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Cuatro (instrument)
The cuatro is a family of Latin American string instruments played in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. It is derived from the Spanish guitar. Although some have viola-like shapes, most cuatros resemble a small to mid-sized classical guitar. In Puerto Rico and Venezuela, the cuatro is an ensemble instrument for secular and religious music, and is played at parties and traditional gatherings. Cuatro means ''four'' in Spanish; the instrument's 15th century predecessors were the Spanish vihuela and the Portuguese cavaquinho, the latter having four strings like the cuatro. Modern cuatros come a variety of sizes and shapes, and number of strings. Cuatros can either have single-strings, like a guitar, or double- or triple-coursed strings like a mandolin, and vary in size from a large mandolin or small guitar, to the size of a full-size guitar. Depending on their particular stringing, cuatros are part of the guitar or mandolin subfamilies of the lute fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venezuelan Cuatro
The cuatro of Venezuela has four single nylon strings, tuned (ad'f#'b). It is similar in shape and tuning to the ukulele, but their character and playing technique are vastly different. It is tuned in a similar fashion to the traditional D tuning of the ukulele, but the A and B are an octave lower. Consequently, the same fingering can be used to shape the chords, but it produces a different inversion of each chord. A cuatro player is called a ''cuatrista''. History The predecessor of the Venezuelan cuatro is the four-string Spanish renaissance guitar which disappeared in the 16th century after a short period of surging popularity. In the 1950s, Fredy Reyna documented the evolution of the renaissance guitar into the current Venezuelan Cuatro, and reinvented the cuatro as a solo instrument, equally capable of rendering traditional Venezuelan music as well as Renaissance pieces. The popularity of the instrument in Venezuela and elsewhere may be due to its apparent simplicity, ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Style Cuatro Of Puerto Rico
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyers' wigs or military officers' spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word ''tradition'' itself derives from the Latin ''tradere'' literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have an ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that be political or cultural, over short periods of time. Various academic disciplines also use the word in a variety of ways. The phrase "according to tradition", or "by tradition", usually means that whatever information follows is known only by oral tradition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whole Note
A whole note (American) or semibreve (British) in musical notation is a single note equivalent to or lasting as long as two half notes or four quarter notes. Description The whole note or semibreve has a note head in the shape of a hollow oval—like a half note (or ''minim'')—but with no note stem (see Figure 1). Since it is equal to four quarter notes, it occupies the entire length of a measure in time. Other notes are multiples or fractions of the whole note. For example, a double whole note (or ''breve'') lasts twice the duration of the whole note, a half note lasts one half the duration, and a quarter note (or ''crotchet'') lasts one quarter the duration. A related symbol is the whole rest (or semibreve rest), which signifies a rest for the duration of a whole note. Whole rests are drawn as filled-in rectangles generally hanging under the second line from the top of a musical staff, though they may occasionally be put under a different line (or ledger line) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tremolo
In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo. The first is a rapid reiteration: * Of a single note, particularly used on bowed string instruments, by rapidly moving the bow back and forth; plucked strings such as on a harp, where it is called '' bisbigliando'' () or "whispering". Tremolo picking, on traditionally plucked string instruments including guitar and mandolin, is the rapid articulation of single notes or a group of notes with a plectrum (pick) or with fingers. Tremolo playing sustains notes that would otherwise rapidly decay (fade to silence). * Between two notes or chords in alternation, an imitation (not to be confused with a trill) of the preceding that is more common on keyboard instruments. Mallet instruments such as the marimba are capable of either method. * A roll on any percussion instrument, whether tuned or untuned. A second type of tremolo is a variation in amplitude: * As produced on organs b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jellybean
Jelly beans are small bean shaped sugar candies with soft candy shells and thick gel interiors (see gelatin and jelly). The confection is primarily made of sugar and sold in a wide variety of colors and flavors. History It has been claimed that jelly beans were first mentioned during 1861, when Boston confectioner William Schrafft urged people to send his jelly beans to soldiers during the American Civil War. It was not until July 5, 1905, that jelly beans were mentioned in the ''Chicago Daily News''. The advertisement publicized bulk beans sold by volume for ten cents per pound, according to the book ''The Century in Food: America's Fads and Favorites''. Most historians contend that jelly beans were first associated with celebrations of Easter in the United States sometime during the 1930s due to their egg-like shape. Manufacture The basic ingredients of jelly beans include sugar, tapioca or corn syrup, and pectin or starch. Relatively minor amounts of the emulsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bridge (instrument)
