1.
Major third
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In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions, and the major third is a third spanning four semitones. Along with the third, the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the larger of the two, the major third spans four semitones, the third three. The major third may be derived from the series as the interval between the fourth and fifth harmonics. The major scale is so named because of the presence of this interval between its tonic and mediant scale degrees, the major chord also takes its name from the presence of this interval built on the chords root. The older concept of a made a dissonantly wide major third with the ratio 81,64. The septimal major third is 9,7, the major third is 14,11. A helpful way to recognize a third is to hum the first two notes of Kumbaya or of When the Saints Go Marching In. A descending major third is heard at the starts of Goodnight, Ladies and Swing Low, in equal temperament three major thirds in a row are equal to an octave. This is sometimes called the circle of thirds, in just intonation, however, three 5,4 major thirds are less than an octave. For example, three 5,4 major thirds from C is B♯, the difference between this just-tuned B♯ and C, like that between G♯ and A♭, is called a diesis, about 41 cents. The major third is classed as an imperfect consonance and is considered one of the most consonant intervals after the unison, octave, perfect fifth, a diminished fourth is enharmonically equivalent to a major third. For example, B–D♯ is a third, but if the same pitches are spelled B and E♭. B–E♭ occurs in the C harmonic minor scale, the major third is used in guitar tunings. For the standard tuning, only the interval between the 3rd and 2nd strings is a third, each of the intervals between the other pairs of consecutive strings is a perfect fourth. In an alternative tuning, the tuning, each of the intervals are major thirds. Decade, compound just major third Ear training List of meantone intervals Doubling the cube, 21/3 = 3√2
Major third
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Just major third.
2.
Pythagorean major third
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In music, a ditone is the interval of a major third. The size of a ditone varies according to the sizes of the two tones of which it is compounded, the Pythagorean ditone is the major third in Pythagorean tuning, which has an interval ratio of 81,64, which is 407.82 cents. The Pythagorean ditone is evenly divisible by two major tones and is wider than a just major third by a syntonic comma, because it is a comma wider than a perfect major third of 5,4, it is called a comma-redundant interval. Play The major third that appears commonly in the system is properly known as the Pythagorean ditone. This is the interval that is sharp, at 408c. It may also be thought of as four justly tuned fifths minus two octaves, the prime factorization of the 81,64 ditone is 3^4/2^6. In Didymuss diatonic and Ptolemys syntonic tunings, the ditone is a just major third with a ratio of 5,4, made up of two unequal tones—a major and a tone of 9,8 and 10,9. The difference between the two systems is that Didymus places the minor tone below the major, whereas Ptolemy does the opposite, in meantone temperaments, the major tone and minor tone are replaced by a mean tone which is somewhere in between the two. Two of these make a ditone or major third. This major third is exactly the just major third in quarter-comma meantone and this is the source of the name, the note exactly halfway between the bounding tones of the major third is called the mean tone. Modern writers occasionally use the word ditone to describe the interval of a third in equal temperament. For example, In modern acoustics, the equal-tempered semitone has 100 cents, the tone 200 cents, the ditone or major third 400 cents, the perfect fourth 500 cents, and so on
Pythagorean major third
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Pythagorean ditone on C Play (
help ·
info)
3.
Music
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Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time. The common elements of music are pitch, rhythm, dynamics, different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. The word derives from Greek μουσική, Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as the harmony of the spheres and it is music to my ears point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, There is no noise, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. There are many types of music, including music, traditional music, art music, music written for religious ceremonies. For example, it can be hard to draw the line between some early 1980s hard rock and heavy metal, within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art or as an auditory art. People may make music as a hobby, like a teen playing cello in a youth orchestra, the word derives from Greek μουσική. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the music is derived from mid-13c. Musike, from Old French musique and directly from Latin musica the art of music and this is derived from the. Greek mousike of the Muses, from fem. of mousikos pertaining to the Muses, from Mousa Muse. In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. With the advent of recording, records of popular songs. Some music lovers create mix tapes of their songs, which serve as a self-portrait. An environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved, amateur musicians can compose or perform music for their own pleasure, and derive their income elsewhere. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings, There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians, in community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community concert bands and community orchestras. However, there are many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in classical music and in popular music forms such as rock, where illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers
Music
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A painting on an Ancient Greek vase depicts a music lesson (c. 510 BC).
Music
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Jean-Gabriel Ferlan performing at a 2008 concert at the collège-lycée Saint-François Xavier
Music
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The composer
Michel Richard Delalande, pen in hand.
Music
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Funk places most of its emphasis on rhythm and
groove, with entire songs based around a
vamp on a single chord. Pictured are the influential funk musicians
George Clinton and
Parliament Funkadelic in 2006.
4.
Pitch (music)
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Pitch can be determined only in sounds that have a frequency that is clear and stable enough to distinguish from noise. Pitch is a major attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness. Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property, Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their perception of the frequency of vibration. Pitch is closely related to frequency, but the two are not equivalent, frequency is an objective, scientific attribute that can be measured. Pitch is each persons subjective perception of a wave, which cannot be directly measured. However, this not necessarily mean that most people wont agree on which notes are higher and lower. Sound waves themselves do not have pitch, but their oscillations can be measured to obtain a frequency and it takes a sentient mind to map the internal quality of pitch. However, pitches are usually associated with, and thus quantified as frequencies in cycles per second, or hertz, by comparing sounds with pure tones, Complex and aperiodic sound waves can often be assigned a pitch by this method. According to the American National Standards Institute, pitch is the attribute of sound according to which sounds can be ordered on a scale from low to high. That is, high pitch means very rapid oscillation, and low pitch corresponds to slower oscillation, despite that, the idiom relating vertical height to sound pitch is shared by most languages. At least in English, it is just one of many deep conceptual metaphors that involve up/down, the exact etymological history of the musical sense of high and low pitch is still unclear. There is evidence that humans do actually perceive that the source of a sound is slightly higher or lower in vertical space when the frequency is increased or reduced. The pitch of tones can be ambiguous, meaning that two or more different pitches can be perceived, depending upon the observer. In a situation like this, the percept at 200 Hz is commonly referred to as the missing fundamental, Pitch depends to a lesser degree on the sound pressure level of the tone, especially at frequencies below 1,000 Hz and above 2,000 Hz. The pitch of lower tones gets lower as sound pressure increases, for instance, a tone of 200 Hz that is very loud seems one semitone lower in pitch than if it is just barely audible. Above 2,000 Hz, the pitch gets higher as the sound gets louder, theories of pitch perception try to explain how the physical sound and specific physiology of the auditory system work together to yield the experience of pitch. In general, pitch perception theories can be divided into place coding, place theory holds that the perception of pitch is determined by the place of maximum excitation on the basilar membrane. However, a purely place-based theory cannot account for the accuracy of pitch perception in the low, temporal theories offer an alternative that appeals to the temporal structure of action potentials, mostly the phase-locking and mode-locking of action potentials to frequencies in a stimulus
Pitch (music)
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In musical notation, the different vertical positions of notes indicate different pitches. Play top (
help ·
info) & Play bottom (
help ·
info)
5.
Sharp (music)
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In music, sharp, dièse, or diesis means higher in pitch. More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means higher in pitch by a semitone, and has a sharp symbol, ♯. Sharp is contrasted with flat, which refers to a lowering of pitch, intonation may be flat, sharp, or both, successively or simultaneously. Under twelve-tone equal temperament, B♯, for instance, sounds the same as, or is equivalent to, C natural. In other tuning systems, such enharmonic equivalences in general do not exist, to allow extended just intonation, composer Ben Johnston uses a sharp to indicate a note is raised 70.6 cents, or a flat to indicate a note is lowered 70.6 cents. In tuning, sharp can also slightly higher in pitch. If two simultaneous notes are out of tune, the higher-pitched one is said to be sharp with respect to the other. Furthermore, the verb sharpen means raise the frequency of a note, double sharps also exist, these are denoted by the symbol and raise a note by two semitones, or one whole tone. They should not be confused with a ghost note, less often one will encounter other sharps. A half sharp raises a note by a quarter tone =50 cents, a sharp and a half raises a note by three quarter tones =150 cents and may be denoted. Although very uncommon, a triple sharp can sometimes be found and it raises a note by three semitones. The sharp symbol may be confused with the number sign, both signs have two sets of parallel double-lines. However, a correctly drawn sharp sign must have two slanted parallel lines which rise from left to right, to avoid being obscured by the staff lines, the number sign, in contrast, has two compulsory horizontal strokes in this place. In addition, while the sharp also always has two vertical lines, the number sign may or may not contain perfectly vertical lines. The order of sharps in key signature notation is F♯, C♯, G♯, D♯, A♯, E♯, B♯, each extra sharp being added successively in the sequence of major keys. Similarly the order of flats is based on the natural notes in reverse order, B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, C♭, F♭, encountered in the following series of major keys. In the above progression, key C♯ may be conveniently written as the harmonically equivalent key D♭
Sharp (music)
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The
notes C sharp and C double sharp on the
treble clef
6.
Flat (music)
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In music, flat, or bemolle means lower in pitch. In music notation, the symbol, ♭, derived from a stylised lowercase b. Intonation or tuning is said to be flat when it is below the true pitch, the order of flats in the key signatures of music notation, following the circle of fifths, is B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, C♭, and F♭. A mnemonic for this is, Before Eating A Doughnut Get Coffee First, the Unicode character ♭ can be found in the block Miscellaneous Symbols, its HTML entity is ♭. Under twelve tone equal temperament, C♭ for instance is the same as, or enharmonically equivalent to, B♮, in any other tuning system, such enharmonic equivalences in general do not exist. To allow extended just intonation, composer Ben Johnston uses a sharp as an accidental to indicate a note is raised 70.6 cents, double flats also exist, which look like and lower a note by two semitones, or a whole step. Less often one will encounter half, or three-quarter, or otherwise altered flats, the Unicode character
Flat (music)
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Figure 1. The
notes A-flat and A double-flat on the
treble clef
7.
Tuning peg
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A tuning peg is used to hold a string in the pegbox of a stringed instrument. It may be made of ebony, rosewood, boxwood or other material, some tuning pegs are ornamented with shell, metal, or plastic inlays, beads or rings. Turning the peg tightens or loosens the string, changing the pitch produced when the string is played, a pegbox is the part of certain stringed musical instruments that houses the tuning pegs. Friction pegs are most often used on violin family instruments They are also used on instruments, such as the Bulgarian gadulka. A properly working peg will turn easily and hold reliably, that is, modern pegs for violin and viola have conical shafts, turned to a 1,30 taper, changing in diameter by 1 mm over a distance of 30 mm. The taper allows the peg to turn more easily pulled out slightly. Peg dope is a used to coat the bearing surfaces of the tuning pegs of string instruments. Manufactured varieties are sold in either a small stick, a block. A commonly used home expedient treatment involves soap and chalk, in varying proportion depending on whether the peg tends to slip or stick, Peg dope serves two different purposes. It both lubricates the peg shaft so it easily in the pegbox and provides friction to keep the pegs from slipping with the force of string tension. Tuning pegs that are fitted and properly doped will both turn smoothly throughout an entire rotation and hold firmly wherever the player wishes. Without the proper amount of friction to hold the peg in place, string instruments with pegs that are slipping can be tuned briefly, but will be out of tune within minutes as soon as the peg slips again. With too much friction, adjusting the tuning at all is impossible, if the pegs or their holes are not perfectly round, or if the bearing surfaces of the pegs are indented from wear, peg dope will not remedy the resulting problems. Pegs for double bass and guitar family instruments are usually geared, machine head Peg shapers and pegbox reamers in various tapers
Tuning peg
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Violin pegbox, retouched image
Tuning peg
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Two types of compound – bearing surfaces of peg are visible as shiny bands
8.
