1.
Chicago
–
Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
2.
Emo
–
Emo /ˈiːmoʊ/ is a loosely categorized music genre characterized by expressive, often confessional, lyrics. By the mid-1990s, numerous emo acts formed in the Midwestern and Central United States, meanwhile, a more aggressive style of emo, screamo, had also emerged. Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the success of Jimmy Eat World. In the wake of success, many emo bands were signed to major record labels. By the early 2010s, the popularity of emo began to decrease, some bands moved away from their emo roots and some bands disbanded. An underground emo revival emerged in the 2010s, with drawing on the sounds and aesthetics of emo of the 1990s. The term emo has been applied by critics and journalists to a variety of artists, including acts and groups with disparate styles. In addition to music, emo is often used more generally to signify a particular relationship between fans and artists, and to describe related aspects of fashion, culture, and behavior. Emo has been associated with a stereotype that includes being particularly emotional, sensitive, misanthropic, shy, introverted and it has also been associated with stereotypes like depression, self-harm, and suicide. While emo originated in hardcore punk and has considered a subgenre of post-hardcore, it has also been associated with indie rock. The fusion of emo with pop punk is known as emo pop. The New York Times described as emo as emotional punk or post-hardcore or pop-punk and that is, punk that wears its heart on its sleeve and tries a little tenderness to leaven its sonic attack. If it helps, imagine Ricky Nelson singing in the Sex Pistols, author Matt Diehl described emo as a more sensitive interpolation of punks mission. The 1966 album Pet Sounds by the American rock band the Beach Boys has been characterized as the first emo album by Treblezines Ernest Simpson, in some ways, one could find trace elements of in early emo albums of the 2000s. In the 1980s, the Washington, D. C. hardcore scene swelled in size with the formation of many hardcore punk, post-hardcore itself is a more melodic and experimental offshoot of hardcore inspired by post-punk. Hardcore bands that were influential on many early emo bands include Minor Threat, The Faith, Black Flag, Emo originated as an outgrowth of the hardcore punk scene of early 1980s Washington, D. C. Minor Threat fan Guy Picciotto formed Rites of Spring in 1984, breaking free of hardcores self-imposed boundaries in favor of guitars, varied rhythms. Many of the themes would become familiar tropes in later generations of emo music, including nostalgia, romantic bitterness
3.
Punk rock
–
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed in the early to mid-1970s in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in 1960s garage rock and other forms of what is now known as proto-punk music, Punk bands typically produced short or fast-paced songs, with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic, many bands self-produce recordings and distribute them through informal channels, the term punk was first used in relation to rock music by some American critics in the early 1970s, to describe garage bands and their devotees. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world, for the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive styles of clothing and adornment, by the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and street punk had become the predominant mode of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a range of other variations, giving rise to post-punk. At the end of the 20th century, punk rock had been adopted by the mainstream, as pop punk and punk bands such as Green Day. The first wave of rock was aggressively modern, distancing itself from the bombast. According to Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone, In its initial form, unfortunately, what happens is that people who could not hold a candle to the likes of Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you had endless solos that went nowhere, by 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock n roll. In critic Robert Christgaus description, It was also a subculture that rejected the political idealism. Technical accessibility and a DIY spirit are prized in punk rock, in the early days of punk rock, this ethic stood in marked contrast to what those in the scene regarded as the ostentatious musical effects and technological demands of many mainstream rock bands. Musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion, according to Holmstrom, punk rock was rock and roll by people who didnt have very many skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music. In December 1976, the English fanzine Sideburns published an illustration of three chords, captioned This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. The title of a 1980 single by the New York punk band Stimulators, inscribed a catchphrase for punks basic musical approach. The previous year, when the rock revolution began in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural Year Zero. As a Clash associate describes singer Joe Strummers outlook, Punk rock is meant to be our freedom, were meant to be able to do what we want to do. Scholar Daniel S. Traber argues that attaining authenticity in the identity can be difficult, as the punk scene matured, he observes
4.
