pickups were replaced with Filter'Tron humbuckers in 1958, that same year the Melita bridge was replaced with a Space Control bridge -- the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was standard starting in 1962.
A stereo version became available as well. It switched to a twin-cutaway body beginning in 1962. Fred Gretsch, the company's owner at the time, retired in 1967 and sold his company to the Baldwin Piano Company. Baldwin would have trouble understanding guitars, which would cause the guitar to lose its popularity; this was not good for the company. The deteriorating Baldwin Manufacturing experienced two destructive fires at its new Arkansas plant in 1973. Gretsch limped through the 1970s and closed in the 1980s. In 1989 Fred Gretsch III began making guitars again; these instruments are based including the White Falcon. Models are now available commemorating every phase in the design of the White Falcon. Features are reproduced accordingly. Modern Falcons are available in black and silver, include a Stephen Stills signature model, as well as a green Bono Irish Falcon that incorporates the original vertical headstock logo and engraved block inlays with the post-1958 electronics configuration and features "The Goal Is Soul" silkscreened onto the pickguard.
Gretsch added a Brian Setzer Black Phoenix model to its lineup. Like Brian Setzer's signature Hot Rod 6120, the Black Phoenix features stripped-down electronics that consist of two pickups, a selector switch, a volume knob. In January 2013, Gretsch introduced the Billy Duffy signature model, replicating the Baldwin-era design with silver binding and chrome hardware. Bacon, Tony. Electric Guitars: The Illustrated Encyclopedia. Thunder Bay. ISBN 978-1-57145-281-8; the Gretsch Pages: White Falcon models The Gretsch Pages: History6136 variantsBrian Setzer Black Falcon Bono Irish Falcon Silver Falcon Black Falcon with Bigsby
Vince Clarke
Vince Clarke is an English synthpop musician and songwriter. Clarke has been the main composer and musician of the band Erasure since its inception in 1985, was the main songwriter of several groups, including Depeche Mode and The Assembly. Vincent John Martin was born in South Woodford, Essex and he moved to Basildon, Essex, he studied the violin and the piano, but he was inspired to make electronic music upon hearing Wirral synth band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Along with OMD, other early influences included The Human League, Daniel Miller, Fad Gadget. In the late-1970s, Clarke and schoolmate Andy Fletcher formed a short-lived band called No Romance in China. In 1980, he teamed up with Martin Gore to form French Look. Another band, named Composition of Sound, followed in 1980 with another addition of Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher. Clarke provided vocals until singer Dave Gahan joined the band, renamed Depeche Mode. At that time, he adopted the stage name Vince Clarke, by which he is known.
The band adopted a slick synthesized electropop sound, which produced the album Speak & Spell and the Clarke-penned singles "Dreaming of Me", "New Life", "Just Can't Get Enough" in 1981. Clarke left Depeche Mode shortly thereafter. There were many rumoured reasons pertaining to his departure, he commented on Depeche Mode's material as being a little dark for his taste, but good nonetheless. Clarke stated that he did not enjoy the public aspects of success, such as touring and interviews, found himself at odds with his bandmates on the tour bus, he stated: "I think everybody in the band myself, imagined that the reason we were doing so well was because of themselves... We were pretty young and lucky, things had happened quickly for us, I don't think we were mature to handle the situation." Clarke was replaced by musician Alan Wilder, Depeche Mode went on to achieve international stardom. Clarke teamed up with singer Alison Moyet to form the popular synthpop band Yazoo, which produced two albums and a string of hits including "Only You", "Don't Go", "Situation", "The Other Side of Love", "Nobody's Diary", "Walk Away from Love".
Yazoo disbanded in 1983, Moyet went on to have a successful solo career. Yazoo reformed in 2008 for a series of live dates to celebrate 25 years since the duo's split. In 1983, Clarke teamed up with Eric Radcliffe, it was their idea to collaborate as one-off associations with different artists on each new single, under the name The Assembly. Meanwhile, he founded the label Reset Records with Eric Radcliffe. During 1983 and further on in 1984, he produced four singles "The Face of Dorian Gray", "I Just Want to Dance", "Claudette", "Calling All Destroyers" for his friend Robert Marlow, which were released on this label, they produced an album, shelved but was released much in 1999 under the name The Peter Pan Effect. In 1985, another collaboration took place with Paul Quinn of Bourgie Bourgie, the result was the single "One Day" by Vince Clarke & Paul Quinn. However, the project never took off, Clarke moved on to other projects. In early 1985, Clarke put an ad in Melody Maker for a singer, one applicant was Andy Bell, a fan of his earlier projects.
