(Vocal/instrumental group, 1973–78, 1992–93, 2001–present) An art punk group formed in New York in 1973, Television originally included Richard Hell (bass), who later formed The Heartbreakers and The Voidoids, along with guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, and Billy Ficca (drums). Hell soon left due to friction with Verlaine. Fred Smith, briefly a member ...
it was now possible for an individual to create fairly sophisticated musical textures without having to call on other performers. This certainly had an effect on commercial music such as television and film music, where there was a growing pressure to cut costs, and it consequently became more difficult for session musicians to gain work in this area. Samplers ...
music in live situations, meant that the number of light orchestras declined steadily from the 1960s. Today, it would be virtually unthinkable to hire an orchestra for a television show, whereas in the 1970s this was commonplace. Choirs and Choruses Originating in the plainsong singing of the early Christian Church, church, chapel and cathedral choirs tend ...
Objects John Cage (1912–92) challenged the listener to focus on the placement of sounds in his music for prepared piano and music using electronic equipment. Rocks (1986) requires radios, television sets, cassette machines and machines emitting fixed sounds like vacuum cleaners, buzzers and alarms. In Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) cactus spikes are played with toothpicks. ...
illustrious career and is still called upon today for use in some orchestral repertoire. The classic ondes sound can clearly be heard in the original theme tune to the science-fiction television series Star Trek, and its character has lent itself to the soundtrack of countless other science-fiction and horror films. The instrument also found favour among numerous composers, including ...
through a complex set of rotary, motor-driven generators, and is capable of a great variety of tone colours. In the 1960s, circuits and components designed to operate television, radio receivers and stereos were adapted to generate music. The great breakthrough, however, came in the 1970s, when digital microcircuitry was used to create a computer ...
of the human body. Movements near antennae mounted on the instrument cause changes in the audio signal. A similar phenomenon can be observed when someone moving near a radio or television aerial alters the reception. Playing Technique The theremin is a wooden cabinet, containing a loudspeaker facing the audience, from which protrude two antennae – a horizontal loop to ...
degree a popular American art form. Yet during the last half-century it has also become a numbers- and profit-driven commercial art form, as well – much like prime time television, for that matter. This owes much to the fact that music’s rise since the 1920s has been made possible by the for-profit radio and recording industries and, more ...
opposite direction, artists like Madonna have worked with innovative producers like Mirwais and William Orbit, assimilating their production style into crossover pop songs, and since the mid-1990s television commercials have often featured electronic music backing-tracks from underground artists like Aphex Twin. It’s no wonder, then, that electronic music is as broad a term as rock. Still ...
of the video in the 1980s afforded parodists like ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic even more scope to lampoon the pop icons of the day, while Rolf Harris, a sometime television presenter, exploited an aura of affable eccentricity and survived into the twenty-first century, now playing regularly at rock festivals. Sprouting from a bawdier fusion of humour and music ...
disembarks with his wife, Pat, and greets Premier Chou En-lai. Nixon is excited. He compares his landing in Beijing, seen live by millions of Americans on prime-time television, with the 1969 landing of the astronauts on the moon. Henry Kissinger tells him he is to see Mao Tse-tung. One hour later Nixon meets Chairman Mao in his ...
career on the West Coast as a dj after military service, catching the attention of Cliffie Stone, who made him a regular on the Hometown Jamboree radio and television shows. He began recording for Capitol in 1948 and initially made his name with a series of fast country boogies, enhanced by the musicianship of guitarist Merle Travis and ...
his own ascent to blues and rock stardom in the early 1980s, and invited King to open many important shows. In 1983 they appeared together on Hamilton, Ontario television station CHCH. The ensuing jam and conversation eventually became the CD Albert King With Stevie Ray Vaughan (1999). In Paradise Although King never regained the level of commercial success he’d ...
polls in guitar magazines as Best Thrash Guitarist or Most Underrated Guitarist. It was also during this time that Skolnick saw one of jazz legend Miles Davis’s guitar-driven bands on television, sparking an intense passion for jazz music. He began to study the jazz language intently, eventually moving to New York City to attend New School University, where ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1928–84) The late ‘Godfather of British blues’ emerged from London’s traditional jazz scene to found Blues Incorporated in 1962. Among those passing through the ranks of this loose if inspirational amalgam were subsequent members of The Rolling Stones, Cream and Led Zeppelin. In the late 1960s, Korner too made the charts as singer with CCS ...
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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
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.