Guitar
–
The guitar is a musical instrument classified as a fretted string instrument with anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually having six. The sound is projected either acoustically, using a wooden or plastic and wood box, or through electrical amplifier. It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the fingers, 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. There are three types of modern acoustic guitar, the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of a guitar is produced by the strings vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar. The term finger-picking can also refer to a tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass. The acoustic bass guitar is an instrument that is one octave below a regular guitar. Early amplified guitars employed a body, but a solid wood body was eventually found more suitable during the 1960s and 1970s. As with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars. The electric guitar has had a influence on popular culture. The guitar is used in a variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as an instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul. The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and, later, in the Americas. The modern word guitar, and its antecedents, has applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times. Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar, 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 back, wide fingerboard. The guitarra Latina had a sound hole and a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers moresca or morisca and latina had been dropped, and it had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply cut waist
5.
Bass guitar
–
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb, by plucking, slapping, popping, strumming, tapping, thumping, or picking with a plectrum, often known as a pick. The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to a guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length. The four-string bass, by far the most common, is tuned the same as the double bass. The bass guitar is an instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds to avoid excessive ledger lines. Like the electric guitar, the guitar has pickups and it is plugged into an amplifier and speaker on stage, or into a larger PA system using a DI unit. Since the 1960s, the guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary widely from one style of music to another, many styles of music utilise the bass guitar, including rock, heavy metal, pop, punk rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues, symphonic rock, and jazz. It is often a solo instrument in jazz, jazz fusion, Latin, funk, progressive rock and other rock, the adoption of a guitar form 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 more easily than on acoustic or electric upright basses. Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period, around 1947, Tutmarcs son, Bud, 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, with the help of his employee George Fullerton and his Fender Precision Bass, which began production in October 1951, became a widely copied industry standard. This split pickup, introduced in 1957, appears to have been two mandolin pickups, the pole pieces and leads of the coils were reversed with respect to each other, producing a humbucking effect. Humbucking is a design that electrically cancels the effect of any AC hum, the Fender Bass was a revolutionary new instrument, which could be easily transported, and which was less prone to feedback when amplified than acoustic bass instruments. Monk Montgomery was the first bass player to tour with the Fender bass guitar, roy Johnson, and Shifty Henry with Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957. The bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, following Fenders lead, in 1953, Gibson released the first short scale violin-shaped electric bass with extendable end pin, allowing it to be played upright or horizontally. In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass, the EB-0 was very similar to a Gibson SG in appearance
6.
Drum kit
–
A drum kit consists of a mix of drums and idiophones most significantly cymbals but also including the woodblock and cowbell. In the 2000s, some also include electronic instruments and both hybrid and entirely electronic kits are used. If some or all of them are replaced by electronic drums, the drum kit is usually played while seated on a drum stool or throne. The drum kit differs from instruments that can be used to produce pitched melodies or chords, even though drums are often placed musically alongside others that do, such as the piano or guitar. The drum kit is part of the rhythm section used in many types of popular and traditional music styles ranging from rock and pop to blues. Other standard instruments used in the section include the electric bass, electric guitar. Many drummers extend their kits from this pattern, adding more drums, more cymbals. Some performers, such as some rockabilly drummers, use small kits that omit elements from the basic setup, some drum kit players may have other roles in the band, such as providing backup vocals, or less commonly, lead vocals. Thus, in an early 1800s orchestra piece, if the called for bass drum, triangle and cymbals. In the 1840s, percussionists began to experiment with foot pedals as a way to them to play more than one instrument. In the 1860s, percussionists started combining multiple drums into a set, the bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, and other percussion instruments were all played using hand-held drum sticks. Double-drumming was developed to one person to play the bass and snare with sticks. With this approach, the drum was usually played on beats one. This resulted in a swing and dance feel. The drum set was referred to as a trap set. By the 1870s, drummers were using an overhang pedal, most drummers in the 1870s preferred to do double drumming without any pedal to play multiple drums, rather than use an overhang pedal. Companies patented their pedal systems such as Dee Dee Chandler of New Orleans 1904–05, liberating the hands for the first time, this evolution saw the bass drum played with the foot of a standing percussionist. The bass drum became the central piece around which every other percussion instrument would later revolve and it was the golden age of drum building for many famous drum companies, with Ludwig introducing
7.
