(Vocal/instrumental group, 1963–66) This Irish R&B group entered the UK Top 10 in 1965 with ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Here Comes The Night’. The latter also made the US Top 40, as did ‘Mystic Eyes’. However, a self-written B-side, ‘Gloria’, was to be their most renowned number after it became a US garage band standard. It ...
The uilleann pipes are extremely highly developed; the bunch of drones that lies across the player’s knees includes some closed-ended ones known as regulators, fit with keys that allow them to be switched on and off during play to give a chordal accompaniment. Iberian Bagpipes Most countries of Europe and some beyond have at least one distinctive type of bagpipe. ...
minstrel musicians were popular throughout the southern states of America. During the American Civil War (1860–65), minstrel shows were a popular entertainment among soldiers, who took back home with them their appreciation of the banjo. Playing Styles The banjo’s big break came with the growth of parlour music. This association lifted the instrument from its links with the lower classes ...
a vigorous application. Other bows were in the flat style with the hair and wood running in parallel; the player would grip both the wood and the bowhair, separating them in part with the fingers. A number of new bowed instruments evolved during this period, some assembled out of shaped pieces of wood, some carved from single blocks. ...
with a violin-type fingerboard running up the middle of the space between the arms, against which four of the six gut strings are stopped. The other two run beside them, playable with the bow or left thumb as drones. All go to tuning pegs on the bar between the lyre-like arms. As with the Bulgarian gadulka and liras of ...
the double-loop form was standard. Because of the restricted range of notes available, bugles were rarely heard outside the context of the army, although orchestral composers did use them to add a whiff of the battlefield. A keyed bugle was patented in 1810, but was shortly replaced by the cornet and the flugelhorn. Cornet Pitched in B-flat, ...
The history of the bugle is usually traced to the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), when the semicircular metal hunting horn came into use on the battlefield. It settled down as a single loop, pitched in C or B flat around 1800, while a two-loop version developed later in the nineteenth century following the Crimean War (1853–56). This instrument was ...
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 ...
try to imitate the perfectly blended, single tone-colour of the choir. Therefore, ‘families’ of instruments of similar design but different sizes were developed by instrument makers to enable them to form their own self-contained choirs, which were called consorts. An equal consort was one in which all the instruments were of the same type, and an unequal ...
The dulcimer is a type of box zither whose name derives from dulce melos or ‘sweet sound’. Usually with four sides, none of them running parallel to each other (though as this is an instrument to be found under various names in practically every country on earth, it is difficult to be definite), it has several strings but no ...
as early as 1716 in Antonio Vivaldi’s (1678–1741) Juditha triumpans but it was the Mannheim Orchestra that most boosted the instrument’s popularity, causing Mozart to rue the lack of them in his orchestra. He wrote a number of pieces especially for versions of the instrument, including the Clarinet Concerto (K622) and the Clarinet Quartet (K581). By the nineteenth century ...
of the speed and force with which the hands control the instrument’s ‘breathing’. It comes in four different sizes – treble, tenor, bass and double-bass – covering between them a total range of just over six-and-a-half octaves. English and European Models One crucial difference separates the English concertina from its European cousins, namely that it sounds the same ...
rods. The drum is not tuned, but the skin is tightened to give a high ringing sound when played. When played singly, the drummer tilts the conga towards them to allow sound to resonate from the open end. When played in groups of two or three they are placed in a stand. Conga-playing technique is very similar to the ...
distinctive, softly percussive clicking sound, was often utilized in Nashville sound-style arrangements. Drums As recently as the 1950s, drums were disdained by many country musicians who considered them too loud or too rock’n’roll. With only a few begrudging exceptions, drums were forbidden on the hallowed stage of the Grand Ole Opry. But by the 1960s, as ...
tone colours. Playing Technique Orchestral crash cymbals are played by passing the face of one cymbal against another at a slight angle with a brushing action, and then damping them against the chest. Different dynamics are achieved by allowing more or less of the face of the cymbals to strike, and by applying more upper-body strength to the velocity ...
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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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David Bowie
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