1.
Archtop guitar
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His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance power and quality of tone. However, Gibson was not the first to apply design principles to the guitar. Back obtained patent #508,858 in 1893 for a guitar that among other features included an arched top, another transitional design is the parlor guitar fitted with a floating bridge and tailpiece. These inexpensive instruments, manufactured by such as Stella and Harmony, are associated with early blues musicians. The earliest Gibson designs introduced the arched top, and increasing body sizes, in 1922, Lloyd Loar was hired by the Gibson Company to redesign their instrument line in an effort to counter flagging sales, and in that same year the Gibson L5 was released to his design. Perhaps the most revered instrument from this period is the F5 mandolin, but probably the more influential was the L5 guitar. The mature Gibson archtop guitar and its imitators are regarded as the quintessential jazzbox, in Europe, companies such as Framus, Höfner and Hagström took up the manufacture of archtops. Archtop guitars were particularly adopted by jazz and country musicians, and in big bands and swing bands. Gibsons ES-150 guitar is generally recognized as the worlds first commercially successful Spanish-style electric guitar, the ES stands for Electric Spanish, and it was designated 150 because it cost $150, along with an EH-150 amplifier and a cable. After its introduction in 1936, it became popular in jazz orchestras of the period. Unlike the usual acoustic guitars utilized in jazz, it was enough to take a more prominent position in ensembles. The ES-150s top was not carved on the underside, making it unsuitable for acoustic use, in 1951, Gibson released the L5CES, an L5 with a single cutaway body and two electric pickups, equally playable as either an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. This innovation was immediately popular, and while purely acoustic archtop guitars such as the Gibson L-7C remain available to this day, they have become the exception. In 1958, the L5CES was redesigned with humbucking pickups, most, the electric archtop was particularly popular with jazz musicians Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel and Johnny Smith. Other manufacturers introduced electric archtop guitars, notable including the Gretsch White Falcon. Some of these instruments have a distinctive sound and were taken up by country music and early rock and roll artists such as Duane Eddy. Similar models remain popular in rockabilly, Gibsons last innovation in archtop design was the creation, in late 1950s, of thinline models with a reduced body depth, notably the Gibson ES-335 and Epiphone Casino. These were more resistant and easier to play standing up
2.
Dovetail joint
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A dovetail joint or simply dovetail is a joinery technique most commonly used in woodworking joinery including furniture, cabinets, carcase construction, log buildings and traditional timber framing. Noted for its resistance to being pulled apart, the joint is commonly used to join the sides of a drawer to the front. A series of cut to extend from the end of one board interlock with a series of tails cut into the end of another board. The pins and tails have a trapezoidal shape, once glued, a wooden dovetail joint requires no mechanical fasteners. The dovetail joint probably pre-dates written history, some of the earliest known examples of the dovetail joint are in furniture entombed with mummies dating from First Dynasty of ancient Egypt, as well the tombs of Chinese emperors. The dovetail design is an important method of distinguishing various periods of furniture, in Europe the dovetail joint is also called a swallow-tail joint or a fantail joint. The dovetail joint is strong because of the way the ‘tails’ and ‘pins’ are shaped. This makes it difficult to pull the joint apart and virtually impossible when glue is added and this type of joint is used in box constructions such as drawers, jewellery boxes, cabinets and other pieces of furniture where strength is required. It is a joint to make manually, requiring skilled workmanship. There are different types of joints and when cut accurately they are very impressive and attractive. The joint is strong especially when used with a good quality glue such as PVA or cascamite, the marking out and cutting procedure is outlined below. The angle of slope varies according to the wood used, typically the slope is 1,6 for softwoods and a shallower 1,8 slope for hardwoods. Often a slope of 1,7 is used as a compromise, the photograph at the top of this page shows a through dovetail joint, where the end grain of both boards is visible when the joint is assembled. Through dovetails are common in carcass and box construction, traditionally, the dovetails would have often been covered by a veneer. However, dovetails have become a signature of craftsmanship and are considered a feature. When used in construction, a through dovetail joint is sometimes referred to as an English dovetail. Use for, Carcass and box construction A half-blind dovetail is used when the craftsman does not wish end grain to be visible from the front of the item. The tails are housed in sockets in the ends of the board that is to be the front of the item so that their ends cannot be seen, half-blind dovetails are commonly used to fasten drawer fronts to drawer sides
3.
Picea abies
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Picea abies, the Norway spruce, is a species of spruce native to Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. It has branchlets that typically hang downwards, and the largest cones of any spruce and it is very closely related to the Siberian spruce, which replaces it east of the Ural Mountains, and with which it hybridises freely. The Norway spruce is widely planted for its wood, and is the used as the main Christmas tree in several cities around the world. It was the first gymnosperm to have its genome sequenced, Norway spruce is a large, fast-growing evergreen coniferous tree growing 35–55 m tall and with a trunk diameter of 1 to 1.5 m. It can grow fast when young, up to 1 m per year for the first 25 years under good conditions, the shoots are orange-brown and glabrous. The leaves are needle-like with blunt tips, 12–24 mm long, quadrangular in cross-section, the seed cones are 9–17 cm long, and have bluntly to sharply triangular-pointed scale tips. They are green or reddish, maturing brown 5–7 months after pollination, the seeds are black, 4–5 mm long, with a pale brown 15-millimetre wing. The tallest measured Norway spruce,62,26 m tall, grows near Ribnica na Pohorju, the northern limit is in the arctic, just north of 70° N in Norway. Its eastern limit in Russia is hard to define, due to extensive hybridisation and intergradation with the Siberian spruce, however, trees showing some Siberian spruce characters extend as far west as much of northern Finland, with a few records in northeast Norway. The hybrid is known as Picea × fennica, and can be distinguished by a tendency towards having hairy shoots, Norway spruce cone scales are used as food by the caterpillars of the tortrix moth Cydia illutana, whereas Cydia duplicana feeds on the bark around injuries or canker. The Norway spruce is one of the most widely planted spruces and it is used as an ornamental tree in parks and gardens. It is also planted for use as a Christmas tree. Every Christmas, the Norwegian capital city, Oslo, provides the cities of London, Edinburgh and Washington D. C. with a Norway spruce and this is mainly a sign of gratitude for the aid these countries gave during the Second World War. In North America, Norway spruce is widely planted, specifically in the northeastern, Pacific Coast and it is naturalised in some parts of North America. There are naturalised populations occurring from Connecticut to Michigan, and it is probable that they occur elsewhere, Norway spruces are more tolerant of hot, humid weather than many conifers which do not thrive except in cool-summer areas and they will grow up to USDA Growing Zone 8. The Norway spruce tolerates acidic soils well, but does not do well on dry or deficient soils, from 1928 until the 1960s it was planted on surface mine spoils in Indiana. The Norway spruce is used in forestry for timber and paper production, the tree is the source of spruce beer, which was once used to prevent and even cure scurvy. This high vitamin C content can be consumed as a tea from the tips or even eaten straight from the tree when light green
4.
Picea sitchensis
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Picea sitchensis, the Sitka spruce, is a large, coniferous, evergreen tree growing to almost 100 m tall, and with a trunk diameter at breast height that can exceed 5 m. It is by far the largest species of spruce and the fifth-largest conifer in the world, the Sitka spruce is one of the few species documented to reach 91 m in height. Its name is derived from the community of Sitka, Alaska, the bark is thin and scaly, flaking off in small, circular plates 5–20 cm across. The crown is conic in young trees, becoming cylindric in older trees. The shoots are very pale buff-brown, almost white, and glabrous, the cones are pendulous, slender cylindrical, 6–10 cm long and 2 cm broad when closed, opening to 3 cm broad. They have thin, flexible scales 15–20 mm long, the bracts just above the scales are the longest of any spruce, occasionally just exserted and they are green or reddish, maturing pale brown 5–7 months after pollination. The seeds are black,3 mm long, with a slender, more than a century of logging has left only a remnant of the spruce forest. The largest trees were cut long before careful measurements could be made, the Queets Spruce is the largest in the world with a trunk volume of 337 m3, a height of 75.6 m, and a 4.55 m dbh. It is located near the Queets River in Olympic National Park, Sitka spruce is a long-lived tree, with individuals over 700 years old known. Because it grows rapidly under favorable conditions, large size may not indicate exceptional age, the Queets Spruce has been estimated to be only 350 to 450 years old, but adds more than a cubic meter of wood each year. Living in a wet climate, the Sitka spruce has a shallow root system with long lateral roots. Despite the prevalence of Sitka spruce in cool, wet climates, its thin bark, DNA analysis has shown that only Picea breweriana has a more basal position than Sitka spruce to the rest of the spruce. The other 33 species of spruce are more derived, which suggests that Picea originated in North America, Sitka spruce is native to the west coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit near Fort Bragg in northern California. It is closely associated with the rain forests and is found within a few kilometers of the coast in the southern portion of its range. North of Oregon, its range extends inland along river floodplains, Sitka spruce is of major importance in forestry for timber and paper production. It is naturalized in parts of Ireland and Great Britain. Sitka spruce is also planted extensively in Denmark, Norway, in Norway, Sitka spruce was introduced in the early 1900s. An estimated 50,000 hectares have been planted in Norway and it is more tolerant to wind and saline ocean air, and grows faster than the native Norway spruce
5.
Picea engelmannii
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It is mostly a high altitude mountain tree, growing at 900 metres –3,650 metres altitude, rarely lower in the northwest of the range, in many areas it reaches the alpine tree line. Picea engelmannii is a medium-sized to large tree growing to 25 metres –40 metres tall, exceptionally to 65 metres tall. The bark is thin and scaly, flaking off in small circular plates 5–10 cm across, the crown is narrow conic in young trees, becoming cylindric in older trees. The shoots are buff-brown to orange-brown, usually densely pubescent, the leaves are needle-like, 15–30 mm long, rhombic in cross-section, glaucous blue-green above with several thin lines of stomata, and blue-white below with two broad bands of stomata. The cones are pendulous, slender cylindrical, 4–8 cm long and 1.5 cm broad when closed and they have thin, flexible scales 15–20 mm long, with a wavy margin. They are reddish to purple, maturing pale brown 4–7 months after pollination. The seeds are black, 2–3 mm long, with a slender, Engelmann spruce extends northward at higher elevations in the Cascade, Monashee, Selkirk, and possibly the Rocky Mountains, as well as the highlands surrounding the Interior Plateau. Both water uptake and water stored in roots appear to be critical for the survival of subalpine Engelmann spruce saplings that are exposed above the snowpack in later winter-early spring, transpiration is greatly reduced in small saplings while engulfed in snowpack. For exposed trees, the availability of water may be critical in late winter. Cuticular damage by ice is probably more important at the tree line. Two geographical subspecies occur, Picea engelmannii subsp, all of the range except as below. Two isolated populations on high mountains in northern Mexico, on the Sierra del Carmen in Coahuila, Engelmann spruces of the Madrean sky islands mountains in the extreme southeast of Arizona and southwest of New Mexico also probably belong to this subspecies, though this is disputed. Engelmann spruce is of importance for its wood, harvested for paper-making. Wood from slow-grown trees at high altitude has a use in making musical instruments such as acoustic guitars, harps, violins. It is also used to an extent as a Christmas tree. Outbreaks of spruce beetles have destroyed millions of Engelmann spruce trees, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. International Union for Conservation of Nature
6.