Tension (mechanics)
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Tension is the opposite of compression. At the atomic level, when atoms or molecules are pulled apart each other and gain potential energy with a restoring force still existing. Each end of a string or rod under such tension will pull on the object it is attached to, to restore the string/rod to its relaxed length. In physics, tension, as a force, as an action-reaction pair of forces. The ends of a string or other object transmitting tension will exert forces on the objects to which the string or rod is connected and these forces due to tension are also called passive forces. Tension in a string is a scalar quantity. A string or rope is often idealized as one dimension, having length but being massless with zero cross section. If there are no bends in the string, as occur with vibrations or pulleys, then tension is a constant along the string, by Newtons Third Law, these are the same forces exerted on the ends of the string by the objects to which the ends are attached. If the string curves around one or more pulleys, it still have constant tension along its length in the idealized situation that the pulleys are massless and frictionless. A vibrating string vibrates with a set of frequencies that depend on the strings tension and these frequencies can be derived from Newtons laws of motion. Each microscopic segment of the string pulls on and is pulled upon by its neighboring segments, tension = τ where x is the position along the string. If the string has curvature, then the two pulls on a segment by its two neighbors will not add to zero, and there will be a net force on that segment of the string, causing an acceleration. With solutions that include the various harmonics on a stringed instrument, tension is also used to describe the force exerted by the ends of a three-dimensional, continuous material such as a rod or truss member. Such a rod elongates under tension, a system is in equilibrium when the sum of all forces is zero. ∑ F → =0 For example, consider a system consisting of an object that is being lowered vertically by a string with tension, T, at a constant velocity. ∑ F → = T → + m g → =0 A system has a net force when a force is exerted on it. Acceleration and net force always exist together, ∑ F → ≠0 For example, consider the same system as above but suppose the object is now being lowered with an increasing velocity downwards therefore there exists a net force somewhere in the system. In this case, negative acceleration would indicate that | m g | > | T |
Tension (mechanics)
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This end of the rope is pulling the
tug of war team to the right. Each segment of the rope is pulled on by the two neighboring segments with a force due to tension. Tension can change along the length of a rope, as it does along the grip of each of the tug of war team members.
9.
Violin
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The violin is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use, smaller violin-type instruments are known, including the violino piccolo and the kit violin, but these are virtually unused in the 2010s. The violin typically has four strings tuned in fifths, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. Violins are important instruments in a variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical tradition and in varieties of folk music. They are also used in genres of folk including country music and bluegrass music. Electric violins are used in forms of rock music, further. The violin is sometimes called a fiddle, particularly in Irish traditional music and bluegrass. The violin was first known in 16th-century Italy, with further modifications occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Europe it served as the basis for stringed instruments used in classical music, the viola. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, many of these trade instruments were formerly sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and other mass merchandisers. A person who makes or repairs violins is called a luthier or violinmaker, the parts of a violin are usually made from different types of wood and on the use of a pickup and an amplifier and speaker). Violins can be strung with gut, Perlon or other synthetic, the earliest stringed instruments were mostly plucked. Similar and variant types were probably disseminated along East-West trading routes from Asia into the Middle East, the first makers of violins probably borrowed from various developments of the Byzantine lira. These included the rebec, the Arabic rebab, the vielle, the earliest pictures of violins, albeit with three strings, are seen in northern Italy around 1530, at around the same time as the words violino and vyollon are seen in Italian and French documents. One of the earliest explicit descriptions of the instrument, including its tuning, is from the Epitome musical by Jambe de Fer, by this time, the violin had already begun to spread throughout Europe. The violin proved very popular, both among street musicians and the nobility, the French king Charles IX ordered Andrea Amati to construct 24 violins for him in 1560, one of these noble instruments, the Charles IX, is the oldest surviving violin. The Messiah or Le Messie made by Antonio Stradivari in 1716 remains pristine and it is now located in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford
Violin
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A standard modern violin shown from the front and the side
Violin
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A young violinist at
Ruthin School
Violin
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The cupola of Madonna dei Miracoli in
Saronno, with angels playing violin, viola and cello, dates from 1535 and is one of the earliest depictions of the violin family
10.
Wind instrument
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The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of the effective length of the vibrating column of air. In the case of wind instruments, sound is produced by blowing through a reed. Using different air columns for different tones, such as in the pan flute and this method is used on nearly all brass instruments. Changing the length of the air column by lengthening and/or shortening the tube using a sliding mechanism. This method is used on the trombone and the slide whistle, changing the frequency of vibration through opening or closing holes in the side of the tube. This can be done by covering the holes with fingers or pressing a key which then closes the hole and this method is used in nearly all woodwind instruments. Making the column of air vibrate at different harmonics without changing the length of the column of air, almost all wind instruments use the last method, often in combination with one of the others, to extend their register. A more accurate way to determine whether an instrument is brass or woodwind is to examine how the player produces sound, in brass instruments, the players lips vibrate, causing the air within the instrument to vibrate. For example, the saxophone is typically made of brass, but is classified as an instrument because it produces sound with a vibrating reed. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, wind instruments are classed as aerophones, sound production in all wind instruments depends on the entry of air into a flow-control valve attached to a resonant chamber. The resonator is typically a long cylindrical or conical tube, open at the far end, a pulse of high pressure from the valve will travel down the tube at the speed of sound. It will be reflected from the end as a return pulse of low pressure. Under suitable conditions, the valve will reflect the pulse back, with increased energy, Reed instruments such as the clarinet or oboe have a flexible reed or reeds at the mouthpiece, forming a pressure-controlled valve. Standing waves inside the tube will be odd multiples of a quarter-wavelength, with a pressure anti-node at the mouthpiece, the reed vibrates at a rate determined by the resonator. For Lip Reed instruments, the controls the tension in their lips so that they vibrate under the influence of the air flow through them. They adjust the vibration so that the lips are most closed, and the air flow is lowest, standing waves inside the tube will be odd multiples of a quarter-wavelength, with a pressure anti-node at the mouthpiece, and a pressure node at the open end. For Air Reed instruments, the thin grazing air sheet flowing across an opening in the pipe interacts with an edge to generate sound. The jet is generated by the player, when blowing through a thin slit, for recorders and flue organ pipes this slit is manufactured by the instrument maker and has a fixed geometry
Wind instrument
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Erke, wind instrument of Argentina
Wind instrument
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The bell of a B Flat clarinet
11.
Brass instrument
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A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the players lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones, literally meaning lip-vibrated instruments, there are several factors involved in producing different pitches on a brass instrument. The view of most scholars is that the brass instrument should be defined by the way the sound is made, as above. Thus one finds brass instruments made of wood, like the alphorn, the cornett, the serpent, as valved instruments are predominant among the brasses today, a more thorough discussion of their workings can be found below. The valves are usually piston valves, but can be rotary valves, slide brass instruments use a slide to change the length of tubing. The main instruments in this category are the family, though valve trombones are occasionally used. The trombone familys ancestor, the sackbut, and the folk instrument bazooka are also in the slide family, there are two other families that have, in general, become functionally obsolete for practical purposes. Instruments of both types, however, are used for period-instrument performances of Baroque or Classical pieces. In more modern compositions, they are used for their intonation or tone color. Natural brass instruments only play notes in the harmonic series. These include the bugle and older variants of the trumpet and horn, the trumpet was a natural brass instrument prior to about 1795, and the horn before about 1820. In the 18th century, makers developed interchangeable crooks of different lengths, natural instruments are still played for period performances and some ceremonial functions, and are occasionally found in more modern scores, such as those by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Keyed or Fingered brass instruments used holes along the body of the instrument and these included the cornett, serpent, ophicleide, keyed bugle and keyed trumpet. They are more difficult to play than valved instruments, Brass instruments may also be characterised by two generalizations about geometry of the bore, that is, the tubing between the mouthpiece and the flaring of the tubing into the bell. Those two generalizations are with regard to the degree of taper or conicity of the bore and the diameter of the bore with respect to its length, cylindrical bore brass instruments are generally perceived as having a brighter, more penetrating tone quality compared to conical bore brass instruments. The trumpet, baritone horn and all trombones are cylindrical bore, in particular, the slide design of the trombone necessitates this. Conical bore brass instruments are those in which tubing of constantly increasing diameter predominates, conical bore instruments are generally perceived as having a more mellow tone quality than the cylindrical bore brass instruments. The British brass band group of instruments fall into this category and this includes the flugelhorn, cornet, tenor horn, horn, euphonium and tuba
Brass instrument
–
A
trumpet, foreground, a
piccolo trumpet behind, and a
flugelhorn in background
12.
Pan pipes
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The pan flutes are a group of musical instruments based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting of multiple pipes of gradually increasing length. Multiple varieties of panflutes have long been popular as folk instruments, the pipes are typically made from bamboo, giant cane, or local reeds. Other materials include wood, plastic, metal and ivory, the pan flute is named after Pan, the Greek god of nature and shepherds often depicted with such an instrument. The pan flutes tubes are stopped at one end, at which the wave is reflected giving a note an octave lower than that produced by an open pipe of equal length. In the traditional South American style, pipes are fine-tuned to correct pitch by placing small pebbles or dry corn kernels into the bottom of the pipes, contemporary makers of curved Romanian-style panpipes use wax to tune new instruments. Special tools are used to place or remove the wax, corks and rubber stoppers are also used, and are easier to quickly tune pipes. The pan flute is an end-blown flute, sound is produced by the vibration of an air-stream blowing across an open hole at the end of a resonating tube. The length of the tube determines the fundamental frequency, an overblown harmonic register is near a 12th above the fundamental in cylindrical tubes, but can approach an octave jump if a decreasing taper is used. According to the Fundamental Principle for pan flutes, the frequency, every time the pitch goes up one octave, the frequency doubles. Because there are 12 notes in a scale or a full octave. By this, it is possible to calculate the length of any pipe, the formula for calculating the length of a pan flute pipe is L = /4. Because of a property of compression within the tube, the length must be a little shorter to correct flat pitch, the extra length is helpful for a maker, who can use a cork or plug at the bottom to adjust the pitch. Some instruments use wax or pellets to tune the fundamental pitch of each tube, a tube that has a diameter 1/10 of its length yields a typical tone colour. An inner diameter range between 1/7 and 1/14 of the length L is acceptable, a narrow tube will sound reedy, while a wide one will sound flutey. If you are a perfectionist, multiply the bore diameter by 0.82 and this compensates for internal compression slowing frequency and the lips partially covering the voicing. Only tiny adjustments will be needed then to adjust fundamental pitch for air density, the pan flute is played by blowing horizontally across an open end against the sharp inner edge of the pipes. Each pipe is tuned to a keynote, called the fundamental frequency, by overblowing, that is, increasing the pressure of breath and tension of lips, odd harmonics, near a 12th in cylindrical tubes, may also be produced. The Romanian pan flute has the pipes arranged in a curved array, an advanced player can play any scale and in any key
Pan pipes
–
Andean pan flute, or zampoña.
Pan pipes
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Pan and Daphnis - 1st century BC Roman replica of 2nd BC Greek original
Pan pipes
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Two Romanian pan flutes
Pan pipes
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A Peruvian-American Airman playing an
Incan zampoña.
13.
Bell (instrument)
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A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone. The strike may be made by an internal clapper or uvula, Bells are usually cast from bell metal for its resonant properties, but can also be made from other hard materials, this depends on the function. Many public or institutional buildings house bells, most commonly as clock bells to sound the hours and quarters, historically, bells have been associated with religious rituals, and are still used to call communities together for religious services. Later, bells were made to important events or people and have been associated with the concepts of peace. The study of bells is called campanology and it is popularly but not certainly related to the former sense of to bell which gave rise to bellow. The earliest archaeological evidence of dates from the 3rd millennium BC. Clapper-bells made of pottery have found in several archaeological sites. The pottery bells later developed into metal bells, in West Asia, the first bells appear in 1000 BC. The earliest metal bells, with one found in the Taosi site, early bells not only have an important role in generating metal sound, but arguably played a prominent cultural role. See also Klang Bell of the British Museum collection, in the western world, the common form of bell is a church bell or town bell, which is hung within a tower or bell cote. Such bells are fixed in position or mounted on a beam so they can swing to. Bells that are hung dead are normally sounded by hitting the bow with a hammer or occasionally by pulling an internal clapper against the bell. Where a bell is swung it can either be swung over an arc by a rope. As the bell swings higher the sound is projected rather than downwards. Bells hung for full circle ringing are swung through just over a circle from mouth uppermost. A stay engages a mechanism to allow the bell to rest just past its balance point, the rope is attached to one side of a wheel so that a different amount of rope is wound on and off as it swings to and fro. Swinging bells are sounded by an internal clapper, the clapper may have a longer period of swing than the bell
Bell (instrument)
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Bianzhong of Marquis Yi of Zeng, dated 433 BC.