A bridge is a device that supports the strings on a stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a soundboard, such as the top of a guitar or violin—which transfers the sound to the surrounding air. Depending on the instrument, the bridge may be made of carved wood (violin family instruments, acoustic guitars and some jazz guitars), metal (electric guitars such as the Fender Telecaster) or other materials. The bridge supports the strings and holds them over the body of the instrument under tension. Explanation Most stringed instruments produce sound through the application of energy to the strings, which sets them into vibratory motion, creating musical sounds. The strings alone, however, produce only a faint sound because they displace only a small volume of air as they vibrate. Consequently, the sound of the strings alone requires impedance matching to the surrounding air by tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
String (music)
A string is the Vibrating string, vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments such as the guitar, harp, piano (piano wire), and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material that a musical instrument holds under tension (mechanics), tension so that they can vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain", consisting only of a single material, like steel, nylon, or catgut, gut, or wound, having a "core" of one material and an overwinding of another. This is to make the string vibrate at the desired Pitch (music), pitch, while maintaining a low profile and sufficient flexibility for playability. The invention of wound strings, such as nylon covered in wound metal, was a crucial step in string instrument technology, because a metal-wound string can produce a lower pitch than a catgut string of similar thickness. This enabled stringed instruments to be made with less thick bass strings. On string instruments that the player plucks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosette (music)
A rosette (from French, meaning ''little rose''), rose, or knot, in the context of musical instruments, is a form of soundhole decoration. The name originated during the medieval period, as a comparison with church windows which were called rose windows. On the oud they are called by the Arabic language term shams, meaning ''sun''. History From the medieval to the baroque periods, it was common to have ornately carved soundhole designs, called roses. These were either carved directly into the wood of the soundboard or inserted from behind and made of carved wood or parchment. The designs used for lutes and other early instruments were often inspired by the geometric patterns in Islamic art, probably from those used on the oud. During the medieval period, most such designs were 4-sided, whereas during the renaissance and baroque periods, 6-sided designs were used. Image:Stradivarius Guitar - 1700, rosette 1, National Music Museum, Vermillion.jpg, Baroque guitar soundhole w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fret
A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. 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. Explanation Pressing the string against the fret reduces the vibrating 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 soft fingertip on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nut (string Instrument)
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 vibrating length of each open string, sets the spacing of the strings across the neck, and usually holds the strings at the proper height from the fingerboard. Along with the bridge, the nut defines the scale lengths (vibrating length) 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, to prevent damage to the strings or their windings. 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. Etymology The word may have come from the German ''Nut'' (pronounced "noot"), meaning ''groove'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pegbox
A variety of methods are used to tune different stringed instruments. Most change the pitch produced when the string is played by adjusting the tension of the strings. A tuning peg in a pegbox is perhaps the most common system. A peg has a grip or knob on it to allow it to be turned. A tuning pin is a tuning peg with a detachable grip, called a tuning lever. The socket on the tuning lever fits over the pin and allows it to be turned. Tuning pins are used on instruments where there is no space for a knob on each string, such as pianos and harps. Turning the peg or pin tightens or loosens the string. Some tuning pegs and pins are tapered, some threaded. Some tuning pegs are ornamented with shell, metal, or plastic inlays, beads (pips) or rings. Other tuning systems include screw-and-lever tuners, geared tuners, and the konso friction tuning system (using braided leather rings). Pegbox A pegbox is the part of certain stringed musical instruments (violin, viola, cello, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unison
In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or perfect unison (also called a prime, or perfect prime)Benward & Saker (2003), p. 53. may refer to the (pseudo-) interval formed by a tone and its duplication (in German, ''Unisono'', ''Einklang'', or ''Prime''), for example C–C, as differentiated from the second, C–D, etc. In the unison the two pitches have the ratio of 1:1 or 0 half steps and zero cents. Although two tones in unison are considered to be the same pitch, they are still perceivable as coming from separate sources, whether played on instruments of a different type: ; or of the same type: . This is because a pair of tones in unison come from different locations or can have different "colors" ( timbres), i.e. come from different musical instruments or human voices. Voices wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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