Rosewood
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Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining but found in many different hues. All genuine rosewoods belong to the genus Dalbergia and it is best known as Brazilian Rosewood, but also as Bahia rosewood. This wood has a sweet smell, which persists for many years. Another classic rosewood comes from Dalbergia latifolia known as Indian rosewood or sonokeling and it is native to India and is also grown in plantations elsewhere in Pakistan. Madagascar rosewood, known as bois de rose, is prized for its red color. It is overexploited in the wild, despite a 2010 moratorium on trade and illegal logging, throughout southeast Asia Dalbergia oliveri is harvested for use in woodworking. It has a fragrant and dense grain near the core, however the outer sapwood is soft. Dalbergia cultrata that has variegated burgundy to light color, a blackwood timber is sold as Burmese Rosewood. Products built with rosewood based engineered woods are sold as Malaysian Rosewood or as Dalbergia oliveri, some rosewood comes from Dalbergia retusa, also known as the Nicaraguan rosewood or as palisander is controlled by CITES under Appendix 2 which allows some commercial activity. Several species are known as Guatemalan rosewood or Panama rosewood, D. tucerencis, D. tucarensis, stevensonii, also on CITES Appendix 2, is used for marimba keys, guitar parts, clarinets and other musical and ornamental applications. Not all species in the large genus Dalbergia yield rosewoods, only about a species do. The woods of some species in the genus Dalbergia are notable—even famous—woods in their own right, African blackwood, cocobolo, kingwood. The woods of some species are usable for tool handles at best. The timber trade will sell many timbers under the name due to some similarities. A fair number of these come from other legume genera. Another that may be found in market from Southeast Asia is Pterocarpus indicus, Dalbergia sissoo is timber from rosewood species from India and Bangladesh, usually known as Sheesham or North-Indian Rosewood. It is extremely dense and has mild rot resistance, but it is porous and its exterior is soft and it is used for making cabinets, flooring and carving. It is exported as quality veneers, due to its after work quality when sealed and dyed, it is often sold as genuine rosewood or as teak
7.
Mahogany
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West Indian or Cuban mahogany, native to southern Florida and the Caribbean, formerly dominant in the mahogany trade, but not in widespread commercial use since World War II. Swietenia humilis, a small and often twisted mahogany tree limited to dry forests in Pacific Central America that is of limited commercial utility. Some botanists believe that S. humilis is a variant of S. macrophylla. While the three Swietenia species are classified officially as genuine mahogany, other Meliaceae species with timber uses are classified as true mahogany, some may or may not have the word mahogany in their trade or common name. Some members of the genus Shorea of the family Dipterocarpaceae are also sold as Philippine mahogany. Mahogany is an important lumber prized for its beauty, durability, and color. The leading importer of mahogany is the United States, followed by Britain, while the largest exporter today is Peru and it was estimated that in 2000, some 57,000 mahogany trees were harvested to supply the U. S. furniture trade alone. Mahogany is the tree of the Dominican Republic and Belize. A mahogany tree with two woodcutters bearing an axe and a paddle also appears on the Belizean national coat of arms, under the motto, Sub umbra floreo. The natural distribution of species within the Americas is geographically distinct. In the 20th century various botanists attempted to further define S. macrophylla in South America as a new species, such as S. candollei Pittier, but many authorities consider these spurious. According to Record and Hess, all of the mahogany of continental North and South America can be considered as one botanical species, the name mahogany was initially associated only with those islands in the West Indies under British control. When transported to Jamaica as slaves, they gave the name to the similar trees they saw there. Though this interpretation has been disputed, no one has suggested a more plausible origin, the indigenous Arawak name for the tree is not known. In 1671 the word appeared in print for the first time. Among botanists and naturalists, however, the tree was considered a type of cedar, the following year it was assigned to a new genus by Nicholas Joseph Jacquin, and named Swietenia mahagoni. Until the 19th century all of the mahogany was regarded as one species, although varying in quality and character according to soil and climate. In 1836 the German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini identified a species while working on specimens collected on the Pacific coast of Mexico
8.
Steel-string acoustic guitar
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The steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar that descends from the classical guitar, but is strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound. It is often referred to simply as a guitar, though the nylon-strung classical guitar is also sometimes called an acoustic guitar. The most common type is called a flat top guitar, to distinguish it from the more specialized archtop guitar. The standard tuning for a guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E, although many players, particularly fingerpickers, use alternate tunings, such as open G, open D. There are many variations in construction and materials used in steel-string guitars, different combinations of woods and construction elements affect the timbre or tone of the guitar. Many players and luthiers are convinced that a well-made guitars tone improves over time, acoustic guitars are commonly constructed in several different body types. The proportion and overall size of two parts helps determine the overall tonal balance and native sound of a particular body style – the larger the body. The 00, also called the Double-Oh or the Grand Concert and it has the thinnest soundbox and the smallest overall size of the major styles, making it very comfortable to play but also one of the quietest. Its smaller size makes it suitable for younger or smaller-framed players and these guitars are commonly called parlor steels as they are well-suited to smaller rooms. Martins 00-xxx series and Taylors x12 series are common examples, the Grand Auditorium guitar, sometimes called the 000 or the Triple-Oh, is very similar in design to the Grand Concert, but slightly wider and deeper. Many 000-style guitars also have a back panel to increase the volume of space in the soundbox without making the soundbox deeper at the edges. Eric Claptons signature Martin guitar, for example, is of this style, Martins 000-xxx series and Taylors x14 series are well-known examples of the Grand Auditorium style. The Dreadnought style was designed by Martin Guitars to produce a deeper sound than classic-style guitars and this body styles combination of a small profile with a deep sound has made it immensely popular, and it has since been copied by virtually every major steel-string luthier. Martins D series guitars, such as the highly-prized D-28, are examples of the Dreadnought. This comes at the expense of being oversized, with a very deep sounding box, the foremost example of this style is the Gibson J-200, but like the Dreadnought, most guitar manufacturers have at least one jumbo model. Any of these body type can optionally incorporate a cutaway, a cutaway guitar has a redesigned upper bout that removes a section of the soundbox on the underside of the neck, hence the name cutaway. This allows for access to the frets that are located on top of the soundbox past the heel of the neck. The tradeoff is reduced soundbox volume, and often a change in bracing, the 12-string guitar replaces each single string with a course of two strings
9.
Django Reinhardt
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He was the first and most significant jazz talent to emerge from Europe. Benny Goodman asked him to travel with his band, which he never did and he died suddenly of a stroke at age 43. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Reinhardt formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934, Reinhardts most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including Minor Swing, Daphne, Belleville, Djangology, Swing 42, and Nuages. According to jazz guitarist Frank Vignola, nearly every major popular-music guitarist in the world has influenced by Django, including Paul McCartney, Keith Richards. Over the last few decades, annual Django festivals have been held throughout Europe and the U. S. in February 2017, the Berlin International Film Festival held the world premiere of the French film, Django. Reinhardt was born on 23 January 1910 in Liberchies, Pont-à-Celles, Belgium and his father was Jean Eugene Weiss, but domiciled in Paris with his wife, he went by Jean-Baptiste Reinhardt, his wifes surname, to avoid French military conscription. His mother, Laurence Reinhardt, was a dancer, the birth certificate refers to Jean Reinhart, son of Jean Baptiste Reinhart, artist, and Laurence Reinhart, housewife, domiciled in Paris. Reinhardts nickname, Django, is Romani for I awake, Reinhardt spent most of his youth in Romani encampments close to Paris, where he started playing the violin, banjo, and guitar. He became adept at stealing chickens, which was viewed as a skill by the Romani. His family made cane furniture for a living, several members of the family were keen amateur musicians. Reinhardt was attracted to music at an age, first playing the violin. At the age of 12 he received a banjo-guitar as a gift and he quickly learned to play, mimicking the fingerings of musicians he watched. Reinhardt was able to make a living playing music by the time he was 15 and he received little formal education and acquired the rudiments of literacy only in adult life. At the age of 17 Reinhardt married Florine Bella Mayer, a girl from the same gypsy settlement, the following year he recorded for the first time. On these recordings, made in 1928, Reinhardt plays the banjo accompanying the accordionists Maurice Alexander, Jean Vaissade and Victor Marceau, and his name was now drawing international attention, such as from British bandleader Jack Hylton, who came to France just to hear him play. He offered him a job on the spot, and Reinhardt accepted. Before he had a chance to start with the band, however, he nearly lost his life when the caravan he and his wife made artificial flowers from extremely flammable celluloid. They caught fire, engulfing the wagon in flames almost immediately, Django dragged himself and his wife through the fire to safety, but suffered extensive burns all over his left hand and other areas
10.
Sound hole
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A sound hole is an opening in the upper sound board of a stringed musical instrument. Bowed lyras have D-holes and mandolins may have F-holes, round or oval holes, a round or oval hole is usually a single one, under the strings. F-holes and D-holes are usually made in pairs placed symmetrically on both sides of the strings, most hollowbody and semi-hollow electric guitars also have F-holes. Though the purpose of sound holes is to help acoustic instruments project their sound more efficiently, in 2015 researchers at MIT published an analysis charting the evolution and improvements in effectiveness of violin F-hole design over time. Tacoma Guitars has developed a unique paisley soundhole placed on the side of the upper bout of their Wing Series guitars. This is a relatively low-stress area that requires less bracing to support the hole, a few hollowbody or semi-hollow electric guitars, such as the Fender Telecaster Thinline and the Gibson ES-120T, have one f-hole instead of two, usually on the bass side. Stringworks U - brief explanation of the effects of sound holes, with a closeup diagram of an F-shaped soundhole
11.
Mandolin
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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
12.
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
13.
