(Instrumental group, 1975–present) Drawing from the age-old parade-band tradition of New Orleans, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band revolutionized the form by drawing on the bebop repertoire and incorporating elements of contemporary R&B into the joyful mix. The innovative group revitalized the brass-band tradition in the 1980s, inspiring a new generation of brass bands to incorporate popular themes of ...
Bugle Best known in its military guise, the bugle is one of the simplest of brass instruments in terms of construction, but it is very difficult to play. The single tube of metal has no valves to help create different notes, so players have to do all the work by changing their embouchure – a combination of the ...
Groups of fresh-faced young men singing catchy tunes have been one of the mainstays of commercial pop since The Beatles. In the last two decades, manufactured boy bands such as New Kids On The Block and Take That have ruled the roost. Although their musical legacy bears no comparison to that of The Fab Four’s, the devotion they inspired ...
When The Grateful Dead started attracting a large fan following on the Bay Area concert scene during the late-1960s, courtesy of free-form jams that showcased the band’s fusion of folk, rock, country and blues, it signalled that rock’n’roll was latching onto a tradition of improvization that had long been prevalent in other forms of Western music. This ...
The classical period saw the rise of the ‘Harmonie’, a small wind band of up to a dozen instruments. Usually this consisted of a mixture of brass and reeds, such as horns, clarinets, oboes and bassoons: Beethoven’s octet op. 103 (1792) is written for two of each of these (the 1796 op. 71 sextet leaves out the oboes). ...
Baroque brass music was written for natural horns and trumpets. The classical period saw experiments with introducing keys into trumpets: the concertos for trumpet by Haydn and Hummel were both written with a keyed trumpet in mind. Trumpeters and horn players also experimented with using one hand in the bell to affect pitch. However, in the early Romantic period valves ...
While in the US and several European countries there is a tradition of mixed wind bands, Britain developed bands made up of brass instruments with saxophone and percussion. The repertory of such ensembles tended to be arrangements of dance music, opera overtures and marches. (Twentieth-century British composers have pioneered original music for brass band.) The brass band developed ...
The music of Latin America combines influences from the traditional music of the African slaves transported between 1450 and the end of the nineteenth century, music from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial powers, and latterly, pop and jazz from North America. Samba is an umbrella term describing an energetic style of dancing and drumming performed at the annual ...
The family of brass instruments includes all those that are sounded by the vibrations of a player’s lips. Though not all are actually made of brass, the majority of instruments in the family are made from metal alloys coated with a shiny lacquer. Brass instruments differ less in their construction than the woodwind family. Like their cousins, they make ...
The shofar is a ram’s horn used as a musical instrument in Judaism. Broadly speaking, it was sounded at times of ceremony, such as the celebration of the new moon, at times of great significance, such as a drought or famine, and as a signal for war. Today, its use in secular contexts has largely ...
The post horn is a small, valveless brass instrument once used by guards on mail coaches to announce arrivals and departures. Originally bow shaped, in the seventeenth century post horns were bent in a single loop to play the fundamental pitch bb'. Clearly these were small instruments, perhaps only 7 cm (3 in) across; nevertheless they appear in ...
Virtually any tube, even without any modification as a musical instrument, can be sounded as a horn, producing a series of notes from the harmonic series. Conches Many of the world’s horns are found objects: an animal horn with the tip cut off, or a large spiral-type shell, usually a conch, with the point cut off ...
The cornett of European Renaissance art music is a longer finger-hole horn made of wood. A precursor to the modern brass horns, it should not be confused with the valved – and much later developed – cornet. Construction and Playing Technique The cornett is a long tube, usually around 60 cm (20 in) in length. It is normally curved ...
A conically bored baritone instrument, the serpent is supposed to have been invented by Edmé Guillaume in 1590. Like its close relative, the cornett, it is sounded by buzzing the lips into an ivory-, horn- or metal-cup mouthpiece which, in turn, agitates the air column. Its 213-cm (84-in) length is undulating in appearance, giving it ...
The cornet is very similar to the trumpet in looks and playing technique. It is thought to have been invented by the instrument maker Jean-Louis Antoine in the 1820s. Antoine, who worked for the Parisian firm Halary, was one of a number of makers experimenting with the new valve technology that was revolutionizing brass instruments at the time. His ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
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