Bell (instrument)
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Parts of a typical bell: 1. yoke, 2. crown, 3. head, 4. shoulder, 5. waist, 6. sound rim, 7. lip, 8. mouth, 9. clapper, 10. bead line
Bell (instrument)
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Church with belltower
Bell (instrument)
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"Bell house at Shimoda" in Japan (lithograph copy of daguerreotype image, 1856)
14.
Cymbal
–
A cymbal is a common percussion instrument. Often used in pairs, cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys, the majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sound a definite note. Cymbals are used in ensembles ranging from the orchestra, percussion ensembles, jazz bands, heavy metal bands. Drum kits usually incorporate at least a crash, ride or crash/ride, a player of cymbals is known as a cymbalist. The word cymbal is derived from the Latin cymbalum, which is the latinisation of the Greek word κύμβαλον kymbalon, cymbal, which in turn derives from κύμβη kymbē, cup, bowl. In orchestral scores, cymbals may be indicated by the French cymbales, German Becken, Schellbecken, Tellern, or Tschinellen, Italian piatti or cinelli, many of these derive from the word for plates. Cymbals have existed since ancient times, representations of cymbals may be found in reliefs and paintings from Hittite Anatolia, Larsa, Babylon, Assyria, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome. References to cymbals also appear throughout the Bible, through many Psalms, cymbals may have been introduced to China from Central Asia in the 3rd or 4th century AD. Cymbals were employed by Turkish janissaries in the 14th century or earlier, by the 17th century, such cymbals were used in European music, and more commonly played in military bands and orchestras by the mid 18th century. Since the 19th century, some composers have called for larger roles for cymbals in musical works, and a variety of shapes, techniques. The anatomy of the plays a large part in the sound it creates. A hole is drilled in the center of the cymbal, which is used to mount the cymbal on a stand or for tying straps through. The bell, dome, or cup is the section immediately surrounding the hole. The bell produces a higher pinging pitch than the rest of the cymbal, the bow is the rest of the surface surrounding the bell. The bow is sometimes described in two areas, the ride and crash area, the ride area is the thicker section closer to the bell while the crash area is the thinner tapering section near the edge. The edge or rim is the circumference of the cymbal. Cymbals are measured by their diameter either in inches or centimeters, the size of the cymbal affects its sound, larger cymbals usually being louder and having longer sustain. The weight describes how thick the cymbal is, Cymbal weights are important to the sound they produce and how they play
Cymbal
–
Cymbal
Cymbal
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Ancient Greek bronze cymbal, 5th century BC,
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Cymbal
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A pair of bronze cymbals from the Chinese
Jin dynasty (1115–1234)
Cymbal
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A type of crash cymbals used in Assam, India. It is similar to Khartal. This instrument is used in Assamese dances called Bihu.
15.
Inharmonicity
–
In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency. Acoustically, a note perceived to have a distinct pitch in fact contains a variety of additional overtones. Many percussion instruments, such as cymbals, tam-tams, and chimes, create complex, any departure from this ideal harmonic series is known as inharmonicity. The less elastic the strings are, the more inharmonicity they exhibit, Music harmony and intonation depends strongly on the harmonicity of tones. An ideal, homogeneous, infinitesimally thin or infinitely flexible string or column of air has exactly harmonic modes of vibration. In any real musical instrument, the resonant body that produces the music tone—typically a string, wire, or column of air—deviates from this ideal and has some small or large amount of inharmonicity. For instance, a thick string behaves less as an ideal string and more like a cylinder. For this reason, a single tone played by a string instrument, brass instrument. The inharmonicity of a string depends on its characteristics, such as tension, stiffness. For instance, a string under low tension exhibits a high degree of inharmonicity. A wound string generally exhibits less inharmonicity than the equivalent solid string, in 1943, Schuck and Young were the first scientists to measure the spectral inharmonicity in piano tones. They found that the spectral partials in piano tones are progressively stretched—that is to say, in 1962, research by Harvey Fletcher and his collaborators indicated that the spectral inharmonicity is important for tones to sound piano-like. They proposed that inharmonicity is responsible for the warmth property common to real piano tones, according to their research synthesized piano tones sounded more natural when some inharmonicity was introduced. In general, electronic instruments that duplicate acoustic instruments must duplicate both the inharmonicity and the resulting stretched tuning of the original instruments. When pianos are tuned by piano tuners, the technician sometimes listens for the sound of beating when two notes are played together, and tunes to the point that minimizes roughness between tones. Piano tuners must deal with the inharmonicity of piano strings, which is present in different amounts in all of the ranges of the instrument, the result is that octaves are tuned slightly wider than the harmonic 2,1 ratio. Because of the problem of inharmonicity, electronic piano tuning devices used by piano technicians are not designed to tune according to a harmonic series. Rather, the use various means to duplicate the stretched octaves
Inharmonicity
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Harmonic spectrum.
16.
Harmonic series (music)
–
A harmonic series is the sequence of sounds where the base frequency of each sound is an integer multiple of the lowest base frequency. Pitched musical instruments are based on an approximate harmonic oscillator such as a string or a column of air. At these resonant frequencies, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling each other to form standing waves, interaction with the surrounding air causes audible sound waves, which travel away from the instrument. Because of the spacing of the resonances, these frequencies are mostly limited to integer multiples, or harmonics, of the lowest frequency. The musical timbre of a tone from such an instrument is determined by the relative strengths of each harmonic. A complex tone can be described as a combination of many simple periodic waves or partials, each with its own frequency of vibration, amplitude, a partial is any of the sine waves of which a complex tone is composed. A harmonic is any member of the series, an ideal set of frequencies that are positive integer multiples of a common fundamental frequency. The fundamental is also considered a harmonic because it is 1 times itself, a harmonic partial is any real partial component of a complex tone that matches an ideal harmonic. An inharmonic partial is any partial that does not match an ideal harmonic, Inharmonicity is a measure of the deviation of a partial from the closest ideal harmonic, typically measured in cents for each partial. Unpitched, or indefinite-pitched instruments, such as cymbals, gongs, or tam-tams make sounds that are rich in inharmonic partials, an overtone is any partial except the lowest partial. The term overtone does not imply harmonicity or inharmonicity and has no special meaning other than to exclude the fundamental. It is the relative strengths of the different overtones that gives an instrument its particular timbre, some electronic instruments, such as synthesizers, can play a pure frequency with no overtones. Synthesizers can also combine pure frequencies into more complex tones, such as to other instruments. Certain flutes and ocarinas are very nearly without overtones, in most pitched musical instruments, the fundamental is accompanied by other, higher-frequency harmonics. Thus shorter-wavelength, higher-frequency waves occur with varying prominence and give each instrument its characteristic tone quality, the fact that a string is fixed at each end means that the longest allowed wavelength on the string is twice the length of the string. Other allowed wavelengths are 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, theoretically, these shorter wavelengths correspond to vibrations at frequencies that are 2,3,4,5,6, etc. times the fundamental frequency. Physical characteristics of the vibrating medium and/or the resonator it vibrates against often alter these frequencies, the harmonic series is an arithmetic series. In terms of frequency, the difference between consecutive harmonics is therefore constant and equal to the fundamental, but because human ears respond to sound nonlinearly, higher harmonics are perceived as closer together than lower ones
Harmonic series (music)
–
Harmonic series of a string with terms written as
reciprocals (2/1 written as 1/2)
17.
Tuning fork
–
A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal. It resonates at a constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it against a surface or with an object. The pitch that a tuning fork generates depends on the length. It is frequently used as a standard of pitch to tune musical instruments, the tuning fork was invented in 1711 by British musician John Shore, Sergeant Trumpeter and Lutenist to the court. A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator used in many applications to produce a fixed tone. The reason for this is that the frequency of the first overtone is about 52/22 = 25/4 = 6 1⁄4 times the fundamental. When the tuning fork is struck, little of the energy goes into the overtone modes, they die out correspondingly faster. It is easier to other instruments with this pure tone. Another reason for using the shape is that, when it vibrates in its principal mode. There is a node at the base of each prong, the fork is usually struck, and then the handle is pressed against a wooden box resonator, or a table top. Without the resonator the sound of a fork is very faint. The reason for this is that the waves produced by each fork prong are 180° out of phase with the other, so at a distance from the fork they interfere. Commercial tuning forks are normally tuned to the pitch at the factory. They can be retuned by filing material off the prongs, filing the ends of the prongs raises the pitch, while filing the inside of the base of the prongs lowers it. Tuning forks used by orchestras between 1750 and 1820 mostly had a frequency of A =423.5 Hz, although there were many forks, standard tuning forks are available that vibrate at all the musical pitches within the central octave of the piano, and other pitches. Well-known manufacturers of tuning forks include Ragg and John Walker, both of Sheffield, England, the pitch of a tuning fork varies slightly with temperature, due mainly to a slight decrease in the modulus of elasticity of steel with increasing temperature. A change in frequency of one vibration in 21,000 per °F change is typical for a tuning fork. The frequency decreases with increasing temperature, tuning forks are manufactured to have their correct pitch at a standard temperature
Tuning fork
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Tuning fork on resonance box, by Max Kohl, Chemnitz, Germany
Tuning fork
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Tuning fork by John Walker stamped with note (E) and frequency in hertz (659)
Tuning fork
–
A needle on a tuning fork carves figures on carbon black.
Tuning fork
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A
Bulova Accutron watch from the 1960s, which uses a steel tuning fork (visible in center) vibrating at 360 Hz.
18.
Piano
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The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. The word piano is a form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had a sound and smaller dynamic range. An acoustic piano usually has a wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. Pressing one or more keys on the keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings. The hammer rebounds from the strings, and the continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air, when the key is released, a damper stops the strings vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained, even when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs and this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the accidentals, which are needed to play in all twelve keys, more rarely, some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass that graduates from one to two, the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. There are two types of piano, the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music and art song and it is used in jazz. The upright piano, which is compact, is the most popular type, as they are a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, with technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, and digital pianos have also been developed. The electric piano became an instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music. The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments, pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches
Piano
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A grand piano (left) and an upright piano (right)
Piano
Piano
–
Grand piano by Louis Bas of
Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
Piano
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Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
19.
Orchestra
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The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of a stage in ancient Greek theatre reserved for the Greek chorus. A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called an orchestra or philharmonic orchestra. The actual number of employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played. The term chamber orchestra usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer, the typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras called for in the works of Richard Wagner, and later, Gustav Mahler. Orchestras are usually led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms, the conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The first violin, commonly called the concertmaster, also plays an important role in leading the musicians, the typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of related musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. The orchestra, depending on the size, contains almost all of the instruments in each group. Chamber orchestra usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles, a chamber orchestra might employ as many as fifty musicians. The term concert orchestra may also be used, as in the BBC Concert Orchestra, the so-called standard complement of doubled winds and brass in the orchestra from the first half of the 19th century is generally attributed to the forces called for by Beethoven. The composers instrumentation almost always included paired flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, the exceptions to this are his Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto, and Piano Concerto No,4, which each specify a single flute. Beethoven carefully calculated the expansion of this particular timbral palette in Symphonies 3,5,6, the third horn in the Eroica Symphony arrives to provide not only some harmonic flexibility, but also the effect of choral brass in the Trio movement. Piccolo, contrabassoon, and trombones add to the finale of his Symphony No.5. A piccolo and a pair of trombones help deliver the effect of storm and sunshine in the Sixth, for several decades after his death, symphonic instrumentation was faithful to Beethovens well-established model, with few exceptions. Apart from the core orchestral complement, various instruments are called for occasionally. These include the guitar, heckelphone, flugelhorn, cornet, harpsichord. Saxophones, for example, appear in some 19th- through 21st-century scores.6 and 9 and William Waltons Belshazzars Feast, and many other works as a member of the orchestral ensemble. The euphonium is featured in a few late Romantic and 20th-century works, usually playing parts marked tenor tuba, including Gustav Holsts The Planets, cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussys La Mer, and several orchestral works by Hector Berlioz
Orchestra
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The Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra.