He teamed with Bell to form the group Erasure, the duo became one of the major selling acts in British music with international hits like "Oh L'amour", "Sometimes", "Chains of Love", "A Little Respect", "Drama!", "Blue Savannah", "Chorus", "Love to Hate You", "Take a Chance on Me", "Always". The band has released 16 albums to date and has enjoyed a long string of hit singles spanning their three decades together, most topped-off by the 2005 top five hit "Breathe" taken from their Nightbird album. In 2006, Erasure produced a country-western style acoustic album consisting of non-single cuts from their previous albums; this album, Union Street was preceded by the single "Boy" included on their 1997 Cowboy album. On 26 January 2007, in a video message on the official Erasure website, the band announced the release of their sixteenth album, entitled Light at the End of the World. Released in the UK on 21 May 2007, with a US release the following day, it was preceded by the single "I Could Fall in Love with You", released on 2 April 2007.
The second single, "Sunday Girl" was subsequently released. The album was produced by Gareth Jones and was a more "dance oriented" effort than some of their more recent work with Clarke making reference to the new material sounding a bit more like Andy Bell's 2005 solo effort Electric Blue. Erasure went on to tour with Cyndi Lauper, Deborah Harry, Margaret Cho, other artists, for the 2007 True Colors Tour of the United States, a tour which benefited gay, lesbian and transgender freedoms and rights. Erasure went out on their own, headlining the "Light at the End of the World" tour in Europe and North America; the band released a new EP, Storm Chaser, in September 2007. The EP contains nine tracks, one of them the winner of an online fan remix contest, for the track "When a Lover Leaves You", from the Light at the End of the World album; the Erasure album, Tomorrow's World, was released on 3 October 2011, featuring production by Frankmusik. The album was done in two locations, Vince in his Cabin Studio in Maine composing the music and vocal arrangement, production done by Andy in Los Angeles.
The album featured three singles.
Synth-pop
Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, art rock and the "Krautrock" of bands like Kraftwerk, it arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, while the mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art musicians. After the breakthrough of Gary Numan in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound in the early 1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra introduced the TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music, the band would be a major influence on early British synth-pop acts; the development of inexpensive polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI and the use of dance beats, led to a more commercial and accessible sound for synth-pop.
This, its adoption by the style-conscious acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV, led to success for large numbers of British synth-pop acts in the US. "Synth-pop" is sometimes used interchangeably with "electropop", but "electropop" may denote a variant of synth-pop that places more emphasis on a harder, more electronic sound. In the mid to late 1980s, duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style, successful on the US dance charts, but by the end of the decade, the'new wave' synth-pop of bands such as A-ha and Alphaville was giving way to house music and techno. Interest in new wave synth-pop began to revive in the indietronica and electroclash movements in the late 1990s, in the 2000s synth-pop enjoyed a widespread revival and commercial success; the genre has received criticism for alleged lack of musicianship. Synth-pop music has established a place for the synthesizer as a major element of pop and rock music, directly influencing subsequent genres and has indirectly influenced many other genres, as well as individual recordings.
Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but "...characterised by a broad set of values that eschewed rock playing styles and structures", which were replaced by "synthetic textures" and "robotic rigidity" defined by the limitations of the new technology, including monophonic synthesizers. Many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music; the result was minimalist, with grooves that were "typically woven together from simple repeated riffs with no harmonic'progression' to speak of". Early synth-pop has been described as "eerie and vaguely menacing", using droning electronics with little change in inflection. Common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, feelings of being cold and hollow. In its second phase in the 1980s, the introduction of dance beats and more conventional rock instrumentation made the music warmer and catchier and contained within the conventions of three-minute pop.
Synthesizers were used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras and horns. Thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, compressed production, a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were more optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance and aspiration. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its "emotional, at times operatic singers" such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox; because synthesizers removed the need for large groups of musicians, these singers were part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Although synth-pop in part arose from punk rock, it abandoned punk's emphasis on authenticity and pursued a deliberate artificiality, drawing on the critically derided forms such as disco and glam rock, it owed little to the foundations of early popular music in jazz, folk music or the blues, instead of looking to America, in its early stages, it consciously focused on European and Eastern European influences, which were reflected in band names like Spandau Ballet and songs like Ultravox's "Vienna".
Synth-pop saw a shift to a style more influenced by other genres, such as soul music. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, around the same time as rock music began to emerge as a distinct musical genre; the Mellotron, an electro-mechanical, polyphonic sample-playback keyboard was overtaken by the Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog in 1964, which produced electronically generated sounds. The portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use in live performance was adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Instrumental prog rock was significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Faust to circumvent the language barrier, their synthesizer-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy M
