Instruments

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The serpent is the bass member of the cornett family and, like the cornett, is made of two carved pieces of wood that are fastened together and then bound in canvas and leather. Sinuously shaped like two Ss, one leading straight into the other, it has a cup mouthpiece on the end of a brass crook, a conical bore and a series of finger holes. At the beginning of the ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The drum is perhaps the oldest instrument known to man. Drummers have always sought increasingly sophisticated ways of refining their art and gaining access to as broad a palette of sounds as possible and, in many instances, have embraced the electronic revolution as enthusiastically as their keyboard-playing counterparts. Early Electronic Drums Early electronic drum systems included the Electro-Harmonix Space Drum and the Pearl Syncussion of 1979, a two-channel synthesizer that could be ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
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A bowed string instrument, the arpeggione was invented in Vienna by J. G. Stauffer in 1823–24. A kind of bass viol, with soundholes like a viol, it is waisted, but shaped more like a large guitar than a viol or double bass. Six-stringed and with metal frets, it was tuned E, A, d, g, b, e’. The arpeggione was played by Vincenz Schuster, who wrote a tutor for the instrument, ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The full drum kit is not the only instrument in the percussion section to have benefited from advances in electronics and music technology. An array of different electronic percussion is available to the modern player. Early electronic drum kits and percussion controllers used closed, proprietary systems to link the playing surfaces to the sound sources. However, most modern instruments have built-in sounds, use the industry standard MIDI protocol to communicate ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
295 Words Read More

A drum machine is an instrument that uses synthesized or sampled sound to emulate drums or other percussion, and allows the user to programme rhythmic patterns that can be chained together into songs. Rhythm Machines The history of the drum machine dates back as far as the 1930s, when Leon Theremin (1896–1993) was commissioned by composer Henry Cowell (1897–1965) to produce the hugely complicated Rhythmicon rhythm machine. The rhythm machines of the ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
315 Words Read More

Until the 1970s, most synthesizers were played by means of a traditional, piano-style keyboard. This tended to limit the player’s ability to expressively control the sound in real time and manufacturers sought to include additional means of control, such as modulation wheels and touch-sensitive ribbon controllers. Wind and brass players, however, realized that their experience of acoustic instruments gave them the tools and techniques – embouchure and breath control – to ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
267 Words Read More

Broadly speaking, guitars can be divided into two categories – acoustic and electric. The term ‘electric guitar’ tends to be reserved for solid-body instruments. Acoustic guitars use the resonating properties of a hollow body and sound holes to produce and project their sound. Electro-Acoustic Guitars The development of amplified music, played in increasingly larger venues, presented a challenge to the acoustic-guitar player. Though it is possible to amplify an acoustic guitar simply ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
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The bagpipe consists of drones, or reedpipes, which are connected to a windbag. The windbag is held under the arm and is squeezed by the elbow to pass air into the pipes. The windbag is inflated by a blowpipe or bellows, and the melody is played by means of a chanter, a pipe with fingerholes. Although the bagpipe was essentially a folk instrument, it was played at court in several periods. ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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An electric guitar usually has a solid wooden body with no acoustic resonance. All the sound is created by the vibration of strings being translated into electrical signals by pickups and then amplified. History The modern electric guitar has its origins in the Hawaiian or steel guitar, particularly popular in the 1920s and 1930s. These instruments were the first examples of guitars that depended on electrical amplification rather than the properties ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
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Originally (and still occasionally) known as the ‘violoncello’, or ‘little violone’, the cello is tuned in fifths like the violin and viola, running bottom to top, C, G, d, a, the same tuning as a viola, but an octave lower. There were early experiments with a smaller five-stringed instrument (with an additional E string to give it an extended upper range) called a violoncello piccolo. J. S. Bach composed the ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The electric bass is similar in both appearance and operation to the electric guitar, but is actually a descendent of the upright acoustic double bass. The double bass had long been an integral part of the jazz rhythm section, but the increasing need to compete with amplified instruments – not to mention the transportation problems caused by its sheer bulk – made players and manufacturers seek amplified alternatives. Electric Bass Fiddle The earliest-known ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
303 Words Read More

The clarinet is a wooden instrument with a cylindrical bore and a single beating reed. Instead of being a kind of flattened drinking straw wedged on to a thin metal tube, as in the case of the oboe and bassoon, it is more like a thin spatula tied on to an open-topped recorder mouthpiece. A single-reed woodwind instrument called the chalumeau had evolved in the seventeenth century, possibly as a ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The Chapman Stick is a large instrument with a wide fretboard and eight, 10 or 12 strings. It is played by tapping (or ‘hammering-on’) a string at the desired fret with the finger and holding it down with the sustain of the note. Since only a single finger of one hand is needed to sound each note, the accomplished player can, using three or four fingers of both hands simultaneously, produce ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
279 Words Read More

The double bass is the only survivor from the viol family to have found a regular place in the orchestra. Like other members of the viol family, it initially carried frets – tiny knotted pieces of gut that measured out the fingerboard. As it was adopted into the violin family, it settled down as a four-stringed instrument, shed its frets and standardized its tuning in fourths from bottom to top: ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
154 Words Read More

The electric steel guitar (also known as ‘Hawaiian guitar’ or simply ‘steel guitar’) is a solid-body, steel-strung instrument that relies on pickups and amplification to produce its sound. It has its origins in the Hawaiian music of the late-nineteenth century and is similar in sound and playing technique to resonator guitars such as the Dobro or National. Playing Technique The steel guitar has two main variants – the lap steel guitar and ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins
303 Words Read More
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