United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located 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, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
Singing
–
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist, Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists, Singers may perform as soloists, or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised and it may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice, if practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific genre, such as classical or rock. They typically take voice training provided by teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers. Though these four mechanisms function independently, they are coordinated in the establishment of a vocal technique and are made to interact upon one another. During passive breathing, air is inhaled with the diaphragm while exhalation occurs without any effort, exhalation may be aided by the abdominal, internal intercostal and lower pelvis/pelvic muscles. Inhalation is aided by use of external intercostals, scalenes and sternocleidomastoid muscles, the pitch is altered with the vocal cords. With the lips closed, this is called humming, humans have vocal folds which can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures. The shape of the chest and neck, the position of the tongue, any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body and an individuals size, Singers can also learn to project sound in certain ways so that it resonates better within their vocal tract. This is known as vocal resonation, another major influence on vocal sound and production is the function of the larynx which people can manipulate in different ways to produce different sounds. These different kinds of function are described as different kinds of vocal registers. The primary method for singers to accomplish this is through the use of the Singers Formant and it has also been shown that a more powerful voice may be achieved with a fatter and fluid-like vocal fold mucosa. The more pliable the mucosa, the more efficient the transfer of energy from the airflow to the vocal folds, Vocal registration refers to the system of vocal registers within the voice. A register in the voice is a series of tones, produced in the same vibratory pattern of the vocal folds
9.
Indie rock
–
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Originally used to independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. In the mid-1980s, the term began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels. Some prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s, during the 1990s, Grunge bands broke into the mainstream, and the term alternative lost its original counter-cultural meaning. The term indie rock became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status, by the end of the 1990s indie rock developed subgenres and related styles including lo-fi, noise pop, emo, slowcore, post-rock and math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success. In the early 2000s, a new group of bands played a stripped-down. The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives, emo also broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s. By the end of the 2000s the proliferation of bands was being referred to as indie landfill. The term indie rock, which comes from independent, describes the small and relatively low-budget labels on which it is released, the influences and styles of the artists have been extremely diverse, including punk, psychedelia, post-punk and country. Allmusic identifies indie rock as including a number of varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes, in fact, there is an everlasting list of genres and subgenres of indie rock. Many countries have developed a local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country. However, there are still indie bands that start off locally, Indie rock has been identified as a reaction against the macho culture that developed in alternative rock in the aftermath of Nirvanas success. However, Cortney Harding pointed out that this sense of equality is not reflected in the number of women running indie labels. The BBC documentary Music for Misfits, The Story of Indie pinpoints the birth of indie as the 1977 self-publication of the Spiral Scratch EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks, Indie pop and indie were originally synonymous. In the mid-1980s, indie began to be used to describe the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels themselves. The indie rock scene in the US was prefigured by the rock that dominated college radio playlists. In the United States, the term was associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of the Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr
10.
Keyboard instrument
–
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various keyboards, including synthesizers. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, today, the term keyboard often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Another important use of the keyboard is in historical musicology. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the piano were in competition. Hence in a phrase like Mozart excelled as a player the word keyboard is usefully noncommittal. The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ, the keys were likely 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, that is “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. Often, the organ did not feature a keyboard at all, almost every keyboard until the fifteenth century had seven naturals to each octave. The clavichord and the harpsichord appeared during the 14th century—the clavichord probably being earlier, the harpsichord and clavichord were both common until widespread adoption of the piano in the 18th 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 pianos 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 19th century, in fact, the modern piano is significantly different from even the 19th-century pianos used by Liszt, Chopin, 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 and this was a very important contribution to the keyboards history. Much effort has gone into creating an instrument that sounds like the piano but lacks its size, 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. Concerns celebrated keyboard players and the various instruments used over the centuries