Orchestra
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Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra
Orchestra
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Göttinger Symphonie Orchester
Orchestra
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A modern orchestra concert hall: Philharmony in
Szczecin, Poland
20.
Concert band
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On rare occasions, additional non traditional instruments may be added to such ensembles such as piano, harp, synthesizer, or electric guitar. A concert bands repertoire includes original compositions, transcriptions/arrangements of orchestral compositions, light music. Though the instrumentation is similar, a band is distinguished from the marching band in that its primary function is as a concert ensemble. The standard repertoire for the band does, however, contain concert marches. One notable and influential original symphonic work for band was Gustav Holsts First Suite in E-Flat, written in 1909, following Holst, a variety of British, American, Canadian and Australian composers wrote for the medium, including Percy Grainger, James Swearingen and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The wind ensemble could be said to be modeled on the section of a Wagner orchestra. While many people consider the ensemble to be one player on a part. Full band pieces usually require doubling or tripling of the clarinet parts, according to Fennell, the wind ensemble was not revolutionary, but developed naturally out of the music that led him to the concept. Professional concert bands not associated with the military are rare, lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps, New York, New York, conducted by Kelly Watkins Municipal Band of Charlottesville, Inc. Other large competitions include the World Music Competition, held in the Netherlands, instrumentation for the wind band is not standardized, composers will frequently add or omit parts. Instrumentation differs depending on the type of ensemble, middle and high school bands frequently have more limited instrumentation and fewer parts. This is both to limit the difficulty for inexperienced players and because schools frequently do not have access to the common instruments. The standard concert band will have several players on each part, depending on available personnel, a concert band can theoretically have as many as 200 members from a set of only 35 parts. Also, it is common to see two tubas playing the part in a wind ensemble. Complicated percussion parts are common in concert pieces, often requiring many percussionists. Many believe this is a difference between the orchestra—which usually lacks a large battery of percussion—and the concert band. While in older transcriptions and concert works, the timpani were treated as its own section as in the orchestra, today, in bands, consequently, the timpani player often will double on other percussion instruments. Contemporary compositions often call on players to use unusual instruments or effects, for example, several pieces call on the use of a siren while others will ask players to play recorders, a glass harmonica, or to sing
Concert band
–
A concert band
Concert band
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A military band
21.
A (musical note)
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La or A is the sixth note of the fixed-Do solfège. Its enharmonic equivalents are B which is a semitone above A♭. A is generally used as a standard for tuning, when the orchestra tunes, the oboe plays an A and the rest of the instruments tune to match that pitch. Every string instrument in the orchestra has an A string, from each player can tune the rest of their instrument. A is also used in combination with a number to label the pitch standard, the number designates the frequency in hertz. A lower number equals a lower pitch, by an international treaty signed in 1939, modern pitch is standardized at A-440. However, tuning has varied over time, geographical region, or instrument maker, in 17th-century Europe, tunings ranged from about A-374 to A-403, approximately two to three semitones below A-440. Historical examples exist of instruments, tuning forks, or standards ranging from A-309 to A-455.3, although the official standard today is A-440, some orchestral groups and chamber groups prefer to tune a little higher, at A-442 or even A-444. Baroque pitch is usually cited as A-415, which is a lower than modern pitch. A0 is the lowest note on the standard piano, the octaves follow A1, A2, etc. A7 is a few pitches lower than C8, the highest note on the standard piano. The note A is not considered to be a milestone or mark to hit with voice as, for example, Tenor C is
A (musical note)
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A440 Play (
help ·
info).
22.
Oboe
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Oboes /ˈoʊboʊ/ OH-boh are a family of double reed woodwind musical instruments. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range, oboes are usually made of wood, but there are also oboes made of synthetic materials. A soprano oboe measures roughly 65 cm long, with keys, a conical bore. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed and vibrating a column of air, the distinctive oboe tone is versatile, and has been described as bright. When the term oboe is used alone, it is taken to mean the standard treble instrument rather than other instruments of the family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called a hautbois, hoboy. The spelling of oboe was adopted into English c.1770 from the Italian oboè, a musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist or simply an oboe player. In comparison to other woodwind instruments, the treble oboe is sometimes referred to as having a clear. The Sprightly Companion, a book published by Henry Playford in 1695, describes the oboe as Majestical and Stately. Humorously, the sound of the oboe is described in the play Angels in America as like that of a if the duck were a songbird. The rich timbre of the oboe is derived from its conical bore, as a result, oboes are readily audible over other instruments in large ensembles. The highest note of the oboe is a lower than the nominally highest note of the B♭ clarinet. Since the clarinet has a range of notes, the lowest note of the B♭ clarinet is significantly deeper than the lowest note of the oboe. Music for the oboe is written in concert pitch. Orchestras normally tune to a concert A played by the oboe, according to the League of American Orchestras, this is done because the pitch of the oboe is secure and its penetrating sound makes it ideal for tuning purposes. The pitch of the oboe is affected by the way in which the reed is made. The reed has a significant effect on the sound of the instrument, Variations in cane and other construction materials, the age of the reed, and differences in scrape and length all affect the pitch of the instrument. German and French reeds, for instance, differ in many ways, weather conditions such as temperature and humidity also affect the pitch
Oboe
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A modern oboe with a reed
Oboe
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Classical oboe, copy by Sand Dalton of an original by Johann Friedrich Floth, c. 1805
Oboe
–
The members of the oboe family from top:
heckelphone,
bass oboe,
cor anglais,
oboe d'amore, regular oboe, and
piccolo oboe
Oboe
–
Oboist
Albrecht Mayer preparing reeds for use. Most oboists scrape their own reeds to achieve the desired tone and response
23.
Clarinet
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The clarinet is a musical-instrument family belonging to the group known as the woodwind instruments. It has a mouthpiece, a straight cylindrical tube with an almost cylindrical bore. A person who plays a clarinet is called a clarinetist, the word clarinet may have entered the English language via the French clarinette, or from Provençal clarin, oboe. It would seem however that its roots are to be found amongst some of the various names for trumpets used around the renaissance. Clarion, clarin and the Italian clarino are all derived from the medieval term claro which referred to a form of trumpet. This is probably the origin of the Italian clarinetto, itself a diminutive of clarino, according to Johann Gottfried Walther, writing in 1732, the reason for the name is that it sounded from far off not unlike a trumpet. The English form clarinet is found as early as 1733, while the similarity in sound between the earliest clarinets and the trumpet may hold a clue to its name, other factors may have been involved. The trumpet parts that required this speciality were known by the term clarino, Johann Christoph Denner is generally believed to have invented the clarinet in Germany around the year 1700 by adding a register key to the earlier chalumeau. Over time, additional keywork and airtight pads were added to improve the tone and these days the most popular clarinet is the B♭ clarinet. However, the clarinet in A, just a lower, is commonly used in orchestral music. Since the middle of the 19th century the clarinet has become an essential addition to the orchestra. The clarinet family ranges from the BBB♭ octo-contrabass to the A♭ piccolo clarinet, the clarinet has proved to be an exceptionally flexible instrument, equally at home in the classical repertoire as in concert bands, military bands, marching bands, klezmer, and jazz. The cylindrical bore is primarily responsible for the clarinets distinctive timbre, the tone quality can vary greatly with the musician, the music, the instrument, the mouthpiece, and the reed. The most prominent were the German/Viennese traditions and the French school, the latter was centered on the clarinetists of the Conservatoire de Paris. The proliferation of recorded music has made examples of different styles of clarinet playing available, the modern clarinetist has a diverse palette of acceptable tone qualities to choose from. The A clarinet and B♭ clarinet have nearly the same bore, orchestral players using the A and B♭ instruments in the same concert could use the same mouthpiece for both. The A and the B♭ instruments have nearly identical tonal quality, the tone of the E♭ clarinet is brighter than that of the lower clarinets and can be heard even through loud orchestral or concert band textures. The bass clarinet has a deep, mellow sound, while the alto clarinet is similar in tone to the bass
Clarinet
–
Bass clarinet
Clarinet
–
Written range (though it is possible to play higher):
Clarinet
–
Sound wave propagation in the soprano clarinet
Clarinet
–
Schüller's quarter-tone clarinet
24.
Beat (acoustics)
–
In acoustics, a beat is an interference pattern between two sounds of slightly different frequencies, perceived as a periodic variation in volume whose rate is the difference of the two frequencies. When tuning instruments that can produce sustained tones, beats can readily be recognized, tuning two tones to a unison will present a peculiar effect, when the two tones are close in pitch but not identical, the difference in frequency generates the beating. The volume varies like in a tremolo as the sounds alternately interfere constructively and destructively, as the two tones gradually approach unison, the beating slows down and may become so slow as to be imperceptible. It can be proven that the envelope of the maxima and minima form a wave frequency is half the difference between the frequencies of the two original waves. Instead, it is perceived as a variation in the amplitude of the first term in the expression above. It can be said that the lower frequency cosine term is an envelope for the higher frequency one, the frequency of the modulation is f1 + f2/2, that is, the average of the two frequencies. It can be noted that every second burst in the pattern is inverted. Each peak is replaced by a trough and vice versa, however, because the human ear is not sensitive to the phase of a sound, only its amplitude or intensity, only the magnitude of the envelope is heard. A physical interpretation is that when cos =1 the two waves are in phase and they interfere constructively, when it is zero, they are out of phase and interfere destructively. Beats occur also in more complex sounds, or in sounds of different volumes, beating can also be heard between notes that are near to, but not exactly, a harmonic interval, due to some harmonic of the first note beating with a harmonic of the second note. For example, in the case of perfect fifth, the harmonic of the bass note beats with the second harmonic of the other note. Musicians commonly use interference beats to objectively check tuning at the unison, perfect fifth, piano and organ tuners even use a method involving counting beats, aiming at a particular number for a specific interval. The composer Alvin Lucier has written many pieces that feature interference beats as their main focus, composer Phill Niblocks music is entirely based on beating caused by microtonal differences. Binaural beats are heard when the right ear listens to a different tone than the left ear. Here, the tones do not interfere physically, but are summed by the brain in the olivary nucleus and this effect is related to the brains ability to locate sounds in three dimensions. Combination tone Gamelan tuning Heterodyne Consonance and dissonance Moiré pattern, a form of interference that generates new frequencies
Beat (acoustics)
–
Diagram of beat frequency
25.
Harmonic
–
A harmonic is any member of the harmonic series, the divergent infinite series. Every term of the series after the first is the mean of the neighboring terms. The phrase harmonic mean likewise derives from music, the term is employed in various disciplines, including music, physics, acoustics, electronic power transmission, radio technology, and other fields. It is typically applied to repeating signals, such as sinusoidal waves, a harmonic of such a wave is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the frequency of the original wave, known as the fundamental frequency. The original wave is called the 1st harmonic, the following harmonics are known as higher harmonics. As all harmonics are periodic at the frequency, the sum of harmonics is also periodic at that frequency. On strings, harmonics that are bowed have a glassy, pure tone, harmonics may also be called overtones, partials or upper partials. In some music contexts, the harmonic, overtone and partial are used fairly interchangeably. Most acoustic instruments emit complex tones containing many individual partials, rather, a musical note is perceived as one sound, the quality or timbre of that sound being a result of the relative strengths of the individual partials. Oscillators that produce harmonic partials behave somewhat like one-dimensional resonators, and are long and thin. Wind instruments whose air column is open at one end, such as trumpets and clarinets. However they only produce partials matching the odd harmonics, at least in theory, the reality of acoustic instruments is such that none of them behaves as perfectly as the somewhat simplified theoretical models would predict. Partials whose frequencies are not integer multiples of the fundamental are referred to as inharmonic partials, antique singing bowls are known for producing multiple harmonic partials or multiphonics. An overtone is any partial higher than the lowest partial in a compound tone, the relative strengths and frequency relationships of the component partials determine the timbre of an instrument. This chart demonstrates how the three types of names are counted, In many musical instruments, it is possible to play the upper harmonics without the note being present. In a simple case this has the effect of making the note go up in pitch by an octave, in some cases it also changes the timbre of the note. This is part of the method of obtaining higher notes in wind instruments. The extended technique of playing multiphonics also produces harmonics, on string instruments it is possible to produce very pure sounding notes, called harmonics or flageolets by string players, which have an eerie quality, as well as being high in pitch
Harmonic
–
Table of harmonics of a stringed instrument with colored dots indicating which positions can be lightly fingered to generate
just intervals up to the 7th harmonic
Harmonic
–
The nodes of a vibrating string are harmonics.
