Alternative Music History and Facts Revealed

Rute (music) ... Commercially-made rutes are usually made of a bundle of thin birch dowels or thin canes attached to a drumstick handle. These often have a movable band to adjust how tightly the dowels are bound toward the tip...

Russian Guitar ... The invention of the Russian guitar is attributed to Andrei Sychra, who also wrote a method for the instrument, as well as over one thousand compositions, seventy-five of which were republished in the 1840s by Stellovsky, and then again in the 1880s by Gutheil. Some of these were published yet again in the Soviet Union in 1926...

Cirque Du Soleil ... Initially named Les Échassiers, they toured Quebec in 1980 as a performing troupe and encountered financial hardship that was relieved by a government grant in 1983 as part of the 450th anniversary celebrations of Jacques Cartier's discovery of Canada. Le Grand Tour du Cirque du Soleil was a success in 1984, and after securing a second year of funding, Laliberté hired Guy Caron from the National Circus School to re-create it as a "proper circus"...

Tenor Guitar ... Almost all the major guitar makers, including Gibson, Martin, Epiphone, Kay, Gretsch, Guild and National, have manufactured tenor (and plectrum) guitars as production instruments at various times. In collaboration with Cliff Edwards, Dobro built the four-stringed round-bodied resonator tenor scale length instrument called the Tenortrope in the early 1930s...

Bass Drum ... The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum (in Italian: gran cassa, gran tamburo)...

History Of The Classical Guitar ... Alonso Mudarra's Tres Libros de Música en Cifra para Vihuela, (Sevilla, 1546) included music for both solo vihuela and solo four-course guitar...

Drum Kit ... More specifically, a modern drum kit (for a right handed player), as used in popular music, taught in many music schools, and for which qualifications are available from Trinity College London consists of: A snare drum, mounted on a specialised stand, placed between the player's knees and played with drum sticks (which may include rutes or brushes)... In some styles of music particular extensions are normal, for example double bass drums in heavy metal music... On the other extreme but more rarely, some performers omit elements from even the basic setup, again particularly for particular styles of music...

Fill (music) ... most fills are simple in structure and short in duration" Each type of popular music such as funk, country, and metal has characteristic fill passages, such as short scalar licks, runs, or riffs... "Although it is a small break in the pattern, the tempo is not changed at all, and in most instances the time-keeping pattern is resumed immediately after the fill. An important point to remember is that the flow of the music should not be sacrificed to the technicality of the fill." Tradition and improvisation In some styles, such as jazz or jazz fusion, musicians have more freedom to improvise fill passages each time a piece or songs is performed...

Flamenco Guitar ... In contrast to the classical guitar, the flamenco is often equipped with a tap plate (a golpeador), commonly made of plastic, similar to a pick guard, whose function is to protect the body of the guitar from the rhythmic finger taps, or golpes. Even so, a well used Flamenco guitar only survives so long before the constant "golpes" wear through the top...

Snare Drum ... It is the centre of the drum kit, the most prominent drum in most marching and stage bands, and the drum that students of both orchestral and kit drumming learn to play first. The snare drum is almost always double-headed, with rattles {called snares) of gut, metal wire or synthetics stretched across one or both heads...

Marching Band ... As musicians became less important in directing the movement of troops on the battlefield, the bands moved into increasingly ceremonial roles - an intermediate stage which provided some of the instrumentation and music for marching bands was the modern brass band, which also evolved out of the military tradition...

Wintuk ... Music The music of Wintuk was composed by Simon Carpentier, who also composed the music of Cirque du Soleil's 2003 production Zumanity...

Archtop Guitar ... Typically, an archtop guitar has: 6 strings An arched top and back, not flat Moveable adjustable bridge F-holes similar to members of the violin family. Humbucker pickups...

Electric Guitar ... It served as a major component in the development of rock and roll and countless other genres of music...

Steel-string Acoustic Guitar ... The most common type can be called a flat-top guitar to distinguish it from the more specialized archtop guitar and other variations. The standard tuning for an acoustic guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E (low to high), although many players, particularly fingerpickers, use alternate tunings (scordatura), such as "open G" (D-G-D-G-B-D), "open D" (D-A-D-F♯-A-D), or "drop D" (D-A-D-G-B-E)...

Vibrato Systems For Guitar ... Since the regular appearance of mechanical vibrato systems in the 1950s, they have been used by many guitarists, ranging from the gentle inflections of Chet Atkins to the exaggerated twang effects of early rocker Duane Eddy to the buoyant effects of surf music aficionados like The Ventures, The Shadows and Dick Dale to art rock innovator Frank Zappa...

Acoustic Bass Guitar ... Traditional music of Mexico features several varieties of acoustic bass guitars, such as the bajo sexto, with six pairs of strings, and the guitarrón, a very large, deep-bodied Mexican 6-string acoustic bass guitar played in Mariachi bands...

Classical Guitar ... (The flamenco guitar is derived from the modern classical, but has differences in material, construction and sound) The name classical guitar does not mean that only classical repertoire is performed on it, although classical music is a part of the instrument's core repertoire (due to the guitar's long history); instead all kinds of music (folk, jazz, flamenco, etc.) are performed on it...

Twelve-string Guitar ... The strings are generally arranged such that the first string of each pair to be struck on a downward strum is the higher octave string; however, this arrangement was reversed by Rickenbacker on their electric 360/12. The tension placed on the instrument by the strings is high, and because of this, 12 string guitars have a reputation for warping after a few years of use...