Fingerboard
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The fingerboard is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, the strings run over the fingerboard, between the nut and bridge. To play the instrument, a musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length and this is called stopping the strings. Depending on the instrument and the style of music, the musician may pluck, on some instruments, notes can be sounded by the fretting hand alone, such as with hammer ons, an electric guitar technique. The word fingerboard in other languages sometimes occurs in musical directions, in particular, the direction sul tasto for bowed string instruments to play with the bow above the fingerboard. This reduces the prominence of upper harmonics, giving a more ethereal tone, a fingerboard may be fretted, having raised strips of hard material perpendicular to the strings, which the player presses the strings against to stop the strings. On modern guitars, frets are made of metal. Frets let the player stop the string consistently in the same place, as well, frets do not dampen string vibrations as much as fingers alone on an unfretted fingerboard. Frets may be fixed, as on a guitar or mandolin, or movable, fingerboards may also be unfretted, as they usually are on bowed instruments, where damping by the finger is of little consequence because of the sustained stimulation of the strings by the bow. Unfretted fingerboards allow a more control over subtle changes in pitch than fretted boards. Fingerboards may also be, though uncommon, a hybrid of these two, such a construction is seen on the sitar, where arched frets attach at the edges of a smooth fingerboard, unfrettable strings run inside the frets, while frettable ones run outside. A double dot or some other variation marks the 12th fret, variations on the standard dot shape can make a guitar more distinctive. Position markers are sometimes made luminescent to make more visible on stage. Position markers are sometimes repeated on the edge of the fingerboard for easy viewing. Over time, strings wear frets down, which can cause buzzing, fixing this occasionally requires replacing the frets—but more often they just need dressing. In fret dressing, a luthier levels and polishes the frets, stainless steel guitar frets may never need dressing, because of the density of the material. Not having frets carefully and properly aligned with the fingerboard can cause severe intonation issues, the ultimate way of determining the source of a buzz and detuning problem is to measure the levelness of the frets. A straightedge positioned on the neck in the lie of one of the strings should show nearly level frets, on bowed string instruments, the fingerboard is usually made of ebony, rosewood or other hardwood
14.
Nut (string instrument)
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A nut, on a stringed musical instrument, is a small piece of hard material that supports the strings at the end closest to the headstock or scroll. The nut marks one end of the length of each open string, sets the spacing of the strings across the neck. Along with the bridge, the nut defines the vibrating lengths of the open strings, the nut may be made of ebony, ivory, cow bone, brass, Corian or plastic, and is usually notched or grooved for the strings. The grooves are designed to lead the string from the fingerboard to the headstock or pegbox in a smooth curve, bowed string instruments in particular benefit from an application of soft pencil graphite in the notches of the nut, to preserve the delicate flat windings of their strings. The word may have come from the German Nut, meaning groove or slot, in French, the nut is known as a fr, sillet, which, like German, can also translate to mean saddle. The Italian term, capo tasto, is the origin of the capo, not all string instruments have nuts as described, The nuts on some instruments are notched deeply enough that they are just string spacers. These instruments use a zero fret—a fret at the beginning of the scale where a normal nut would be that provides the correct string clearance, the zero fret is often found on less expensive instruments, as it is easier to set up an instrument this way. However, a zero fret also makes the sound of the open string similar to fretted notes, a conventional nut can make open strings sound slightly different—and for this reason some high-end instruments use a zero fret. String slots in a nut without a zero fret must be cut to the depth to make string height correct. Strings that are too low at the nut can buzz against the frets, some fretted instruments have a compensated nut. This type of nut provides better intonation across the instrument, the principle, given that strings are different thicknesses and have different tensions, the temperament of each fret is not 100% accurate for an equal temperament instrument. This is especially evident on the first few frets of an electric guitar, many guitar players notice how open position chords never sound in tune with each other. A compensated nut aims to correct this, by staggering the starting position of each string according to thickness, while not a complete solution such as a true temperament fretboard, there is a noticeable difference in tuning within chords. Many guitar companies, such as Music Man, and ESP include compensated nuts as standard on most of their instruments, another type is a locking nut. This nut—usually used in conjunction with a vibrato system such as a Floyd Rose or Kahler—clamps the strings against the nut. This improves tuning stability when using the vibrato bar, a drawback however, is that the locking nut must be loosened using an Allen wrench to tune outside the range of the fine tuners on the bridge. The erhu does not use a hard nut to define the length of the open string, but rather a qiān jin, a loop of string, or, less commonly. Some guitars have a rolling nut, in this design, made popular by the Fender company, the strings sit on roller bearings instead of nut slots
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Headstock
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A headstock or peghead is part of a guitar or similar stringed instrument such as a lute, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and others of the lute lineage. The main function of a headstock is to house the pegs or mechanism that holds the strings at the head of the instrument, at the tail of the instrument the strings are usually held by a tailpiece or bridge. Machine heads on the headstock are commonly used to tune the instrument by adjusting the tension of strings and, consequentially, two traditional layouts of tuners are called 3+3 and 6 in line tuners, though many other combinations are known, especially for bass guitars and non-6-string guitars. When there are no heads, the guitar headstock may be missing completely. The headstock may be carved separately and glued to neck using some sort of joint, there are two major trends in headstock construction, based on how the string will go after passing the nut. The advantages and disadvantages of both trends are very debatable and subjective, so these two variants are used, Straight headstocks form a plane with a flat surface of neck. This makes neck and headstock easier to manufacture, they can be constructed from a piece of wood. Fender usually uses non-angled, straight headstocks, because of the low angle of the string over the nut, string trees may be used to avoid the string coming out of the nut while playing. Angled headstocks form some kind of angle with a surface of neck. The value of magic angle that gives the best tone and stability is also very debatable, but it is usually in a range from 3° to 25°. Fragile construction is cited as a disadvantage of each style too, single-piece necks are more likely to break on occasional hit and are harder to repair, apart from its main function, the headstock is an important decorative detail of a guitar. It is the place where overwhelming majority of guitar manufacturers draw their logo, some guitars without machine heads have a headstock for purely decorative reasons. Most major guitar brands have signature headstock designs that make their guitars or guitar series easily recognizable, on some electric guitars and basses the finish used on the body is also applied to the face of the headstock. Generally, matched-headstock models carry a premium over their plain counterparts due to the extra processes involved in the finishing process. Although Fender no longer offers matched headstocks on production models made in the United States or Mexico, generally, a guitar is only considered to have a matching headstock if the guitar is usually produced without matching body and headstock finishes
16.
Guitar bracing
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Guitar bracing refers to the system of wooden struts which internally support and reinforce the soundboard and back of acoustic guitars. Soundboard or top bracing transmits the forces exerted by the strings from the bridge to the rim, brace design contributes significantly to the type of sound a guitar will produce. According to luthiers W. Cumpiano and J. Natelson, By varying brace design, the back of the instrument is braced to help distribute the force exerted by the neck on the body, and to maintain the tonal responsiveness and structural integrity of the sound box. Braces may be made from top woods, balsa wood or, in high-end instruments and this is the standard bracing pattern on the classical guitar, dating to the work of Antonio Torres Jurado in the 19th century. In the 1970s, scientist Michael Kasha radically overhauled every aspect of design to incorporate principles such as mechanical impedance matching. The Australian guitarmaker Greg Smallman introduced guitars with an extremely thin soundboard, Smallman combines this with heavier, laminated back and sides with a frame. Smallmans guitars are used by John Williams, smallmans design was inspired by research by Torres who made a guitar with a papier mâché back and sides to show that the soundboard was the most important factor in guitar sound projection. Smallman also uses two 45 degree pole supports from the bottom to the board that transfer sound. In all steel-string instruments, the ends of the top braces taper at the edge of the soundboard, in most factory built guitars the brace tops are given a round profile, but are otherwise left unshaped. This produces a top and may reduce the number of warranty claims arising from damage, however. Braces are usually made from Sitka Spruce, some luthiers use Adirondack Spruce, also known as Red Spruce, in high end instruments. The system consists of two forming an X shape across the soundboard below the top of the sound hole. The lower arms of the X straddle and support the ends of the bridge, under the bridge is a hardwood bridge plate which prevents the ball end of the strings from damaging the underside of the soundboard. Below the bridge patch are one or more tone bars which support the bottom of the soundboard and these abut one of the X braces and usually slant down towards the bottom edge of the soundboard. The top tone bar butts against a portion of the patch in most instruments. Above the sound hole a large transverse brace spans the width of the bout of the soundboard. Around the lower bout, small finger braces support the area between the X-braces and the edge of the soundboard, in this system, two overlapping X shapes form a diamond surrounding the underside of the bridge plate. Some luthiers prefer it where additional strength is required, for instance for twelve string guitars and this bracing does not allow the top to move or vibrate as much as it normally would but offers more strength and prevent bellying around the bridge area
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Classical guitar
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The classical guitar is the member of the guitar family used in classical music. It is an acoustical wooden guitar with strings made of nylon, the traditional classical guitar has twelve frets clear of the body and is held on the left leg, so that the hand that plucks or strums the strings does so near the back of the soundhole. The modern steel string guitar, on the hand, usually has fourteen frets clear of the body and is commonly played off the hip. Examples of early guitars include the early romantic guitar. Classical guitar strings once made of catgut are now made of polymers as nylon. A guitar family tree may be identified, the flamenco guitar derives from the modern classical, but has differences in material, construction and sound. Todays modern classical guitar was established by the designs of the 19th-century Spanish luthier. Cultural baroque court music, 19th century opera and its influences, 19th century folk songs, Latin American music, thus over recent decades we have become accustomed to specialist artists with expertise in the art of vihuela, lute, Baroque guitar, 19th-century guitar, etc. Different types of guitars have different sound aesthetics, e. g. different colour-spectrum characteristics, different response and these guitars in turn sound different from the Torres models used by Segovia, that are suited for interpretations of romantic-modern works such as Moreno Torroba. When considering the guitar from a perspective, the musical instrument used is just as important as the musical language. As an example, It is impossible to play a historically informed de Visee or Corbetta on a classical guitar. The reason is that the guitar used courses, which are two strings close together, that are plucked together. This gives baroque guitars an unmistakable sound characteristic and tonal texture that is an part of an interpretation. Additionally the sound aesthetic of the guitar is very different from modern classical type guitars. However, they are considered to emphasize the fundamental too heavily for earlier repertoire, Some attribute this to the popularity of Segovia, considering him the catalyst for change toward the Spanish design and the so-called modern school in the 1920s and beyond. Some people consider it to have been influence of Segovia. It was the 19th century classical guitarist Francisco Tárrega who first popularized the Torres design as a solo instrument. Vihuela, renaissance guitars and baroque guitars have a bright sound - rich in overtones -, later in Spain a style of music emerged that favored a stronger fundamental, With the change of music a stronger fundamental was demanded and the fan bracing system was approached