26.
Node (physics)
–
A node is a point along a standing wave where the wave has minimum amplitude. For instance, in a guitar string, the ends of the string are nodes. By changing the position of the end node through frets, the guitarist changes the length of the vibrating string. The opposite of a node is an anti-node, a point where the amplitude of the wave is a maximum. These occur midway between the nodes, standing waves result when two sinusoidal wave trains of the same frequency are moving in opposite directions in the same space and interfere with each other. In a standing wave the nodes are a series of locations at equally spaced intervals where the amplitude is zero. At these points the two waves add with opposite phase and cancel each other out and they occur at intervals of half a wavelength. Midway between each pair of nodes are locations where the amplitude is maximum, at these points the two waves add with the same phase and reinforce each other. In cases where the two opposite wave trains are not the amplitude, they do not cancel perfectly, so the amplitude of the standing wave at the nodes is not zero. This occurs when the reflection at the boundary is imperfect and this is indicated by a finite standing wave ratio, the ratio of the amplitude of the wave at the antinode to the amplitude at the node. These can be visible by sprinkling sand on the surface. In transmission lines a voltage node is a current antinode, in this type the derivative of the waves amplitude is forced to zero at the boundary. So there is a maximum at the boundary, the first node occurs a quarter wavelength from the end. A sound wave consists of alternating cycles of compression and expansion of the wave medium, during compression, the molecules of the medium are forced together, resulting in the increased pressure and density. During expansion the molecules are forced apart, resulting in the decreased pressure, the number of nodes in a specified length is directly proportional to the frequency of the wave. Occasionally on a guitar, violin, or other stringed instrument, when the finger is placed on top of the string at a certain point, but does not push the string all the way down to the fretboard, a third node is created and a harmonic is sounded. During normal play when the frets are used, the harmonics are always present, with the artificial node method, the overtone is louder and the fundamental tone is quieter. If the finger is placed at the midpoint of the string, the first overtone is heard, when two additional nodes divide the string into thirds, this creates an octave and a perfect fifth
Node (physics)
–
Pattern of two waves' interference (from up to down). The point represents the node.
27.
Stringed instrument tunings
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This is a chart of stringed instrument tunings. Instruments are listed alphabetically by their most commonly known name, a course may consist of one or more strings. Courses are listed reading from left to right facing the front of the instrument, on a majority of instruments, this places the notes from low to high pitch. Exceptions exist, Instruments using reentrant tuning may have a string before a low string. Instruments strung in the direction will be noted with the highest sounding courses on the left. Strings within a course are given from left to right, facing the front of the instrument. Single-string courses are separated by spaces, multiple-string courses are shown with courses separated by bullet characters, pitch, Unless otherwise noted, contemporary western standard pitch and 12-tone equal temperament are assumed. Octaves are given in scientific notation, with Middle C written as C4. Because stringed instruments are easily re-tuned, the concept of a standard tuning is somewhat flexible, other tunings will then be given under the heading Alternates. ISBN0825602386 Dearling, Robert, Stringed Instruments, Chelsea House Publishing, ISBN0791060926 Hanson, Mark, The Complete Book of Alternate Guitar Tunings, Music Sales America. ISBN0936799137 Marcuse, Sibyl, Musical Instruments, A Comprehensive Dictionary, ISBN0393007588 Piston, Walter, Orchestration, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN0393097404 Randell, D. M. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th Edition, ISBN0674011635 Atlas of Plucked Instruments A Case Study of the Zheng Concerto Chapman Stick Tunings Hurdy-gurdy Tuning Koto Tunings Zither Tuning
Stringed instrument tunings
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Akkordolia
Stringed instrument tunings
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Scientific pitch notation
Stringed instrument tunings
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Amzad
Stringed instrument tunings
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Armonico
28.
Guitar
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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
Guitar
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Illustration in a
Carolingian psalter from the 9th century showing an instrument of the
chordophone family, most probably a
lute
Guitar
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A
classical guitar with nylon
strings
Guitar
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A guitarra latina (left) and a guitarra morisca (right), Spain, 13th century
Guitar
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Guitar collection in
Museu de la Música de Barcelona
29.
Perfect fourth
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In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions, and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C. Diminished and augmented fourths span the same number of staff positions, the perfect fourth may be derived from the harmonic series as the interval between the third and fourth harmonics. The term perfect identifies this interval as belonging to the group of perfect intervals, so called because they are neither major nor minor, up until the late 19th century, the perfect fourth was often called by its Greek name, diatessaron. Its most common occurrence is between the fifth and upper root of all major and minor triads and their extensions. A perfect fourth in just intonation corresponds to a ratio of 4,3, or about 498 cents, while in equal temperament a perfect fourth is equal to five semitones. A helpful way to recognize a fourth is to hum the starting of the Bridal Chorus from Wagners Lohengrin. Other examples are the first two notes of the Christmas carol Hark, the Herald Angels Sing or El Cóndor Pasa, and, for a descending perfect fourth, the second and third notes of O Come All Ye Faithful. The perfect fourth is a perfect interval like the unison, octave, and perfect fifth, in common practice harmony, however, it is considered a stylistic dissonance in certain contexts, namely in two-voice textures and whenever it appears above the bass. Conventionally, adjacent strings of the bass and of the bass guitar are a perfect fourth apart when unstopped, as are all pairs. Sets of tom-tom drums are also tuned in perfect fourths. The 4,3 just perfect fourth arises in the C major scale between G and C, play The use of perfect fourths and fifths to sound in parallel with and to thicken the melodic line was prevalent in music prior to the European polyphonic music of the Middle Ages. In the 13th century, the fourth and fifth together were the concordantiae mediae after the unison and octave, in the 15th century the fourth came to be regarded as dissonant on its own, and was first classed as a dissonance by Johannes Tinctoris in his Terminorum musicae diffinitorium. In practice, however, it continued to be used as a consonance when supported by the interval of a third or fifth in a lower voice. Modern acoustic theory supports the medieval interpretation insofar as the intervals of unison, octave, the octave has the ratio of 2,1, for example the interval between a at A440 and a at 880 Hz, giving the ratio 880,440, or 2,1. The fifth has a ratio of 3,2, and its complement has the ratio of 3,4, ancient and medieval music theorists appear to have been familiar with these ratios, see for example their experiments on the Monochord. In early western polyphony, these simpler intervals were generally preferred, however, in its development between the 12th and 16th centuries, In the earliest stages, these simple intervals occur so frequently that they appear to be the favourite sound of composers. Later, the more complex intervals move gradually from the margins to the centre of musical interest
Perfect fourth
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Perfect fourth Play (
help ·
info)
30.
Bass guitar
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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
Bass guitar
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A
Music Man StingRay bass
Bass guitar
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(a standard tuned 4-string bass guitar)
Bass guitar
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Musical instrument inventor Paul Tutmarc outside his music store in Seattle, Washington
Bass guitar
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Design patent issued to Leo Fender for the second-generation
Precision Bass
31.
Double bass
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The double bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. It is an instrument and is typically notated one octave higher than sounding to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths, rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2. The instruments exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, the double bass is a standard member of the orchestras string section, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of genres, such as jazz, 1950s-style blues and rock and roll, rockabilly, psychobilly, traditional country music, bluegrass, tango. The double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings, in orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, Classical music uses just the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, so does traditional bluegrass. In jazz, blues, and related genres, the bass is typically amplified with an amplifier and speaker, the double bass stands around 180 cm from scroll to endpin. However, other sizes are available, such as a 1⁄2 or 3⁄4 and these sizes do not reflect the size relative to a full size, or 4⁄4 bass, a 1⁄2 bass is not half the size of a bass but is only slightly smaller. It is typically constructed from several types of wood, including maple for the back, spruce for the top and it is uncertain whether the instrument is a descendant of the viola da gamba or of the violin, but it is traditionally aligned with the violin family. While the double bass is nearly identical in construction to other violin family instruments, like other violin and viol-family string instruments, the double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed, in jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, except for some solos and also occasional written parts in modern jazz that call for bowing. In classical pedagogy, almost all of the focus is on performing with the bow and producing a good bowed tone, some of these articulations can be combined, for example, the combination of sul ponticello and tremolo can produce eerie, ghostly sounds. Classical bass players do play pizzicato parts in orchestra, but these parts generally require simple notes, vibrato is used to add expression to string playing. In general, very loud, low-register passages are played with little or no vibrato, mid- and higher-register melodies are typically played with more vibrato. The speed and intensity of the vibrato is varied by the performer for an emotional and musical effect, in jazz, rockabilly and other related genres, much or all of the focus is on playing pizzicato. In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play extremely rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods, as well, jazz and rockabilly bassists develop virtuoso pizzicato techniques that enable them to play rapid solos that incorporate fast-moving triplet and sixteenth note figures. In jazz and related styles, bassists often add semi-percussive ghost notes into basslines, to add to the rhythmic feel and to add fills to a bassline
Double bass
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Side and front views of a modern double bass with a French-style bow
Double bass
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Jazz bassist Ron Carter pictured playing with his Quartet at "Altes Pfandhaus" in Cologne
Double bass
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Example of a Busetto-shaped double bass: Copy of a Matthias Klotz (1700) by Rumano Solano
Double bass
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Principal parts of the double bass
32.
Viola
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The viola is a string instrument that is bowed or played with varying techniques. It is slightly larger than a violin and has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century it has been the middle or alto voice of the family, between the violin and the cello. The strings from low to high are generally tuned to C3, G3, D4. In the past, the viola varied in size and style as did its names, the Italians often used the term, viola da braccio meaning literally, of the arm. Brazzo was another Italian word referring to the viola which the Germans adopted in the form, the French had their own names, Cinquiesme was a small viola, Haute Contre was a large viola and Taile meant Tenor. In the modern era, the French use the term Alto, the viola had enjoyed popularity in the heyday of five-part harmony up until the eighteenth century, taking three lines of the harmony and occasionally playing the melody line. Music that is written for the viola differs from that of most other instruments in that it uses the alto clef. Viola music switches to the treble clef when there are sections of music written in a higher register to make the notes easier to read. The viola often plays the voices in string quartets and symphonic writing. The viola occasionally plays a major, soloistic role in orchestral music, examples include Don Quixote by Richard Strauss and Harold en Italie by Hector Berlioz. In the earlier part of the 20th century, more composers began to write for the viola, encouraged by the emergence of specialized soloists such as Lionel Tertis and William Primrose. English composers Arthur Bliss, York Bowen, Benjamin Dale, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams all wrote substantial chamber, many of these pieces were commissioned by, or written for Lionel Tertis. William Walton, Bohuslav Martinů, Toru Takemitsu, Tibor Serly, Alfred Schnittke, Paul Hindemith wrote a substantial amount of music for viola, including the concerto Der Schwanendreher. The concerti by Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók, and William Walton are the big three of viola repertoire, the viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size violas body is between 25 mm and 100 mm longer than the body of a violin, with an average length of 41 cm. Small violas typically made for children typically start at 30 cm, for a child who needs a smaller size, a fractional-sized violin is often strung with the strings of a viola. Unlike the violin, the viola does not have a full size. The body of a viola would need to measure about 51 cm long to match the acoustics of a violin, there have been several experiments intended to increase the size of the viola, in the interest of improving the instruments sound
Viola
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A viola shown from the front and the side
Viola
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Playing a 17" viola in 3rd position.
