There are many different instrumental interfaces through which it is possible to control synthesized or sampled sounds – the most common being the piano-style keyboard. The electronic musician is also able to access a wide range of sounds through electric guitar, string, percussion and wind instruments. These devices are, to a large extent, quite recognizably conventional, ...
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 ...
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. ...
Computer music can be defined as music that is generated by, or composed and produced by means of, a computer. The idea that computers might have a role to play in the production of music actually goes back a lot further than one might think. As early as 1843, Lady Ada Lovelace suggested in a published article that ...
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) ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
Like the guitar with its electric counterparts, other members of the stringed-instrument family have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by electronic technology – namely amplification and access to a broader palette of synthesized (or sampled) sound. Electric Stringed Instruments Stringed instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello and double bass, can all be effectively amplified ...
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 ...
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 ...
The term ‘guitar synthesizer’ refers to a system consisting of a guitar controller interfaced to a synthesizer sound-module. Such instruments afford the guitar player access to not only synthesized (or sampled) emulations of guitar sounds but also to a vast array of electronic tones and instrumental simulations. In this way, the guitarist can bring techniques, such as string bending ...
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 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 ...
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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
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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