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Resonator
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The oscillations in a resonator can be either electromagnetic or mechanical. Resonators are used to generate waves of specific frequencies or to select specific frequencies from a signal. Musical instruments use acoustic resonators that produce sound waves of specific tones, another example is quartz crystals used in electronic devices such as radio transmitters and quartz watches to produce oscillations of very precise frequency. A cavity resonator is one in which waves exist in a space inside the device. Acoustic cavity resonators, in sound is produced by air vibrating in a cavity with one opening, are known as Helmholtz resonators. A physical system can have as many resonant frequencies as it has degrees of freedom, systems with one degree of freedom, such as a mass on a spring, pendulums, balance wheels, and LC tuned circuits have one resonant frequency. Systems with two degrees of freedom, such as coupled pendulums and resonant transformers can have two resonant frequencies, a crystal lattice composed of N atoms bound together can have N resonant frequencies. As the number of coupled harmonic oscillators grows, the time it takes to transfer energy from one to the next becomes significant, the vibrations in them begin to travel through the coupled harmonic oscillators in waves, from one oscillator to the next. The term resonator is most often used for an object in which vibrations travel as waves, at an approximately constant velocity, bouncing back. The material of the resonator, through which the waves flow, therefore, they can have millions of resonant frequencies, although only a few may be used in practical resonators. The oppositely moving waves interfere with other, and at its resonant frequencies reinforce each other to create a pattern of standing waves in the resonator. If the distance between the sides is d, the length of a trip is 2 d. To cause resonance, the phase of a sinusoidal wave after a round trip must be equal to the initial phase so the waves self-reinforce. The above analysis assumes the medium inside the resonator is homogeneous, so the waves travel at a constant speed, and they are then called overtones instead of harmonics. There may be several such series of resonant frequencies in a single resonator, an electrical circuit composed of discrete components can act as a resonator when both an inductor and capacitor are included. Oscillations are limited by the inclusion of resistance, either via a specific resistor component, such resonant circuits are also called RLC circuits after the circuit symbols for the components. A distributed-parameter resonator has capacitance, inductance, and resistance that cannot be isolated into separate lumped capacitors, inductors, an example of this, much used in filtering, is the helical resonator. A single layer coil that is used as a secondary or tertiary winding in a Tesla coil or magnifying transmitter is also a distributed resonator
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Luthier
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A luthier is someone who builds or repairs string instruments generally consisting of a neck and a sound box. The word luthier comes from the French word luth, which means lute, a luthier was originally a maker of lutes, but the term now includes makers of stringed instruments such as the violin or classical guitar. A luthier does not make harps or pianos, as these require different skills, the craft of making string instruments, or lutherie, is commonly divided into two main categories, makers of stringed instruments that are plucked or strummed, and those that are bowed. Since bowed instruments require a bow, the category includes a subtype known as a bow maker or archetier. Luthiers may also teach string-instrument making, either through apprenticeship or formal classroom instruction, Antonio Torres Jurado is credited with developing the form of classical guitar still in use today. Christian Frederick Martin of Germany developed a form evolved into the modern steel-string acoustic guitar. The American luthier Orville Gibson specialized in mandolins, and is credited with creating the archtop guitar, the important 20th-century American luthiers John DAngelico and Jimmy DAquisto made archtop guitars. Lloyd Loar worked briefly for the Gibson Guitar Corporation making mandolins and his designs for a family of arch top instruments are held in high esteem by todays luthiers, who seek to reproduce their sound. Concurrent with Fenders work, guitarist Les Paul independently developed an electric guitar. A company founded by luthier Friedrich Gretsch and continued by his son and grandson, Fred and Fred, Jr. originally made banjos, vintage guitars are often sought by collectors. Bowed instruments include, cello, crwth, double bass, erhu, fiddle, hudok, mouthbow, nyckelharpa, hurdy-gurdy, rabab, rebec, sarangi, viol, viola, viola da braccio, viola damore, the purported inventor of the violin is Andrea Amati. Amati was originally a maker, but turned to the new instrument form of violin in the mid-16th century. He was the progenitor of the famous Amati family of luthiers active in Cremona and his eldest was Antonio Amati, and the younger, Girolamo Amati. It is even possible Bartolomeo Cristofori, later inventor of the piano, gasparo da Salò of Brescia was another important early luthier of the violin family. About 80 of his instruments survive, and around 100 documents that relate to his work and he was also a double bass player and son and nephew of two violin players, Francesco and Agosti, respectively. Gasparo Duiffopruggar of Füssen, Germany, was incorrectly credited as the inventor of the violin. He was likely an important maker, but no documentation survives, da Salò made many instruments and exported to France and Spain, and probably to England. He had at least five apprentices, his son Francesco, a helper named Battista, Alexander of Marsiglia, Maggini inherited da Salòs business in Brescia
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Fret
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A fret is a raised element on the neck of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the width of the neck. On most modern western fretted instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard, on some historical instruments and non-European instruments, frets are made of pieces of string tied around the neck. Frets divide the neck into fixed segments at intervals related to a musical framework, on instruments such as guitars, each fret represents one semitone in the standard western system, in which one octave is divided into twelve semitones. Fret is often used as a verb, meaning simply to press down the string behind a fret, fretting often refers to the frets and/or their system of placement. Pressing the string against the fret reduces the length of the string to that between the bridge and the next fret between the fretting finger and the bridge. This is damped if the string were stopped with the fingertip on a fretless fingerboard. Frets make it easier for a player to achieve an acceptable standard of intonation. Furthermore, a fretted fingerboard makes it easier to play chords accurately, a disadvantage of frets is that they restrict pitches to the temperament defined by the fret positions. A player may still influence intonation, however, by pulling the string to the side to increase string tension and this technique is often used by electric guitarists of all genres, and is an important part of sitar playing. On instruments with frets that are thicker off the fingerboard, string tension, sometimes a player can pull the string toward the bridge or nut, thus lowering or raising the string tension and pitch. However, except for instruments that accommodate extensive string pulling, like the sitar, since the intonation of most modern western fretted instruments is equal tempered, the ratio of the distances of two consecutive frets to the bridge is 212, or approximately 1.059463. Theoretically, the twelfth fret should divide the string in two exact halves, to compensate for the increase in string tension when the string is pressed against the frets, the bridge position is adjusted slightly so the 12th fret plays exactly in tune. Fan frets (also fanned frets, slanted frets, or multi-scale, Frets are generally perpendicular to the instruments neck centerline, on a fanned fretboard, the frets are angled with only one center fret perpendicular to the neck’s centerline. This gives the strings more length and the higher strings shorter length. The idea is to more accurate tuning and deeper bass. Some think that fanned frets might be more ergonomic, fanned frets first appeared on the 16th century Orpharion, a variant of the cittern, tuned like a lute. John Starrett revived the idea in the seventies on his innovative instrument
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Gibson
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Gibson Brands, Inc. is an American manufacturer of guitars and other instruments, now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was known as Gibson Guitar Corp. and renamed Gibson Brands. Orville Gibson founded the company in 1902 as The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co. Ltd. in Kalamazoo, Gibson invented archtop guitars by constructing the same type of carved, arched tops used on violins. By the 1930s, the company was also making flattop acoustic guitars, as well as one of the first commercially available hollow-body electric guitars, Gibson sells guitars under a variety of brand names and builds one of the worlds most iconic guitars, the Gibson Les Paul. Many Gibson instruments are highly collectible, Gibson was at the forefront of innovation in acoustic guitars, especially in the big band era of the 1930s, the Gibson Super 400 was widely imitated. In 1952, Gibson introduced its first solid-body electric guitar, the Les Paul which became its most popular guitar to date— designed by Ted McCarty, Gibson was owned by the Norlin corporation from 1969 to 1986. In 1986, the company was acquired by its present owners, Gibson is a privately held corporation owned by its chief executive officer Henry Juszkiewicz and its president David H. Berryman. Orville Gibson patented a single-piece mandolin design in 1898 that was more durable than other mandolins, Orville Gibson began to sell his instruments in 1894 out of a one-room workshop in Kalamazoo Michigan. In 1902 Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd. was incorporated to market the instruments, initially, the company produced only Orville Gibsons original designs. Orville died in 1918 of endocarditis, the following year the company hired designer Lloyd Loar to create newer instruments. Loar designed the flagship L-5 archtop guitar and the Gibson F5 mandolin that was introduced in 1922, in 1936 Gibson introduced their first Electric Spanish model, the ES-150 followed by other electric instruments like steel guitars, banjos and mandolins. During World War II, instrument manufacturing at Gibson slowed due to shortages of wood and metal, between 1942-1945, Gibson employed women to manufacture guitars. Women produced nearly 25,000 guitars during World War II yet Gibson denied ever building instruments over this period, Gibson folklore has also claimed its guitars were made by seasoned craftsmen who were too old for war. In 1944 Gibson was purchased by Chicago Musical Instruments, the ES-175 was introduced in 1949. Gibson hired Ted McCarty in 1948, who became President in 1950, the Les Paul was offered in Custom, Standard, Special, and Junior models. In the mid-50s, the Thinline series was produced, which included a line of thinner guitars like the Byrdland, the first Byrdlands were slim, custom built, L-5 models for guitarists Billy Byrd and Hank Garland. Later, a neck was added. Other models such as the ES-350T and the ES-225T were introduced as less costly alternatives, in 1958, Gibson introduced the ES-335T model
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C. F. Martin & Company