Viola
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Bow frogs, top to bottom: violin, viola, cello
Viola
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This article is about the classical musical instrument. For the flower, see
Viola (plant). For the Portuguese guitar, see
viola caipira. For other uses, see
Viola (disambiguation).
33.
Cello
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The cello or violoncello is a bowed or plucked string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. The strings from low to high are generally tuned to C2, G2, D3 and A3 and it is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin and viola and the double bass. The cello is used as a musical instrument, as well as in chamber music ensembles, string orchestras, as a member of the string section of symphony orchestras. It is the second-largest and second lowest bowed string instrument in the symphony orchestra. Cello parts are written in the bass clef, but both tenor clef and treble clefs are used for higher-range parts, both in orchestral/chamber music parts and in solo cello works. A person who plays the cello is called a cellist or violoncellist, in a small Classical ensemble, such as a string quartet, the cello typically plays the bass part, the lowest-pitched musical line of the piece. In orchestra, in Baroque era and Classical music period, the cello plays the bass part. In Baroque era music, the cello is used to play the basso continuo bassline, in a Baroque performance, the cello player might be joined by other bass instruments, playing double bass, viol or other low-register instruments. The name cello is a contraction of the Italian violoncello, which means little violone, in modern symphony orchestras, it is the second largest stringed instrument. Thus, the name contained both the augmentative -one and the diminutive -cello. By the turn of the 20th century, it had become common to shorten the name to cello and it is now customary to use cello without apostrophe as the full designation. Viol is derived from the viola, which was derived from Medieval Latin vitula. Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2, followed by G2, D3 and it is tuned in the same intervals as the viola, but an octave lower. Unlike the violin or viola but similar to the double bass, the cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. The instrument is a part of the orchestra, as part of the string section. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello, among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are Johann Sebastian Bachs six unaccompanied Suites. The Prelude from the First Suite is particularly famous, romantic era repertoire includes the Robert Schumann Concerto, the Antonín Dvořák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Johannes Brahms. The cello is increasingly common in traditional music, especially Scottish fiddle music
Cello
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Cello close-up
Cello
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Cello, front and side view. The endpin at the bottom is retracted or removed for easier storage and transportation, and adjusted for height in accordance to the player.
Cello
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A baroque cello strung with gut strings. Note the absence of fine-tuning pins on the tailpiece.
Cello
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The cello section of the Orchestra of the Munich University of Applied Sciences is shown here.
34.
Perfect fifth
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In music theory, a perfect fifth is the musical interval corresponding to a pair of pitches with a frequency ratio of 3,2, or very nearly so. In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is the interval from the first to the last of five notes in a diatonic scale. The perfect fifth spans seven semitones, while the diminished fifth spans six, for example, the interval from C to G is a perfect fifth, as the note G lies seven semitones above C. Play The perfect fifth may be derived from the series as the interval between the second and third harmonics. In a diatonic scale, the dominant note is a fifth above the tonic note. The perfect fifth is more consonant, or stable, than any other interval except the unison and it occurs above the root of all major and minor chords and their extensions. Until the late 19th century, it was referred to by one of its Greek names. Its inversion is the perfect fourth, the octave of the fifth is the twelfth. The term perfect identifies the perfect fifth as belonging to the group of perfect intervals, so called because of their simple pitch relationships and their high degree of consonance. However, when using correct enharmonic spelling, the fifth in Pythagorean tuning or meantone temperament is actually not a perfect fifth. The perfect unison has a pitch ratio 1,1, the perfect octave 2,1, the perfect fourth 4,3, within this definition, other intervals may also be called perfect, for example a perfect third or a perfect major sixth. In terms of semitones, these are equivalent to the tritone, the justly tuned pitch ratio of a perfect fifth is 3,2, meaning that the upper note makes three vibrations in the same amount of time that the lower note makes two. The just perfect fifth can be heard when a violin is tuned, if adjacent strings are adjusted to the ratio of 3,2, the result is a smooth and consonant sound. Keyboard instruments such as the piano normally use a version of the perfect fifth. In 12-tone equal temperament, the frequencies of the perfect fifth are in the ratio 7 or approximately 1.498307. An equally tempered fifth, defined as 700 cents, is about two cents narrower than a just perfect fifth, which is approximately 701.955 cents. Kepler explored musical tuning in terms of ratios, and defined a lower imperfect fifth as a 40,27 pitch ratio. His lower perfect fifth ratio of 1.4815 is much more imperfect than the equal temperament tuning of 1.498, the perfect fifth is a basic element in the construction of major and minor triads, and their extensions
Perfect fifth
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Examples of perfect fifth intervals
35.
Scordatura
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Scordatura, is a tuning of a stringed instrument different from the normal, standard tuning. It typically attempts to allow special effects or unusual chords or timbre and it is common to notate the finger position as if played in regular tuning, while the actual pitch resulting is altered. When all the strings are tuned by the same interval up or down, as in the case of the viola in Mozarts Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, the part is transposed as a whole. Of course, German violinist Hans Hake includes 3 works in Vorstimmung (upset tuning] for 2 violins in his collection Ander Theil Newer Pavanen, Scordatura was much used by composers for viola damore, violin and cello, including J. S. Bach, Biber, Vivaldi, Ariosti, Vilsmayr, and others in compositions for violin during the early 18th century, a special type of notation was used to make it easier to read. This notation was used to notate music for the viola damore. The viola damore used a number of different tunings and writing music for it in scordatura notation was a natural choice for composers of the time. Heinrich Ignaz Franz Bibers Rosary Sonatas for violin and continuo, aside from the first and last works of this collection, wherein the instrument is set to the common G-D-A-E tuning, the violin for each sonata is tuned to a different array of pitches. VII in C minor is written in a form of scordatura on a nine line stave, see viola damore for more information. Johann Joseph Vilsmayr Artificiosus Consentus Pro Camera, a set of six published in 1715. The middle four partitas use scordatura tunings, johann Pachelbels Musikalische Ergötzung bestehend in 6 verstimmten Partien, six suites for two violins and continuo. Tunings include C-F-C-F, C-G-C-F, B♭-E♭-B♭-E♭, B-E-B-E, C-G-C-F, and B♭-F-B♭-E♭. Antonio Vivaldi, violin concerto in A major, Op.9, No.6, in which the violins G string is tuned up to an A, allowing for a beautifully resonant scale and arpeggio motif ending on the retuned string. Georg Philipp Telemann, Concerto in A Major for two Violins, TWV43,7, the title of the symphony means the absent-minded man – so it is as if the violins have forgotten to tune their strings. The music fully pauses for the violins to re-tune before continuing, camille Saint-Saëns, solo violin in Danse Macabre, where the E-string is tuned to E♭. This changes the open intervals of the double stop A and E to the tri-tone, gustav Mahler, scordatura violin soloist in the 2nd movement of his 4th Symphony. In this case, the composer desired the specific tone of the sound produced by a scordatura violin. Franz von Vecseys Nuit du Nord, a 1921 work for violin and piano, in Max Schereks Sérénade et boléro for solo violin, Op.27, the violin must be tuned to F, F, D, B♭
Scordatura
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Violin with strings crossed for Biber's Resurrection sonata
36.
Equal temperament
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An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which the frequency interval between every pair of adjacent notes has the same ratio. In equal temperament tunings, the interval is often found by dividing some larger desired interval, often the octave. That resulting smallest interval, 1⁄12 the width of an octave, is called a semitone or half step, the standard pitch has not always been 440 but has varied and generally risen over the past few hundred years. For example, some music has been written in 19-TET and 31-TET, in Western countries, when people use the term equal temperament without qualification, they usually mean 12-TET. To avoid ambiguity between equal temperaments that divide the octave and ones that divide some other interval, the equal division of the octave. According to this system, 12-TET is called 12-EDO, 31-TET is called 31-EDO. Other instruments, such as wind, keyboard, and fretted instruments, often only approximate equal temperament. Some wind instruments that can easily and spontaneously bend their tone, most notably trombones, use tuning similar to string ensembles, the two figures frequently credited with the achievement of exact calculation of equal temperament are Zhu Zaiyu in 1584 and Simon Stevin in 1585. Kenneth Robinson attributes the invention of equal temperament to Zhu Zaiyu, Zhu Zaiyu is quoted as saying that, in a text dating from 1584, I have founded a new system. I establish one foot as the number from which the others are to be extracted, altogether one has to find the exact figures for the pitch-pipers in twelve operations. Kuttner disagrees and remarks that his claim cannot be considered correct without major qualifications, kuttner proposes that neither Zhu Zaiyu or Simon Stevin achieved equal temperament, and that neither of the two should be treated as inventors. The origin of the Chinese pentatonic scale is traditionally ascribed to the mythical Ling Lun, allegedly his writings discussed the equal division of the scale in the 27th century BC. However, evidence of the origins of writing in this period in China is limited to rudimentary inscriptions on oracle bones, an approximation for equal temperament was described by He Chengtian, a mathematician of Southern and Northern Dynasties around 400 AD. He came out with the earliest recorded approximate numerical sequence in relation to equal temperament in history,900849802758715677638601570536509.5479450, historically, there was a seven-equal temperament or hepta-equal temperament practice in Chinese tradition. Zhu Zaiyu, a prince of the Ming court, spent thirty years on research based on the equal temperament idea originally postulated by his father and he described his new pitch theory in his Fusion of Music and Calendar 乐律融通 published in 1580. An extended account is given by Joseph Needham. Similarly, after 84 divisions the length was divided by a factor of 128,84 =27 =128, according to Gene Cho, Zhu Zaiyu was the first person to solve the equal temperament problem mathematically. Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit in China recorded this work in his personal journal, in 1620, Zhus work was referenced by a European mathematician
Equal temperament
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Prince Zhu Zaiyu constructed 12 string equal temperament tuning instrument, front and back view
Equal temperament
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Simon Stevin's Van de Spiegheling der singconst c. 1605.
Equal temperament
–
Figure 1: The
syntonic tuning continuum, which includes many notable "equal temperament" tunings (Milne 2007).
37.
Pythagorean tuning
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Pythagorean tuning is a tuning of the syntonic temperament in which the generator is the ratio 3,2, which is 702 cents wide. Hence, it is a system of tuning in which the frequency ratios of all intervals are based on the ratio 3,2. This ratio, also known as the perfect fifth, is chosen because it is one of the most consonant and easiest to tune by ear. As Novalis put it, The musical proportions seem to me to be particularly correct natural proportions, the so-called Pythagorean tuning was used by musicians up to the beginning of the 16th century. The Pythagorean system would appear to be ideal because of the purity of the fifths, Pythagorean tuning is based on a stack of intervals called perfect fifths, each tuned in the ratio 3,2, the next simplest ratio after 2,1. Since notes differing in frequency by a factor of 2 are given the same name, the purpose of this adjustment is to move the 12 notes within a smaller range of frequency, namely within the interval between the base note D and the D above it. This interval is called the basic octave. For instance, the A is tuned such that its frequency equals 3,2 times the frequency of D—if D is tuned to a frequency of 288 Hz, then A is tuned to 432 Hz. Similarly, the E above A is tuned such that its frequency equals 3,2 times the frequency of A, or 9,4 times the frequency of D—with A at 432 Hz, this puts E at 648 Hz. Since this E is outside the basic octave, it is usual to halve its frequency to move it within the basic octave. Therefore, E is tuned to 324 Hz, a 9,8 above D, the B at 3,2 above that E is tuned to the ratio 27,16 and so on. This frequency is doubled to bring it into the basic octave. When extending this tuning however, a problem arises, no stack of 3,2 intervals will fit exactly into any stack of 2,1 intervals. For instance a stack such as this, obtained by adding one note to the stack shown above A♭–E♭–B♭–F–C–G–D–A–E–B–F♯–C♯–G♯ will be similar. More exactly, it will be about a quarter of a semitone larger, thus, A♭ and G♯, when brought into the basic octave, will not coincide as expected. This discrepancy, of about 23.46 cents, or nearly one quarter of a semitone, is known as a Pythagorean comma, to get around this problem, Pythagorean tuning constructs only twelve notes as above, with eleven fifths between them. For example, one may use only the 12 notes from E♭ to G♯. This, as shown above, the remaining interval is left badly out-of-tune, meaning that any music which combines those two notes is unplayable in this tuning. A very out-of-tune interval such as one is known as a wolf interval
Pythagorean tuning
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The syntonic tuning continuum, showing Pythagorean tuning at 702 cents.
