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Pianos
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an action mechanism where hammers strike strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a chromatic scale in equal temperament. A musician who specializes in piano is called a pianist. There are two main types of piano: the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano offers better sound and more precise key control, making it the preferred choice when space and budget allow. The grand piano is also considered a necessity in venues hosting skilled pianists. The upright piano is more commonly used because of its smaller size and lower cost. When a key is depressed, the strings inside are struck by felt-coated wooden hammers. The vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies the sound by coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration, ending the sound. Most notes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortepiano
A fortepiano is an early piano. In principle, the word "fortepiano" can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1700 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the mid-18th to early-19th century instruments, for which composers of the Classical period (music), Classical era, such as Haydn, Mozart, and the younger Beethoven and Schubert, wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven's time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand piano, grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the later 20th century, the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance. Fortepianos are built for that purpose, in specialist workshops. Construction The fortepiano has leather-covered hammers and thin, harpsichord-like strings. It has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano Pedals
Piano pedals are foot-operated levers at the base of a piano that change the instrument's sound in various ways. Modern pianos usually have three pedals, from left to right, the soft pedal (or una corda), the sostenuto pedal, and the sustaining pedal (or damper pedal). Some pianos omit the sostenuto pedal, or have a middle pedal with a different purpose such as a muting function also known as silent piano. The development of the piano's pedals is an evolution that began from the very earliest days of the piano, and continued through the late 19th century. Throughout the years, the piano had as few as one modifying stop, and as many as six or more, before finally arriving at its current configuration of three. Individual pedals Damper pedal The ''damper pedal'', ''sustain pedal'', or ''sustaining pedal'' is to the right of the other pedals, and is used more often than the other pedals. It raises all the dampers off the strings so that they keep vibrating after the player re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bartolomeo Cristofori
Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (; May 4, 1655 – January 27, 1731) was an Italian maker of musical instruments famous for inventing the piano. Life The available source materials on Cristofori's life include his birth and death records, two wills, the bills he submitted to his employers, and a single interview carried out by Scipione Maffei. From the latter, both Maffei's notes and the published journal article are preserved. Cristofori was born in Padua in the Republic of Venice. Nothing is known of his early life. A tale is told that he served as an apprentice to the great violin maker Nicolò Amati, based on the appearance in a 1680 census record of a "Christofaro Bartolomei" living in Amati's house in Cremona. However, as Stewart Pollens points out, this person cannot be Bartolomeo Cristofori, since the census records an age of 13, whereas Cristofori according to his baptismal record would have been 25 at the time. Pollens also gives strong reasons to doubt the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano Concerto
A piano concerto, a type of concerto, is a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for piano accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuosic showpieces which require an advanced level of technique. Piano concertos are typically written out in music notation, including sheet music for the pianist (which is typically memorized for a more virtuosic performance), orchestral parts, and a full score for the conductor. The standard practice in the Baroque and Classical eras (together spanning from circa 1600 to circa 1800), was for the orchestra to provide subordinate accompaniment over which the piano plays solo parts. However, at the end of the classical era, the orchestra had an equal role to the pianist and frequently had “dialogue” or “conversation” between the two. When music students and music competition auditionees play piano concertos, the orchestra part may be performed in an orchestral reduction, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Keyboard
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine ( acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard). Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard or simply piano keys. Description The twelve notes of the Western musical scale are laid out with the lowest note on the left. The longer keys (for the seven "natural" notes of the C major scale: C, D, E, F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bridge (instrument)
A bridge is a device that supports the strings (music), strings on a stringed instrument, stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a Sound board (music), 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 Particle displacement, displace only a small volume of air as they vibrate. Consequently, the sound of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equal Temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or Musical tuning#Tuning systems, tuning system that approximates Just intonation, just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into steps such that the ratio of the frequency, frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same. This system yields Pitch (music), pitch steps perceived as equal in size, due to the logarithmic changes in pitch frequency. In classical music and Western music in general, the most common tuning system since the 18th century has been 12 equal temperament (also known as ''12 tone equal temperament'', ' or ', informally abbreviated as ''12 equal''), which divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equal on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the twelfth root of two, 12th root of 2, (\sqrt[12] ≈ 1.05946). That resulting smallest interval, the width of an octave, is called a semitone or half step. In Western world, Western countries the term ''equal temperamen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Note
In music, notes are distinct and isolatable sounds that act as the most basic building blocks for nearly all of music. This musical analysis#Discretization, discretization facilitates performance, comprehension, and musical analysis, analysis. Notes may be visually communicated by writing them in musical notation. Notes can distinguish the general pitch class or the specific Pitch (music), pitch played by a pitched Musical instrument, instrument. Although this article focuses on pitch, notes for unpitched percussion instruments distinguish between different percussion instruments (and/or different manners to sound them) instead of pitch. Note value expresses the relative Duration (music), duration of the note in time. Dynamics (music), Dynamics for a note indicate how Loudness, loud to play them. Articulation (music), Articulations may further indicate how performers should shape the Envelope (music), attack and decay of the note and express fluctuations in a note's timbre and Pit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aliquot Stringing
Aliquot stringing is the use of extra, un-struck strings in a piano for the purpose of enriching the tone. Aliquot systems use an additional (hence fourth) string in each note of the top three piano octaves. This string is positioned slightly above the other three strings so that it is not struck by the hammer. Whenever the hammer strikes the three conventional strings, the aliquot string vibrates sympathetically. Aliquot stringing broadens the vibrational energy throughout the instrument, and creates an unusually complex and colorful tone. Etymology The word ''aliquot'' ultimately comes from a Latin word meaning 'some, several'. In mathematics, ''aliquot'' means 'an exact part or divisor', reflecting the fact that the length of an aliquot string forms an exact division of the length of longer strings with which it vibrates sympathetically. History Julius Blüthner invented the aliquot stringing system in 1873. The Blüthner aliquot system uses an additional (hence fourth) s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Action (music)
In the description of musical instruments, the term action has two completely different meanings. *In keyboard instruments, the action is the mechanism that translates the motion of the keys into the creation of sound (by plucking or striking the strings). *In stringed instruments that are plucked, strummed, or bowed by hand, the action is the physical distance between the fingerboard and the string. Keyboard instruments In a harpsichord, the main part of the action is a jack—a vertical strip of wood seated on the far end of the key. At the top of the jack is mounted a hinged tongue bearing a plectrum. When the key is pressed and the jack rises, the plectrum plucks the string. When the key is released and the jack falls back down, the tongue permits the plectrum to retract slightly, so that it can return to its rest position without getting stuck or plucking the string again on the way down. The jack also bears a damper, whose purpose is to stop the vibration of the string ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Popular Music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia'' As a kind of popular art, it stands in contrast to art music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through sound recording, recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for a wide variety of genres of music that appeal to the tastes of a large segment of the populati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