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Martin & Company is an American guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. Martin is highly regarded for its guitars and is a leading manufacturer of flat top guitars. Martin instruments can sell for thousands of dollars, and vintage instruments occasionally command six-figure prices, the company has also made mandolins as well as several models of electric guitars and electric basses, although none of these other instruments are currently in production. The companys headquarters and primary factory are situated in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the building includes the Martin Guitar Museum, which features over 170 guitars made by the company over its history. Visitors can see pictures of famous guitar owners, try out some guitars, Martin also manufactures instruments in Navojoa, Mexico. Martin produced 182 instruments during 1901, increasing to 56,422 in 2000, the company has been run by the Martin family throughout its history. The current chairman and CEO, C. F, Chris Martin IV, is the great-great-great-grandson of the founder. The firm was the first to many of the characteristic features of the modern flat top. Influential Martin innovations include the Dreadnought body style and scalloped bracing, C. F. Martin was born in 1796 in Markneukirchen, Germany, and came from a long line of cabinet makers and woodworkers. His father, Johann Georg Martin, also built guitars, by the age of 15, according to the book Martin Guitars, A History by Mike Longworth, C. F. Martin apprenticed to Johann Georg Stauffer, a well-known guitar maker in Vienna, Austria. Martin returned to his hometown after completing training and opened his own guitar-making shop, however, he soon became embroiled in a controversy between two guilds. In the early 1800s, European craftsmen still operated under the guild system, the guitar was a relatively new instrument, and most guitar makers were members of the Cabinet Makers Guild. However, the Violin Makers Guild claimed exclusive rights to manufacture musical instruments, the Violin Makers Guild filed appeals on three occasions—the first in 1806—to prevent cabinet makers from producing guitars. Johann Martin is mentioned in a surviving submission dated 1832, although the cabinet makers successfully defended their right to build guitars, C. F. Martin believed that the guild system was too restrictive and moved to New York City in 1833. By 1838, he moved his business to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the Martin company is generally credited with developing the X-bracing system during the 1850s although C. F. Martin did not apply for a patent on the new bracing system. The Martin company was the first to use X-bracing on a large scale, from the 1860s on, fan bracing became standard in Europe. Martin and other American builders including Washburn and others since forgotten used X-bracing instead, the growing popularity of the guitar in the early 1900s led to a demand for louder and more percussive guitars. In response, many began to use metal strings instead of the traditional catgut
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France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
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Machine head
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A machine head is a geared apparatus for tuning stringed musical instruments by adjusting string tension. Machine heads are used on mandolins, guitars, double basses etc. and are located on the instruments headstock. Non-geared tuning devices that are used on violins, violas, cellos, lutes, older Flamenco guitars, friction pegs hold the string in tune by way of friction caused by their tapered shape and by the string pull created by the tight string. Some other commonly used names for guitar tuners are pegs, gears, machines, cranks, knobs. Traditionally, a machine head consists of a cylinder or capstan, mounted at the center of a pinion gear, a knob or button. The capstan has a hole through the far end from the gear, and the string is made to go through that hole, to complete the string installation, the string is tightened by turning the capstan using the tuning knob. The worm gear ensures that the capstan cannot turn without a movement on the knob, banjos usually employ a different mechanism using planetary gears - in this case the knob and the capstan both rotate on the same axis. A few guitars have used this design, the guitarist adjusts the tension of the various strings using the knobs so that they are correctly tuned, a higher tension yields a sharper pitch, a lower tension a flatter pitch. Typical tensions for steel-string acoustic guitars with light tension strings are 10.5 kgf to 13.8 kgf, normally, worm gears provide a gear ratio of 14,1. Versions with an 18,1 gear ratio also exist, trading better accuracy in fine tuning against slower initial string winding, vintage and vintage-reproduction guitars frequently have individual open-gear tuners, enclosed tuners not having become common until after WWII. Bass tuners generally feature larger knobs than guitar tuners as well, often these are distinctively shaped, gear ratios of 20,1 are used often. Exposed gears are more common in premium bass guitars than in six string non-bass instruments. Since the 1950s, guitar performance techniques evolved, and aggressive usage of a vibrato bar became widespread, however, the original machine heads couldnt withstand the rigors of constant string tension changing, and strings could go out of tune after using a vibrato mechanism several times. However, such machine heads reached limited success, mostly because of their price, as of 2006, many break strings when tension is increased while the mechanism is locked and later unlocked, which frequently happens in music stores. Note that on some guitars, such as those with Floyd Rose bridge, in this case, main machine heads at headstock may be missing entirely, as well as the headstock itself. Steinbergers and Hohners require specialist double-ball end strings, whereas the Washburn Bantam can take regular strings, certain instrumental families, most notably the Violin family have been actively resistant to the use of machine heads, insisting on the continued use of friction pegs. The fitting of them on instruments in these families is often regarded as blasphemous, the exact reasoning behind this resistance varies from case to case, with appearance, tradition, and simplicity, among others, being cited. This resistance remains despite the issues with friction pegs losing tuning, coming loose
25.
Bridge (instrument)
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Most stringed instruments produce their sound through the application of energy to the strings, which sets them into vibratory motion. The strings alone, however, produce only a faint sound because they displace only a volume of air as they vibrate. Consequently, the sound of the strings alone requires impedance matching to the air by transmitting their vibrations to a larger surface area capable of displacing larger volumes of air. This calls for an arrangement that allows for the strings to vibrate freely, a bridge is the customary means by which this is accomplished. Typically, the bridge is perpendicular to the strings and larger surface with the tension of the strings pressing down on the bridge and thus on the larger surface beneath it. That larger, more acoustically responsive surface may be coupled to a sound chamber—an enclosure such as the body of a guitar or violin—that provides resonance that helps amplify the sound, alternatively, a bridge may consist of multiple parts. One common form is a bridge that incorporates a separate bearing surface on which the strings rest and this is often of a material harder than the bridge itself, such as bone, ivory, high-density plastic, or metal. A classical guitar saddle sits loosely in the bridge and is kept there by string tension. The saddle has shallow grooves in it, at least for the treble strings, yet another type of multi-part bridge is common on instruments whose sound plate is curved rather than flat. Instruments of this type, such as guitars and mandolins, often have a bridge with a base. On classical and flat-top guitars the bridge is glued to the top, a bridge held on to the top by string tension, as in archtop guitars, is known as a floating bridge, and requires a separate tailpiece to anchor the strings. The bridge must transfer vibration to the board or other amplifying surface. As the strings are set in motion, it does this by bending to and this causes the sounding board to vibrate at the same frequency as the string producing a wave-like motion and an audible sound. Bridges are designed to hold the strings at a height above the fingerboard of the instrument. Bridge height may be fixed or alterable, in addition to supporting the strings and transmitting their vibrations, the bridge also controls the spacing between strings with shallow grooves cut in the bridge or its saddle. The strings sit in grooves, thus are held in their proper lateral position. The nut, at the end of the instrument from the bridge or tailpiece. Bridges for electric guitars can be divided into two groups, vibrato and non-vibrato
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Jam session
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A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp on tunes, songs and chord progressions. To jam is to music without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. Original jam sessions, also free flow sessions, are used by musicians to develop new material. Both styles can be used simply as a gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one participant. When Bing Crosby would attend these sessions, the musicians would say he was jammin the beat, since he would clap on the one, thus these sessions became known as jam sessions. The New York scene during World War II was famous for its after-hours jam sessions, one of the most famous was the regular after-hours jam at Mintons Playhouse in New York City that ran in the 1940s and early 1950s. The Mintons jams had competitive cutting contests, in which soloists would try to keep up with the house band and outdo each other in improvisational skill. During the 1950s these descargas became the basis of a new genre of improvised jams based on the son montuno with notable jazz influences pioneered by the likes of Julio Gutiérrez and Cachao. During the 1960s, descargas played an important role in the development of salsa, however, they can be shorter on the recorded version. Some notable recorded jams and jam-inspired performances in the idiom, Led Zeppelin live shows almost always contained extended, improvised solos. Notable examples include Dazed and Confused from both The Song Remains the Same and How the West Was Won both include 3 way jamming for up to 20 minutes. As a result of this jam, guitarist Duane Allman was invited to join the Dominos after having recorded three songs, and he made a major contribution to the resulting LP. The soundtrack for Tonite Lets All Make Love in London features 2 improvised jams titled Interstellar Overdrive, the latter is complete improvisation around the beat of the drums provided by drummer Nick Mason. The farewell Last Waltz concerts led by The Band in 1976 included two late-night jam sessions featuring Neil Young, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and others along with members of The Band. These performances were not included in the film or original recordings of the officially released for the first time as part of a 2002 box set. The third disc of George Harrisons 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass, titled Apple Jam, the Velvet Undergrounds Sister Ray, Some Kinda Love and Foggy Notion, had extensive live versions. Nirvanas improvised hidden track Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip from the album In Utero, bluesbreaker by Brian May and Friends recorded during the Star Fleet Project and featuring Eddie Van Halen, Phil Chen, Alan Gratzer and Fred Mandel
27.
Gypsy jazz
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Gypsy jazz is a style of jazz music often said to have been started by guitarist Jean Django Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are in France it is called by the French name, jazz manouche, or alternatively, manouche jazz. The term is now used for this style of music. Many of the musicians in this style worked in Paris in various popular Musette ensembles, the Musette style waltz remains an important component in the gypsy jazz repertoire. Reinhardt was noted for combining a dark, chromatic gypsy flavor with the articulation of the period. This combination is critical to this style of jazz, in addition to this, his approach continues to form the basis for contemporary gypsy jazz guitar. Reinhardts most famous group, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, the original Quintette du Hot Club de France played acoustically without a drummer, facilitating the use of the acoustic guitar as a lead instrument. Guitar and violin are still the main instruments, although clarinet, mandolin. The rhythm guitar is played using a distinct percussive technique, la pompe, most gypsy jazz guitarists, lead and rhythm, play a version of the Selmer-Maccaferri guitar design favored by Reinhardt himself. Although many instrumental line-ups exist, a group including one lead guitar, violin, in Eastern gypsy jazz, the rhythm section is most likely covered by one or two cymbaloms, or a cymbalom and/or drums and an acoustic guitar. An upright bass fills out the ensembles, rhythm guitar in gypsy jazz uses a special form of strumming known as la pompe, i. e. the pump. This form of rhythm is similar to the boom-chick in bluegrass styles, it is what gives the music its fast swinging feeling. The strumming hand, which never touches the top of the guitar, the up-down part of la pompe must be done extremely fast, regardless of the tempo of the music. It is very similar to a note in classical music. This pattern is played in unison by two or more guitarists in the rhythm section. Another important aspect of style of playing is based on the chord shapes Django was forced to use due to his injury. Standard barre chords are not as common in gypsy jazz, standard major and minor chords are almost never played, and are instead replaced by major 7th chords, major 6th chords, and 6/9 chords. Gypsy reharmonisation is often aimed at giving a minor feel even where a song is in a major key, dominant seventh chords are also altered by lowering the 9th and 13th scale degree
28.