38.
A440 (pitch standard)
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A440 or A4, which has a frequency of 440 Hz, is the musical note A above middle C and serves as a general tuning standard for musical pitch. Prior to the standardization on 440 Hz, many countries and organizations followed the French standard since the 1860s of 435 Hz, which had also been the Austrian governments 1885 recommendation. Johann Heinrich Scheibler recommended A440 as a standard in 1834 after inventing the tonometer to measure pitch, the American music industry reached an informal standard of 440 Hz in 1926, and some began using it in instrument manufacturing. In 1936 the American Standards Association recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz and this standard was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 as ISO16. It is designated A4 in scientific pitch notation because it occurs in the octave that starts with the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard, A440 is widely used as concert pitch in the United Kingdom and the United States. In continental Europe the frequency of A4 commonly varies between 440 Hz and 444 Hz, in the period instrument movement, a consensus has arisen around a modern baroque pitch of 415 Hz, baroque for some special church music at 466 Hz, and classical pitch at 430 Hz. A440 is often used as a reference in just intonation regardless of the fundamental note or key. The US time and frequency station WWV broadcasts a 440 Hz signal at two minutes past every hour, with WWVH broadcasting the same tone at the first minute past every hour and this was added in 1936 to aid orchestras in tuning their instruments. History of pitch standards in Western music Concert pitch Pitch Electronic tuner A
A440 (pitch standard)
–
A440 Play (
help ·
info).
39.
Mandolin
–
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family and is usually plucked with a plectrum or pick. It commonly has four courses of doubled metal strings tuned in unison, although five, the courses are normally tuned in a succession of perfect fifths. It is the member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello. There are many styles of mandolin, but three are common, the Neapolitan or round-backed mandolin, the mandolin and the flat-backed mandolin. The round-back has a bottom, constructed of strips of wood. The carved-top or arch-top mandolin has a shallower, arched back. The flat-backed mandolin uses thin sheets of wood for the body, each style of instrument has its own sound quality and is associated with particular forms of music. Neapolitan mandolins feature prominently in European classical music and traditional music, carved-top instruments are common in American folk music and bluegrass music. Flat-backed instruments are used in Irish, British and Brazilian folk music. Some modern Brazilian instruments feature a fifth course tuned a fifth lower than the standard fourth course. There has also been a type and an instrument with sixteen-strings. Much of mandolin development revolved around the soundboard, pre-mandolin instruments were quiet instruments, strung with as many as six courses of gut strings, and were plucked with the fingers or with a quill. However, modern instruments are louder—using four courses of metal strings, the modern soundboard is designed to withstand the pressure of metal strings that would break earlier instruments. The soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections, there is usually one or more sound holes in the soundboard, either round, oval, or shaped like a calligraphic f. A round or oval sound hole may be covered or bordered with decorative rosettes or purfling, Mandolins evolved from the lute family in Italy during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the deep bowled mandolin, produced particularly in Naples, became common in the 19th century. Dating to around c.13,000 BC, a painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow. From the musical bow, families of stringed instruments developed, since each string played a note, adding strings added new notes, creating bow harps, harps. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords, another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute
Mandolin
–
An American A-style left-handed mandolin, with F-holes
Mandolin
–
Modern Neapolitan bowlback mandolin manufactured by the
Calace family workshop.
Mandolin
–
Mandolin with six courses of strings (2 strings per course), labeled Milanese at the museum.
Mandolin
–
Advertisement for a Lyon and Healy made, Washburn brand mandolin from an 1897 short-stories magazine, The Black Cat.
40.
Banjo
–
The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
Banjo
–
A five-string bluegrass banjo
Banjo
–
Open strings and highest note of a standard-tuned five-string bluegrass banjo.
Banjo
–
A five-string banjo.
Banjo
–
Plectrum banjo from Gold Tone
41.
Tenor banjo
–
The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
Tenor banjo
–
A five-string bluegrass banjo
Tenor banjo
–
A five-string banjo.
Tenor banjo
–
Plectrum banjo from Gold Tone
Tenor banjo
–
Four-string banjo
42.
Mandola
–
The mandola or tenor mandola is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin, the four courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola. The mandola, although now rarer, is the ancestor of the mandolin, the name mandola may originate with the ancient pandura, and was also rendered as mandora, the change perhaps having been due to approximation to the Italian word for almond. The instrument developed from the lute at a date, being more compact and cheaper to build. Historically related instruments include the mandore, mandole, vandola, bandola, bandora, however, significantly different instruments have at times and places taken on the same or similar names, and the true mandola has been strung in several different ways. The mandola has four courses of metal strings, tuned in unison rather than in octaves. The scale length is typically around 42 cm, the mandola is typically played with a plectrum. The double strings accommodate a sustaining technique called tremolando, an alternation of the plectrum on a single course of strings. The mandola is commonly used in folk music—particularly Italian folk music and it is sometimes played in Irish traditional music, but the instruments octave mandola, Irish bouzouki and modern cittern are more commonly used. It is tuned like a viola CGDA, like the guitar, the mandola can be acoustic or electric. Attila the Stockbroker, punk poet and frontman of Barnstormer, uses an electric mandola as his main instrument, alex Lifeson, guitarist of Rush, has also featured the mandola in his work. Mandolas are often played in orchestras, along with other members of the mandolin family, mandolin, mandocello. Sometimes the octave mandolin is included as well, Mandolin Mando-bass Octave mandola - Tuned an octave below the mandolin Mandocello - Tuned an octave below the mandola Irish bouzouki Troughton, John. Mandolin Manual, The Art, Craft and Science of the Mandolin, united States, Crowood Press, Limited, The. The Tenor Mandola Chord Bible, CGDA Standard Tuning 1,728 Chords, Chords for Mandolin, Irish Bango, Bouzouki, Mandola, Mamdocello. — A chord book featuring 20 pages of popular chords, the Mandolin Page theMandolinTuner, a mandolin site focusing on mandolin tuning, chords and tabs
Mandola
–
Mandola
Mandola
–
A Genoese mandola, c. 1700s.
Mandola
–
L-R - Banjo-mandolin, standard mandolin, 3-course mandolin, Tenor mandola.
43.
Mandocello
–
The mandocello is a plucked string instrument of the mandolin family. It has eight strings in four paired courses, tuned in fifths like a mandolin, but is larger and it can be described as being to the mandolin what the cello is to the violin. Mandocello construction is similar to the mandolin, the scale of the mandocello is longer than that of the mandolin. Gibson examples have a length of 24.75 but flat-back designs have appeared with both significantly shorter and longer scale lengths. These instruments may have approximately 23 frets, giving the 4-course mandocello a range from two octaves below middle C to the F an octave above middle C. Bowl-back instruments may have a scale length, on the order of 22.5 inches. As is typical of the family, mandocellos can be found with either a single oval soundhole or a pair of F soundholes. The internal bracing also bears similarity to the mandolin. Gibsons mandocellos were typically constructed with a single transverse brace on the top just below the oval soundhole, the mandocello generally has four courses of two strings each, tuned C2-G2-D3-A3. Because of the gauge of the lowest course, some folk mandocello players remove one of the C strings to prevent rattling while playing fortissimo. The rare 10-string mandocello, containing an additional course of E strings, may be termed a liuto cantabile or liuto moderno, like most other instruments in the mandolin family the mandocello originated in Europe. Later, around the turn of the 20th century, Gibson began building mandocellos in the style of their mandolins with arched tops, Gibson is known to have produced at least four models of mandocello between 1905 and the 1920s, the K-1, K-2, K-4, and K-5. Other American instrument companies also produced mandocellos, usually, courses of 2 adjacent strings are doubled. It is occasionally used as an instrument for the performance of classical music, such as concertos. However, some specifically for liuto cantabile were composed by Raffaele Calace. The mandocello also has a role in folk music, such as bluegrass or Celtic music. In this setting the flat-back mandocello is typically used, the mandocellos lower range does not produce the bright, projecting sound of the mandolin or mandola, and its use in this setting has been generally eclipsed by mandolin artists since Bill Monroe. The amplified instrument has infrequently been used in rock music groups
Mandocello
–
Mandocello
44.
Tenor guitar
–
The tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was developed in its acoustic form by Gibson Guitar Company. Tenor guitars are four-stringed instruments normally made in the shape of a guitar, or sometimes with a pear shaped body or, more rarely. They can be acoustic and/or electric and they can come in the form of top, archtop. Tenor guitars normally have a length similar to that of the tenor banjo of between 21 and 23 inches. The earliest origins of the guitar are not yet fully clear. Gibson built the tenor lute TL-4 in 1924, which had a lute-like pear-shaped body, four strings and it is possible that similar instruments were made by other makers such as Lyon and Healy and banjo makers, such as Bacon. In the same period, banjo makers, such as Paramount, built transitional round banjo-like wood-bodied instruments with four strings, from 1927 onwards, the very first true wood-bodied acoustic tenor guitars appeared as production instruments made by both Gibson and Martin. Almost all the guitar makers, including Epiphone, Kay, Gretsch, Guild. In collaboration with Cliff Edwards, Dobro built the four-stringed round-bodied resonator tenor scale length instrument called the Tenortrope in the early 1930s, makers such as Gibson even used to offer the tenor models as a custom option for their six string guitar models at no extra charge. Gibson also had a line of tenor guitars under their brand name of Kalamazoo. Budget tenor guitars by makers such as Harmony, Regal and Stella, were made in numbers in the 1950s and 1960s and are still widely available. Tenor guitars were manufactured continuously by both Gibson and Martin from the 1920s until the 1970s, National, formed by the Dopyera Brothers, also made significant numbers of resonator tenor and plectrum guitars between the 1920s and 1940s. Dobro, another company associated with the Dopyera Brothers, as well as National, in 1934, Gibson introduced an acoustic archtop tenor guitar, the TG-50, based on the acoustic archtop six string model, the L-50, with its production run lasting until 1958. In 1936 Gibson introduced the worlds first commercially successful electric Spanish-style guitar, in early 1937 Gibson also began shipping two other versions of the ES-150, a tenor guitar and a plectrum version. This first electric archtop tenor guitar, the ETG-150, was in production until 1972. In the mid 1950s electric solid-body tenor guitar models started to be produced and these were mostly produced as one-off custom instruments but, for a short time in 1955, Gretsch manufactured the only production electric solid-bodied tenor guitar, the Gretsch 6127 DuoJet. The tenor guitar can also be tuned like a soprano/concert/tenor ukulele, the normal CGDA tuning is very open and it gives the instrument voicings more reminiscent of the mandolin family than the guitar family, from both open and closed chords
Tenor guitar
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1928 Dobro style 37 tenor guitar from Lowell Levinger's collection
Tenor guitar
Tenor guitar
–
1928 National Style O plectrum guitar from Lowell Levinger's collection
Tenor guitar
–
Cincinnati, Ohio musician Kentucky Graham playing a
hollow-body electric tenor guitar
45.
