The piano has occupied a special place in music and, since the advent of amplification, musicians have sought ways in which its expressive, versatile sound could be made louder in order to carry above the sound of other amplified instruments and also how it could be packaged into an instrument more easily transportable than the traditional acoustic piano. ...
The first bluesman to record with an electric guitar, T-Bone Walker (1910–75) shaped the course of post-war blues, influencing everyone from B.B. King and Chuck Berry to Jimi Hendrix and beyond. B.B. King acknowledges that the first time he heard Walker, he knew he had to get an electric guitar, and Berry and Hendrix took ...
Although the first generations of electric bluesmen played louder and more flamboyantly than their acoustic forefathers, their music was still traditional in its delivery and structure. The British blues players who emulated them during the 1960s were also fairly traditional in their approach to the genre. Jimi Hendrix opened things up a bit more when he first appeared on the ...
When the player’s fingers press down its keys, the lever mechanism of the fortepiano (meaning ‘loud-soft’) causes the string to be struck once by a covered hammer, rather than plucked as in a harpsichord. The mechanism allowed it to play variously loudly or softly, and in an age producing music of increasing emotional diversity the dynamic range of ...
Although the terms ‘fortepiano’ and ‘pianoforte’ were used indiscriminately by musicians of the time, for the sake of clarity the former term is now specifically used to indicate keyboard instruments of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the latter to mean the modern instrument. The piano displaced the harpsichord musically and socially, taking over the latter’s ...
During the first years of the nineteenth century piano technology progressed at an astonishing rate. The range of notes was extended by two and a half octaves, the sustaining pedal and soundboard were developed, and in England the idea of using metal bracing to bear the tension of the strings was explored, enabling thicker strings and a fuller ...
In 1905, and probably for several decades before that, there were more pianos in the United States than there were bathtubs. In Europe, throughout the nineteenth century, piano sales increased at a greater rate than the population. English, French and German makers dispatched veritable armies of pianos to every corner of the Earth. It was the ...
The name ‘player piano’ is a misnomer, indeed the precise opposite of the truth. In fact, this is a playerless piano – a piano that plays itself. Origins of the Player Piano Though almost exclusively associated with the early-twentieth century, the idea of a self-playing piano had been around for centuries. Henry VIII’s self-playing virginals and Clementi’s studded-cylinder ...
The development of electric and electronic musical instruments – as well as associated music-production systems – is one of the defining strands in the history of music over the last century. In fact, the advent of electric instruments predates even the twentieth century. Some of the instruments discussed here – such as the electric guitar – are commonly recognizable. Others ...
The bizarre Telharmonium is widely regarded as the earliest example of a purely electronic instrument. Patented in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahill (1867–1934), a lawyer and inventor from Washington D.C., the Telharmonium pioneered several important technologies. The sound was generated by a series of electromechanical tone wheels (rather like the Hammond organ), each of which produced a pure sine tone ...
The term electric, or electromechanical, organ is used to describe instruments that produce sounds using a dynamo-like system of moving parts – as opposed to electronic organs that employ solid-state electronics. Laurens Hammond In the same way that ‘Hoover’ is used instead of ‘vacuum cleaner’, the very name ‘Hammond’ has become synonymous with electric organs. The Hammond organ was ...
The clavinet is essentially an electric version of the clavichord. Designed in the 1960s by Ernst Zacharias of the German company, Hohner, the clavinet evolved from the Cembalet, an instrument Zacharias had developed some years earlier as an electronic counterpart to the harpsichord. Construction Hohner produced several models of clavinet over the years, including the legendary D6. ...
The Mellotron and its predecessor the Chamberlain were in effect the earliest examples of a sample playback instrument. Chamberlain In 1949, Californian inventor Harry Chamberlain, patented the Chamberlain MusicMaster. It was the first commercially available instrument to use pre-recorded lengths of tape mounted within a keyboard in such a way that, whenever a key was depressed, a ...
No instrument has had a more dramatic impact on contemporary music than the synthesizer. Its development opened up a whole new world of seemingly endless sonic possibilities and ushered in completely new forms of music. History The birth of the synthesizer dates back to the mid-1940s when Canadian physicist, composer and instrument builder, Hugh le Caine (1914–77) built the ...
Like the synthesizer, the sampler has had a huge influence on the course of electronic music. A sampler is an instrument that can record, store and replay brief sections of audio – ‘samples’. In many ways, the Mellotron might be regarded as the earliest example of a sampling instrument. However, the sampler really came into its own ...
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...
CURATED
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.