String (music)
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A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a material that a musical instrument holds under tension so that they can vibrate freely. Wound strings have a core of one material, with an overwinding of other materials and this is to make the string vibrate at the desired pitch, while maintaining a low profile and sufficient flexibility for playability. This enabled stringed instruments to be made with less thick bass strings, on string instruments that the player plucks or bows directly, this enabled instrument makers to use thinner strings for the lowest-pitched strings, which made the lower-pitch strings easier to play. The end of the string that mounts to the tuning mechanism is usually plain. Depending on the instrument, the other, fixed end may have either a plain, loop. When a ball or loop is used with a guitar, this ensures that the string stays fixed in the bridge of the guitar, when a ball or loop is used with a violin-family instrument, this keeps the string end fixed in the tailpiece. Fender Bullet strings have a cylinder for more stable tuning on guitars equipped with synchronized tremolo systems. Strings for some instruments may be wrapped with silk at the ends to protect the string, the color and pattern of the silk often identifies attributes of the string, such as manufacturer, size, intended pitch, etc. There are several varieties of wound strings available, the simplest wound strings are roundwound—with round wire wrapped in a tight spiral around either a round or hexagonal core. Such strings are usually simple to manufacture and the least expensive and they have several drawbacks, however, Roundwound strings have a bumpy surface profile that produce friction on the players fingertips. This causes squeaking sounds when the fingers slide over the strings. Roundwound strings higher friction surface profile may hasten fingerboard and fret wear, when the core is round, the winding is less secure and may rotate freely around the core, especially if the winding is damaged after use. Flatwound strings also have either a round or hex core, however, the winding wire has a rounded square cross-section that has a shallower profile when tightly wound. This makes for more playing, and decreased wear for frets. Squeaking sounds due to fingers sliding along the strings are also decreased significantly, flatwound strings also have a longer playable life because of smaller grooves for dirt and oil to build up in. On the other hand, flatwound strings sound less bright than roundwounds, flatwounds also usually cost more than roundwounds because of less demand, less production, and higher overhead costs. Manufacturing is also difficult, as precise alignment of the flat sides of the winding must be maintained
29.
Plectrum
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A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, in harpsichords, the plectra are attached to the jack mechanism. A plectrum for electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass guitars, the size, shape and width may vary considerably. Thin items such as coins, bread clips or broken compact discs. Banjo and guitar players may wear a metal or plastic thumb pick mounted on a ring, guitar picks are made of a variety of materials, including celluloid, metal, and rarely other exotic materials such as turtle shell, but today delrin is the most common. For other instruments in the day most players use plastic plectra but a variety of other materials, including wood. Many guitarists also use the pick and the remaining right-hand fingers simultaneously to combine some advantages of flat picking and this technique is called hybrid picking. A plectrum of the type is often called a pick. The plectra for the Japanese biwa and shamisen can be large. Plectra used for Chinese instruments such as the sanxian were formerly made of animal horn, click on the images to view them in full size. In a harpsichord, there is a plectrum for each string. These plectra are very small, often only about a long, about 1.5 millimeters wide. The plectrum is gently tapered, being narrowest at the plucking end, the top surface of the plectrum is flat and horizontal, and is held in the tongue of the jack, which permits it to pluck moving upward and pass almost silently past the string moving downward. In the historical period of harpsichord construction plectra were made of feather quills. In Italy, some makers used vulture quills, other Italian harpsichords employed plectra of leather. In late French harpsichords by the great builder Pascal Taskin, peau de buffle, modern harpsichords frequently employ plectra made with plastic, specifically the plastic known as acetal. Some plectra are of the variety of acetal, sold by DuPont under the name Delrin, while others are of the copolymer variety. Harpsichord technicians and builders generally use the names to refer to these materials
30.
Tortoiseshell
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The large size, fine colour and unusual form of the hawksbills scutes make it especially suitable. Tortoiseshell was widely used from ancient times in the West and in Asia, despite being expensive, tortoiseshell was attractive to manufacturers and consumers because of its beautiful mottled appearance, its durability, and its organic warmth against the skin. The initial processing involved separating the layers of the scutes from the animals carapace by heating, softening the plates by boiling them in salt water. Two pieces could be fused by use of a hot iron, finishing and polishing was done by various techniques mainly in Europe or in the US. Craftsmen in various Asian countries have also perfected this art, in 1973, the trade of tortoiseshell worldwide was banned under CITES. The material was often imitated in stained horn, plastic and other materials. The synthetic Delrin has been used especially for guitar picks, tortoiseshell has been used since ancient times, and the ancient Greek chelys or lyre often used a whole shell to form its body. Inlaid veneers of tortoiseshell were popular with wealthy ancient Romans for furniture, especially couches for dining, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, probably a work of the 1st century AD, distinguishes between shell from different species, with that regarded as the best probably the hawksbill. Small luxury objects such as snuff-boxes were decorated in piqué work, hopes of capturing a large store of tortoiseshell led to the Ngatik massacre by Australian beachcombers of up to 50 men of Sapwuahfik in Micronesia in July 1837
31.
Al Bowlly
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He recorded more than 1,000 records between 1927 and 1941. Bowlly was born in Lourenço Marques, in the then Portuguese colony of Mozambique, to Greek and Lebanese parents who met en route to Australia, Bowlly was brought up in Johannesburg. However, he fell out with Adeler and was fired from the band in Surabaya, after a spell with a Filipino band in Surabaya he was then employed by Jimmy Liquime in India. Bowlly worked his passage back home by busking and that year, If I Had You became one of the first popular songs by an English jazz band to become well known in America as well, and Bowlly had gone out on his own by the beginning of the 1930s. First, however, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 resulted in Bowlly being made redundant, during the next four years, he recorded over 500 songs. By 1933 Lew Stone had ousted Fox as bandleader, and Bowlly was singing Stones arrangements with Stones band, with him and Marjie separated and his band dissolved, that year he was once again down on his luck. He was forced to borrow money from friends for a trip to New York for the surgery of which he was so in need. In 1938, he returned to the United States to undergo successful major throat surgery for the removal of his vocal wart. His absence from the UK in the early 1930s damaged his popularity with British audiences, despite his association with the gifted pianist, Monia Liter and his career began to suffer as a result of problems with his voice from around 1936, which affected the frequency of his recordings. He played a few parts in films around this time. The parts he did play were cut, and scenes that were shown were brief. Noble was offered a role in Hollywood although the offer did not, unfortunately, include Bowlly, Bowlly moved back to London with his wife Marjie in January 1937. He underwent a revival from 1940, as part of an act with Jimmy Messene, with an act called Radio Stars with Two Guitars. It was his last venture before his death in April 1941 and his last recorded song, made two weeks before his death, was a duet with Messene of Irving Berlins satirical song on Hitler, When That Man is Dead and Gone. In December 1931, Bowlly married Constance Freda Roberts in St Martins District, London, the couple separated after a fortnight, and sought a rapid divorce. He remarried in December 1934, this time to Marjie Fairless, on 17 April 1941, Bowlly and Messene had just given a performance at the Rex Cinema in Oxford Street, High Wycombe, now demolished. Both were offered the opportunity of a stay in the town. His decision proved to be fatal, as he was killed by a Luftwaffe parachute mine that detonated outside his flat later that evening
32.
Bal-musette
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Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1880s. Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and these places often were frequented by members of the French upper-class looking for excitement among the poor and downtrodden. Some establishments even staged mock police raids for their patrons benefit, performers of this era include Antoine Bouscatel, Émile Vacher, Martin Cayla, Charles Péguri, and Gus Viseur. Musette dance forms arose from people looking for easier, faster and more sensual dance steps, an original musette dance also appeared, known as java. Admission to most bals was free, but dancers bought dance tokens at the cash-desk and these tokens were made of metal in various shapes with the name of the hall stamped on one side. In the middle of the dance, the bal director walked between the couples with a bag and the dancers turned-in a token, by 1945, the bal-musette became the most popular style of dance in France and its biggest stars were widely known across the country. Its popularity declined drastically beginning around 1960, a revival of bals has begun, especially in larger cities, and a modern form of the musette is establishing itself. Amandine Dewaele, Les origines du bal musette, Paris 8e, roger Chenault, La danse musette, Courbevoie, Author edition. Web site of Jo Privat, a French musette accordion player
33.
Chanson
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A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specializing in chansons is known as a chanteur or chanteuse, the earliest chansons were the epic poems performed to simple monophonic melodies by a professional class of jongleurs or ménestrels. These usually recounted the deeds of past heroes, legendary. The Song of Roland is the most famous of these, the chanson courtoise or grand chant was an early form of monophonic chanson, the chief lyric poetic genre of the trouvères. It was an adaptation to Old French of the Occitan canso and it was practised in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thematically, as its name implies, it was a song of courtly love, some later chansons were polyphonic and some had refrains and were called chansons avec des refrains. A Crusade song was known as a chanson de croisade, in its typical specialized usage, the word chanson refers to a polyphonic French song of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Early chansons tended to be in one of the formes fixes—ballade, the earliest chansons were for two, three or four voices, with first three becoming the norm, expanding to four voices by the sixteenth century. Sometimes, the singers were accompanied by instruments, the first important composer of chansons was Guillaume de Machaut, who composed three-voice works in the formes fixes during the 14th century. Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois, who wrote so-called Burgundian chansons, were the most important chanson composers of the next generation and their chansons, while somewhat simple in style, are also generally in three voices with a structural tenor. Musicologist David Fallows includes the Burgundian repertoire in A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs 1415-1480 and these works are typically still 3 voices, with an active upper voice pitched above two lower voices usually sharing the same range. The first book of music printed from movable type was Harmonice Musices Odhecaton and this genre sometimes featured music that was meant to be evocative of certain imagery such as birds or the marketplace. Many of these Parisian works were published by Pierre Attaingnant, composers of their generation, as well as later composers, such as Orlando de Lassus, were influenced by the Italian madrigal. Many early instrumental works were ornamented variations on chansons, with this becoming the canzone. French solo song developed in the late 16th century, probably from the aforementioned Parisian works, louis Niedermeyer, under the particular spell of Schubert, was a pivotal figure in this movement, followed by Édouard Lalo, Felicien David and many others. Another offshoot of chanson, called chanson réaliste, was a musical genre in France. Among the better-known performers of the genre are Damia, Fréhel, chanson can be distinguished from the rest of French pop music by following the rhythms of French language, rather than those of English, and a higher standard for lyrics. Canzone Russian chanson French historical chanson panorama Brown, Howard Mayer, in The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham
34.