Mando-bass
–
Mandobass is the largest member of the mandolin family, sometimes used as the bass instrument in mandolin orchestras. It is so large that it usually isnt held in the lap, the neck-scale length on a full-size mando-bass is similar to that of a standard orchestral double bass viol, about 43. There are three variants of the mandobass, The large four-string mandobass has a much longer neck and is tuned EADG. It was popular in early 20th century American and European mandolin ensembles, early examples had very large bodies and were often played in an upright position like a double bass is. Later examples often have smaller bodies and are intended to be played guitar style, the small four-string mandobass is identical, but built on a smaller scale and usually tuned GDAE, two octaves below the mandolin. Though not as resonant as the instrument, players often preferred it as easier to handle. When mandolin orchestras were being organized in numbers, the members aware of a problem of adding bass to their orchestras. Furthermore they didnt get the bass notes of the contra-bass. For those reasons most mandolin orchestras preferred to use the ordinary contra-bass, the bow not only helps with volume for forte sections of music, but the contra-bass has deeper notes available. Up until 1911 the mandolin family of instruments as known in the United States had no true bass member, mandolins were relatively new to the United States, beginning to be known in the mid 1880s and reaching the peak of popularity before 1910. The American public was unaware of the few mando-basses being made in Europe. It was at this meeting that George D. Laurian of the Gibson Mandolin - Guitar Company announced that his department had developed a bass member for the mandolin family. At the Guilds next meeting in 1912, four companies displayed their versions of a mando-bass, Gibson, Leland, Vega, ultimately, the two most successful instruments were those produced by Gibson and Vega. The Gibson instruments were designed to be played upright or on their side. Gibson made Mandobasses from 1912 to approximately 1930, and most of the instruments which survive from this era are Gibsons, mando-bases were produced in a variety of sizes and shapes. The Pagani model was one of the few 8-string mando-basses made in the US. Vega produced both a flat-back and a humped-back mando-bass, both with a generally mandolin-shape in outline, but with pointed upper bouts. Other builders produced instruments that were more guitar-, lute- or cittern-shaped, by the late 1920s the popularity of mandolin orchestras was waning, and demand for the mando-bass began to evaporate
Mando-bass
–
Hilary James With mandobass
Mando-bass
–
A Gibson Mandobass (center rear), displayed for size comparison.
Mando-bass
–
Gibson Melody Maids of Kalamazoo, Michigan from a 1922 trade magazine. One of the musicians is playing a mandobass, center left.
46.
Ukulele
–
The ukulele, sometimes abbreviated to uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments, it generally employs four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings. Some strings may be paired in courses, giving the instrument a total of six or eight strings and it gained great popularity elsewhere in the United States during the early 20th century and from there spread internationally. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and construction, ukuleles commonly come in four sizes, soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone. The ukulele is commonly associated with music from Hawaii where the name translates as jumping flea. Legend attributes it to the nickname of the Englishman Edward William Purvis, one of King Kalākauas officers, because of his size, fidgety manner. According to Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch, the means the gift that came here, from the Hawaiian words uku. Three immigrants in particular, Madeiran cabinet makers Manuel Nunes, José do Espírito Santo, one of the most important factors in establishing the ukulele in Hawaiian music and culture was the ardent support and promotion of the instrument by King Kalākaua. A patron of the arts, he incorporated it into performances at royal gatherings,50,000 schoolchildren and adults learned ukulele through the Doane program at its peak. Today, a program created by James Hill and J. Chalmers Doane continues to be a staple of music education in Canada. The ukulele came to Japan in 1929 after Hawaiian-born Yukihiko Haida returned to the country upon his fathers death, Haida and his brother Katsuhiko formed the Moana Glee Club, enjoying rapid success in an environment of growing enthusiasm for Western popular music, particularly Hawaiian and jazz. During World War II, authorities banned most Western music, but fans and players kept it alive in secret, in 1959, Haida founded the Nihon Ukulele Association. Today, Japan is considered a home for Hawaiian musicians. Demand surged in the new century because of its simplicity and portability. The ukulele was popularized for an audience during the Panama Pacific International Exposition. The Hawaiian Pavilion featured a guitar and ukulele ensemble, George E. K. Awai and his Royal Hawaiian Quartet, the popularity of the ensemble with visitors launched a fad for Hawaiian-themed songs among Tin Pan Alley songwriters. The ensemble also introduced both the lap steel guitar and the ukulele into U. S. mainland popular music, where it was taken up by vaudeville performers such as Roy Smeck and Cliff Ukulele Ike Edwards. On April 15,1923 at the Rivoli Theater in New York City, Smeck appeared, playing the ukulele, in Stringed Harmony, a short film made in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. On August 6,1926, Smeck appeared playing the ukulele in a short film His Pastimes, made in the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process, the ukulele soon became an icon of the Jazz Age
Ukulele
–
Martin 3K Professional Ukulele
Ukulele
–
1916 cartoon by
Louis M. Glackens satirizing the current ukulele craze
Ukulele
–
Boy in
Hawaii wearing
lei and holding a Maccaferri "Islander" plastic ukulele
Ukulele
–
A modern red ukulele.
47.
Reentrant tuning
–
On a stringed instrument, a break in an otherwise ascending order of string pitches is known as a re-entry. A re-entrant tuning, therefore, is a tuning where the strings are not all ordered from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch, most common re-entrant tunings have only one re-entry. In the case of the ukulele, for example, the re-entry is between the third and fourth strings, while in the case of the Venezuelan cuatro it is between the first and second strings. Ukuleles other than the tenor and baritone are most commonly tuned in re-entrant fashion and these conventional re-entrant tunings are sometimes known as high 4th tunings. Non re-entrant tunings, also known as low 4th tunings, exist for these instruments, the Andean charango, a small 5-course, 10-string guitar frequently made from an armadillo shell, is most usually tuned in re-entrant fashion, with re-entry between the third and second courses. Other members of the family, such as the hualaycho and charangon are usually similarly tuned, the ronroco is often. The ten string guitar was originally designed for a specific re-entrant tuning invented by Narciso Yepes. Both this and other re-entrant tunings, such as the Marlow tunings, are now used and these tunings may also be used on related instruments, such as ten string electric and jazz guitars. The Venezuelan cuatro is a member of the family, smaller in size. The cuatro is similar in size and construction to the ukulele and it is one of several South American instruments by the name of cuatro, despite of the name, not all instruments called Cuatro have four strings, but the Venezuelan Cuatro, preserves this number of strings. The traditional Camburpinton tuning is re-entrant, but with the re-entry between the second and first strings, rather than third and fourth as in the ukulele. The results are different in tone. Other tunings of the Venezuelan cuatro are not re-entrant however they are not as popular as the Camburpinton tuning, note that there is also a 10-string/5-course Puerto Rican cuatro which is not tuned re-entrantly, but in straight fourths. A variety of tunings are used for the four string tenor guitar, one example of a re-entrant tuning for tenor guitar is D4–G3–B3–E4 with strings 3–1 as for the normal 6-string guitar, but string 4 tuned to D an octave above the 4th string of the 6 string guitar. The five string banjo is used in bluegrass music and old-time music. The four string plectrum banjo, and the four string tenor banjo, lack this shorter string, see also the detailed articles on particular instruments
Reentrant tuning
–
Soprano ukulele, an instrument which is almost always tuned in re-entrant fashion
Reentrant tuning
–
Narciso Yepes' re-entrant tuning for the ten string guitar
Reentrant tuning
–
Traditional re-entrant cuatro tuning
Reentrant tuning
–
Upper neck and head of a bluegrass banjo, showing the shorter 5th string
48.
5-string banjo
–
The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head. The membrane, or head, is made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, the banjo is frequently associated with country, folk, Irish traditional and bluegrass music. Historically, the banjo occupied a place in African American traditional music. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music and it is also very frequently used in Traditional Jazz. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, the etymology of the name banjo is uncertain. The word could have come from the Yoruba word Bami jo and it may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. A Banza, a five double string courses Portuguese viuhela with two short strings, mbanza is a string African instrument that has been built after the Portuguese Banza. Banza is quite similar to Banjo, various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd body. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century, 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw, banjer and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo have been played in many countries, another likely relative of the banjo is the akonting, a spike folk lute played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of strings, though often including some form of drone, the five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage and his version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string. This new banjo was at first tuned dGdf♯a, though by the 1890s this had been transposed up to gcgbd, Banjos were introduced in Britain by Sweeneys group, the American Virginia Minstrels, in the 1840s, and became very popular in music halls. In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo, two techniques closely associated with the five-string banjo are rolls and drones. Rolls are right hand fingering pattern that consist of eight notes that subdivide each measure
5-string banjo
–
A five-string bluegrass banjo
5-string banjo
–
A five-string banjo.
5-string banjo
–
Plectrum banjo from Gold Tone
5-string banjo
–
Four-string banjo
49.
Cavaquinho
–
The cavaquinho is a small string instrument of the European guitar family with four wire or gut strings. A cavaquinho player is called a cavaquista, the most common tuning is D–G–B–D, other tunings include D–A–B–E and G–G–B–D and A–A–C♯–E. Guitarists often use D–G–B–E tuning to emulate the highest four strings of the guitar, the origins of this Portuguese instrument are elusive. The author holds that the cavaquinho and the guitar may have brought to Braga by the Biscayans. There are different kinds of cavaquinho and it is a very important instrument in Brazilian music, especially for samba and choro. The standard tuning in Brazil is D–G–B–D, some of the most important players and composers of the instruments Brazilian incarnation are, Waldir Azevedo, Paulinho da Viola and Mauro Diniz. The samba cavaco is the connection between the rhythm and harmony sections, playing the rhythm comping and it is played with a pick, with sophisticated percussive strumming beats. The cavaquinho is also found in other places, in Cape Verde the cavaquinho was introduced in the thirties from Brazil. The present-day Cape-Verdean cavaquinho is very similar to the Brazilian one in dimensions and it is generally used as a rhythmic instrument in Cape-Verdean music genres but it is occasionally used as a melodic instrument. In the United States, it was introduced by Portuguese and became an important part of the music of that place. The Hawaiian islands have an instrument very similar to the cavaquinho, called the ukulele, the Hawaiian ukulele also has four strings, though tuned differently, and a shape somewhat similar to the cavaquinho. The machete was introduced into Hawaii by Augusto Dias, Manuel Nunes, Viola braguesa Rabeca Gaita transmontana Ukulele Cuatro Tenor guitar Richards, Tobe A. The Cavaquinho Chord Bible, DGBD Standard Tuning 1,728 Chords, — A comprehensive chord dictionary instructional guide for the Brazilian and Portuguese cavaquinho. All the Cavaquinhos types at Associação Cultural Museu Cavaquinho Cavaquinho at Grupo de Cavaquinhos do Porto
Cavaquinho
–
Portuguese & Brazilian cavaquinhos
50.
Antonio Vivaldi
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Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers and he composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons, many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, however, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldis arrival, and Vivaldi himself died less than a year later in poverty. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice, then the capital of the Republic of Venice and he was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, which led to a belief that his life was somehow in danger. Though not known for certain, the childs immediate baptism was most likely due either to his health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. In the trauma of the earthquake, Vivaldis mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood, Vivaldis official church baptism took place two months later. Vivaldis parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora, Giovanni Battista, who was a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught Antonio to play the violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. Antonio was probably taught at an age, judging by the extensive musical knowledge he had acquired by the age of 24. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, the president of the Sovvegno was Giovanni Legrenzi, an early Baroque composer and the maestro di cappella at St Marks Basilica. It is possible that Legrenzi gave the young Antonio his first lessons in composition, the Luxembourg scholar Walter Kolneder has discerned the influence of Legrenzis style in Vivaldis early liturgical work Laetatus sum, written in 1691 at the age of thirteen. His symptoms, strettezza di petto, have interpreted as a form of asthma. This did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, composing or taking part in musical activities, in 1693, at the age of fifteen, he began studying to become a priest. He was ordained in 1703, aged 25, and was nicknamed il Prete Rosso. Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a dispensation from celebrating Mass because of his ill health, Vivaldi only said Mass as a priest a few times and appeared to have withdrawn from priestly duties, though he remained a priest. In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino at a called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. While Vivaldi is most famous as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well, Vivaldi was only 25 when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà
Antonio Vivaldi
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Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
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Church where Vivaldi was baptised: San Giovanni Battista in Bragora,
Sestiere di Castello, Venice
Antonio Vivaldi
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Commemorative plaque beside the Ospedale della Pietà.
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