Enrico Macias
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Gaston Ghrenassia, known by his stage name Enrico Macias French pronunciation, , is a French Pied-noir singer, songwriter and musician. He is popular throughout the world and has travelled extensively for fifty years and he was born to an Algerian Jewish family in Constantine, Algeria, and played the guitar from childhood. His father, Sylvain Ghrenassia, was a violinist in an orchestra that played primarily maalouf, gaston started playing with the Cheikh Raymond Leyris Orchestra at age 15. He pursued a career as a teacher, but continued practicing the guitar. In 1961, the Algerian War of Independence was raging, gaston left Algeria with his wife, Suzy, on 29 July 1961, eleven months before the end of the Algerian War of Independence, and went into exile in mainland France. He has not been permitted to return to Algeria ever since, first living in Argenteuil, he eventually moved to Paris, where he decided to pursue a career in music. At first he tried translating into French the maalouf numbers which he already knew, later on, he developed a new French repertoire that he performed in cafés and cabarets. He remained, though, an interpreter of Arab-Andalusian music. He adopted the stage name Enrico Macias and made his first recording in 1962 after a meeting with Raymond Bernard of Pathé, the result was the recording of Adieu mon pays which he had composed for his beloved Algeria on the boat on his way to France. He appeared on French television and became an overnight sensation and this led to a first tour in 1963 as a second act with Paola and Billy Bridge. His daughter, Jocya, was born that year. In Turkey, many of his songs were translated and interpreted by Turkish artists. In 1965, he was awarded the Prix Vincent Scotto, and he also toured Japan and recorded titles in Spanish and Italian and was popular in both countries. His American debut, at a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert, took place on 17 February 1968 and he continued to tour the United States, singing in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. In Quebec, Canada he was welcomed as a francophone artist. In 1971, he returned to the Paris Olympia, then went to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a second US tour culminated in a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1972. In 1974, he gave ten shows at the Uris Theater on Broadway and he toured France and went twice to Israel in 1976 and 1978. He was invited to Egypt by the Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat to sing for peace and this came after Macias had been banned from Arab countries for many years, despite keeping his popularity with Arab and ethnic audiences in the Middle East and North Africa
35.
Harp guitar
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The harp guitar is a guitar-based stringed instrument with a history of well over two centuries. The word harp is used in reference to its harp-like unstopped open strings, a harp guitar must have at least one unfretted string lying off the main fretboard, typically played as an open string. This family consists of varieties of instrument configurations. Most readily identified are American harp guitars with either hollow arms, double necks or harp-like frames for supporting extra bass strings, other harp guitars feature treble or mid-range floating strings, or various combinations of multiple floating string banks along with a standard guitar neck. While most players of harp guitars play on instruments, a few of them also work with electric instruments. Notable artists who played electric guitars are Tim Donahue and Michael Hedges. American musician William Eaton both designs and plays electric guitar and is considered one of the worlds great designers/builders of unique guitars. The Japanese noise band Solmania built their own harp guitars, yuri Landman has built a 17 string electric harp guitar for Finn Andrews of The Veils. The instrument has a movable bridge on the harp section allowing players to pitch the harp section higher or lower. Historical harp guitar players include the German composers and guitarists Adam Darr and Eduard Bayer and the Italian virtuosi Pasquale Taraffo, Mario Maccaferri, viennese and French virtuosos who often played instruments with extra, floating bass strings include Carulli, Coste, Giuliani, Mertz, Padovec and Sor. English guitarist John McLaughlin notably played a guitar, particularly with the group Shakti, often using the harp strings for Indian inspired drones. Michael Hedges was known for using a 1920s-era harp guitar. Andy McKee also plays a guitar in a few of his songs, such as Into The Ocean and The Friend I Never Met. Antoine Dufour also uses the instrument occasionally, such as in his song Paroxysm, oleg Timofeyev primarily uses a traditional Russian seven-string guitar with floating sub-bass strings. American harp-guitarist Gregg Miner owns the worlds largest collection of guitars and runs harpguitars. net. Alongside Stephen Bennett, he has organized, attended and documented every Harp Guitar Gathering since its inception, alfred Karnes was an Old Time Country and Southern Gospel singer and guitarist who recorded at the famous Bristol Sessions in 1927. He was known for such as Im Bound for the Promised Land. His records are the known use of the harp-guitar in Old Time Music
36.
Slide guitar
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Slide guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the manner, an object called a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating smooth transitions in pitch and allowing wide, Slide guitar is most often played, With the guitar in the normal position, using a slide on one of the fingers of the left hand. This same technique is used to play steel guitar and the Dobro resonator guitar used in Bluegrass music. The technique of using a slide on a string has been traced to one-stringed African instruments similar to a Diddley bow, the technique was made popular by African American blues artists. The first musician recorded using the style was Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two solo pieces Guitar Blues and Guitar Rag in 1923, Blues legend Muddy Waters was also very influential, particularly in developing the electric Chicago blues slide guitar from the acoustic Mississippi Delta slide guitar. Texas blues musician Johnny Winter developed his style through years of touring with Waters. Slide player Roy Rogers honed his skills by touring with blues artist John Lee Hooker. John Lees cousin Earl Hooker may have been the first to use wah-wah, the sound has since become commonplace in country and Hawaiian music. The Rolling Stones featured a guitar as early as their 1963 recording of the John Lennon/Paul McCartney song I Wanna Be Your Man. Guitarist Brian Jones played slide in a very blues-oriented style, Jones was also one of the first English guitarists to play slide and during the bands early years, he was considered one of the best slide guitarists in the music world. His successors Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood also displayed their own slide guitar skills while with the band, the album Let It Bleed features Keith Richards on slide guitar for the majority of the album, since the band were in-between guitarists during the making of the album. Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger has also played guitar on occasion. Canned Heats Alan Wilson also helped bring slide guitar to music in the late 1960s. George Harrison experimented with slide guitar during the half of The Beatles career, first using the technique on an early outtake recording of Strawberry Fields Forever. The 1965 songs Drive My Car, and Run For Your Life have slide guitar, Harrison later used slide extensively in his solo career, on songs such as My Sweet Lord, Give Me Love, This Is Love, and Cheer Down. He played slide in the Traveling Wilburys as well as on The Beatles 1995 and 1996 reunion singles Free as a Bird, slides may be used on any guitar, but slides generally and steels in particular are often used on instruments specifically made to play in this manner. Often, the strings are raised a little higher off the fingerboard than they would be for conventional guitar playing—especially if the player isnt going to use the fingers for fretting
37.
Tenor guitar
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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
38.
Eddie Freeman (musician)
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Eddie Freeman was a noted English jazz musician of the first half of the 20th century and a transcriber and teacher of flamenco guitar music in the latter half. Born Edward F. and designed and constructed his own flamenco, Eddie learned to play violin at the age of 12 and became a professional violinist in pit orchestras of silent movie houses in England. While playing in movie houses he took up the tenor banjo, during this period he found it necessary to abandon the tenor banjo in favor of the six string guitar which was coming into favor. He returned to London to play in the Harry Roy Orchestra at the London Pavilion, when noted bandleader Al Collins heard of Eddie and listened to him play, Collins signed him up for his orchestra at the Savoy Hotel in London. When Collins switched to the Berkeley Hotel in 1932, Freeman went with him, in the early 1930s, Freeman designed the Eddie Freeman Special 4-String Guitar” for Selmer Music Company, to implement the guitar method he had developed in Baltimore. Since it was still tuned CGDA, it could be played by tenor banjoists, selmer-Maccaferri tenor guitars were produced from 1932 until 1934. Nearly 100 of the some 300 genuine Maccaferri guitars that were built were Eddie Freeman Specials, the guitar was not a commercial success, despite heavy promotion by Maccaferri, because of opposition from orchestra guitarists in England who thought it was a threat to their livelihoods. However, in recent years some luthiers such as the late David Hodson in the U. K have started building this four string model again because of demand from their customers. Freeman spent the war years in Belfast playing trumpet and conducting a seven-piece Dixie combo in The Embassy Club, after the war he played trumpet in the Knightsbridge South American Club in London, and doubled with jazz guitar in the Bag ONails Club. Freeman moved to the Bronx in New York in the mid-1940s and was joined by his wife, by the early 1950s they had moved to Oceanside, California where he supported himself as a piano tuner. Inspired by flamenco music, which he first heard at the Savoy Hotel, he left his family in California and traveled to Spain to discover its fundamentals. His search was interrupted when he played violin in the Palma de Majorca Symphony and he later formed a flamenco group, Los Tres de Sevilla, with two dancers. When he returned to the US he moved his family to Dallas, Texas and he made accurate transcriptions of the finest flamenco guitarists, Ramon Montoya, Sabicas, Mario Escudero, Carlos Ramos, Esteban de Sanlucar, Nino Ricardo, and Paco de Lucia. He subsequently published a collection of transcriptions of guitar solos by Carlos Ramos through Charles H, each piece in the library of music that formed the basis of his system was carefully selected to develop a particular aspect of technique or understanding of Flamenco in a logical progression. In addition to transcribing and teaching guitar, Freeman designed and constructed his own flamenco. The entire January 1980 edition of Jaleo, the newsletter of the Flamenco Association of San Diego, was dedicated to articles about him written by his students, Flamenco Tenor banjo Maccaferri guitars A collection of Edward Freemans flamenco transcriptions
39.
Reentrant tuning
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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
40.
John D'Angelico
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John D’Angelico was a luthier from New York City, noted for his handmade archtop guitars and mandolins. John D’Angelico was born in 1905 in New York to an Italian-American family, and was apprenticed in 1914 to his great-uncle, Raphael Ciani, who made violins, mandolins, DAngelico took over as supervisor of Ciani’s shop when he died. In 1932, he working on his own designs in his own workshop in New York. By 1937, D’Angelico had settled on at least four main f-hole archtop guitar designs, heavily influenced by the Gibson L-5, Excel –17 inch body New Yorker –18 inch body. Through at least the late 1930s, D’Angelico’s guitar necks had non-adjustable steel reinforcement, later models had functional truss rods. By the late 40s, DAngelico was building only the Excel, all New Yorker models featured pearl inlays in the headstock and fingerboards, as well as quadruple bindings. All of D’Angelico’s guitars were hand-built, and many were customized for specific people, D’Angelico’s shop rarely made more than 30 guitars per year. In all, it is estimated that he built 1,164 guitars, D’Angelico also built a few round-hole archtops, and a few mandolins. Original DAngelico guitars are identified by a serial number punched inside the bass f-hole—the serial numbers ranging from 1001 to 2164, D’Angelico suffered a series of heart attacks starting in 1959, and also suffered from pneumonia. He died at age 59 in 1964, the DAngelico Guitars brand has continued under other owners. Some of DAngelicos employees went on to become craftsmen in their own right, among them were Jimmy Di Serio, who worked for DAngelico from 1932-1959, and Jimmy DAquisto, who worked for DAngelico in the last few years of his life. In 1952, he hired DAquisto as an apprentice, who would buy the business from the DAngelico family. DAngelico and DAquisto are generally regarded as the two greatest archtop guitar makers of the 20th century, in 2011, works by DAngelico and DAquisto were included in the Guitar Heroes exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Archtop guitar Jimmy DAquisto Ralph Patt Peterson, Jonathon, tuning in thirds, A new approach to playing leads to a new kind of guitar. American Lutherie, The Quarterly Journal of the Guild of American Luthiers,8222 South Park Avenue, Tacoma WA98408, USA
41.
Ibanez
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Ibanez is a Japanese guitar brand owned by Hoshino Gakki. The Hoshino Gakki company began in 1908 as the musical instrument sales division of the Hoshino Shoten, the Ibanez brand name dates back to 1929 when Hoshino Gakki began importing Salvador Ibáñez guitars from Spain. In the 1960s Japanese guitar makers started to mainly copy American guitar designs and Ibanez branded copies of Gibson and this resulted in the so-called Ibanez lawsuit period. During this lawsuit period Ibanez started producing guitars under the Mann name to avoid authorities in the US, after the lawsuit period Hoshino Gakki introduced Ibanez models that were definitely not copies of the Gibson or Fender designs such as the Iceman and The Ibanez Roadstar. The company has produced its own guitar designs ever since, the late 1980s and early 1990s were an important period for the Ibanez brand. Hoshino Gakki also had semi acoustic, nylon and steel stringed acoustic guitars manufactured under the Ibanez name, cimar and Starfield were guitar and bass brands owned by Hoshino Gakki. In the 1970s, Hoshino Gakki and Kanda Shokai shared some guitar designs and so some Ibanez, the Kanda Shokai Greco guitars were sold in Japan and the Hoshino Gakki Ibanez guitars were sold outside Japan. From 1982, Ibanez guitars have also sold in Japan as well as being sold outside Japan. Guitar brands such as Antoria and Mann shared some Ibanez guitar designs, the Antoria guitar brand was managed by JT Coppock Leeds Ltd England. CSL was a brand managed by Charles Summerfield Ltd England. The Maxxas brand name came about because Hoshino Gakki thought that the guitar did not fit in with the Ibanez model range and was therefore named Maxxas by Rich Lasner from Hoshino USA. Harry Rosenbloom, founder of the Medley Music of Bryn Mawr, by 1965 Rosenbloom had decided to stop manufacturing guitars and chose to become the exclusive North American distributor for Ibanez guitars. In September 1972, Hoshino began a partnership with Elger Guitars to import guitars from Japan, in September 1981, Elger was renamed Hoshino U. S. A. retaining the company headquarters in Bensalem, Pennsylvania as a distribution and quality-control center. Hoshino settled out of court in early 1978 and the case was closed on February 2,1978. After the lawsuit Hoshino Gakki abandoned the strategy of copying classic U. S. A. electric guitar designs—having already introduced a plethora of original designs, Hoshino was producing Artist models of their own design from 1974, introducing a set neck model in 1975. Ibanez J. Custom The J. Custom series are the most exclusive and they are Envisioned to be the finest Japanese-made guitar in history. Built by some of the most skilled luthiers Ibanez has to offer, they represent every advance in design and they feature aftermarket pickups 5 piece maple/wenge necks with Titanium reinforcement rods, a rosewood fingerboard with a tree of life fret board inlay, and Edge Zero tremolo systems. Ibanez Prestige The Prestige guitars are Ibanezs top of the models that are built in Japan
42.
Chris Eccleshall
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His main business is making custom-built acoustic and electric guitars, although he also produces a standard range of solid body electrics under the name Electric Lady. He also makes solid bodied electric mandolins, acoustic mandolins, mandolas, Eccleshall originally trained as a violin maker with W. E. Hill and Sons of Bond Street, London, who at the time were the number one violin company in the world. He was also an engineer in the Fleet Air Arm, later he moved to Ealing Strings at Ealing Common, London. During this time Eccleshall still found time to make and repair guitars, eventually becoming so busy he set up his own workshop and went into making guitars full-time. British guitar makers were virtually unheard of at the time, but Eccleshall was one of the first to win recognition, along with Tony Zemaitis and John Birch. Week after week the three were involved in a competition to get their outlandish guitar designs onto Top of the Pops during the heyday of British glam rock. Although his name is known to insiders than to the general public. In the early 1980s Eccleshall struck a deal with the Japanese-made brand Kimbara to make. Eccleshall travelled to the Japanese factory to supervise the setup and was pleased with Japanese engineering standards. These guitars are rare in Europe and are mostly now in Japan. In 1986 Eccleshall uprooted from his native Ealing to move to Dartington and he now lives and works in Totnes. Eccleshall has worked with many apprentices and assistants and has trained and advised other luthiers including George Lowden, Eccleshall has been responsible for several inventions for which he never received the credit. He still possess an SG body with a Meher Baba sticker from that era, Eccleshalls C-Model acoustic guitar has a classical guitar shaped body, but for steel strings. His Special is a variant of this, many of Eccleshalls standard designs are modified versions of shapes associated with Gibson guitars. His B-Model acoustic is based on the J-200 acoustic, but is smaller, the Kestrel and Falcon electric guitars have solid bodies but with a 335 outline. The MC Model has the 175 outline but in 3/4 size with a slimline body and his 335-style bass is a unique hollow-bodied instrument used by Eddie Macdonald of The Alarm, Peter Hook of Joy Division & New Order and Simon Gallup of The Cure. Eccleshalls solid electric mandolin is used by electric folk bands. Official website Rory Gallaghers guitars including Eccleshall guitar, mandolin & mandola
43.
George Cole (musician)
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George Cole is an American music producer, composer, lyricist, vocalist, session musician, and guitarist. He fronts his own Gypsy jazz/Uptown Swing band and since early 2014 has been the guitarist for the David Grisman Quintet, before his acoustic music endeavors, he played electric guitar for the pop rock band Beatnik Beatch and Big Blue Hearts. He played on Chris Isaaks platinum Forever Blue album, Cole is also a teacher, and his students include Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt of Green Day, Ethan Roberts, and Danny Jones. Cole grew up in Richmond, California and he performed in the band Young Country in the late 1970s and The Upstarts in the early 1980s. His favorite chlidhood band was The Benny Goodman Quartet, Cole has taught guitar lessons to promising musicians for nearly 30 years. He began teaching lessons in California in the 1980s. He taught Billie Joe Armstrong for ten years and the bassist Mike Dirnt of the rock band Green Day. Cole and Billie Joe would frequently spend afternoons jamming together, free-form style with the teacher winging off as many odd notes as his pupil and he helped arrange their first recording session at RDR studios in San Francisco in 1986. Armstrong received his first electric guitar, a Fernandes Stratocaster copy that he named Blue, Cole bought the new guitar from David Margen of the band Santana. Cole gave Armstrong a Bill Lawrence Humbucking pickup and told him to install the pickup in the bridge position, Armstrong then switched back to a Seymour Duncan JB pickup that he still uses today. Armstrong fetishized his teachers guitar, partly because the instrument had a sound quality. He prized it mostly, however, because of his relationship with Cole, Cole was lead guitarist in the pop rock band Beatnik Beatch from 1984–1988. In Beatnik Beatch he performed with Warren Zevon and Buster Poindexter, Beatnik Beatch has a music video on VH1 which features Cole. The group won a BAMMY – Bay Area Music Award for Best New Major Label Artist, Cole was a member of the band Big Blue Hearts from 1997–2000. He toured with Joe Walsh of The Eagles, recorded with producer Roy Thomas Baker, and they performed with Robert Cray, Ringo Starr, Cole started the gypsy jazz band George Cole Quintet in 2006 and is the Producer, composer, lyricist, Vocalist, and lead guitarist. The band was a five-piece acoustic gypsy jazz group, Cole performed a sold out performance at Carnegie Hall in New York as part of a world flute festival concert to benefit In Defense of Animals. The band performed at a San Francisco Chapter of National Academy of Recording Arts, in 2010–2011 Cole released his most recent recording Riverside Drive and toured extensively in the United States with a quintet. This festival is differentiated from other Django Reinhardt festivals in that it honors the legacy of the jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli
44.
Joseph Reinhardt
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He was the first and most significant jazz talent to emerge from Europe. Benny Goodman asked him to travel with his band, which he never did and he died suddenly of a stroke at age 43. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Reinhardt formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934, Reinhardts most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including Minor Swing, Daphne, Belleville, Djangology, Swing 42, and Nuages. According to jazz guitarist Frank Vignola, nearly every major popular-music guitarist in the world has influenced by Django, including Paul McCartney, Keith Richards. Over the last few decades, annual Django festivals have been held throughout Europe and the U. S. in February 2017, the Berlin International Film Festival held the world premiere of the French film, Django. Reinhardt was born on 23 January 1910 in Liberchies, Pont-à-Celles, Belgium and his father was Jean Eugene Weiss, but domiciled in Paris with his wife, he went by Jean-Baptiste Reinhardt, his wifes surname, to avoid French military conscription. His mother, Laurence Reinhardt, was a dancer, the birth certificate refers to Jean Reinhart, son of Jean Baptiste Reinhart, artist, and Laurence Reinhart, housewife, domiciled in Paris. Reinhardts nickname, Django, is Romani for I awake, Reinhardt spent most of his youth in Romani encampments close to Paris, where he started playing the violin, banjo, and guitar. He became adept at stealing chickens, which was viewed as a skill by the Romani. His family made cane furniture for a living, several members of the family were keen amateur musicians. Reinhardt was attracted to music at an age, first playing the violin. At the age of 12 he received a banjo-guitar as a gift and he quickly learned to play, mimicking the fingerings of musicians he watched. Reinhardt was able to make a living playing music by the time he was 15 and he received little formal education and acquired the rudiments of literacy only in adult life. At the age of 17 Reinhardt married Florine Bella Mayer, a girl from the same gypsy settlement, the following year he recorded for the first time. On these recordings, made in 1928, Reinhardt plays the banjo accompanying the accordionists Maurice Alexander, Jean Vaissade and Victor Marceau, and his name was now drawing international attention, such as from British bandleader Jack Hylton, who came to France just to hear him play. He offered him a job on the spot, and Reinhardt accepted. Before he had a chance to start with the band, however, he nearly lost his life when the caravan he and his wife made artificial flowers from extremely flammable celluloid. They caught fire, engulfing the wagon in flames almost immediately, Django dragged himself and his wife through the fire to safety, but suffered extensive burns all over his left hand and other areas
