Being Practical About Music Practice

Guitar ... Acoustic guitars (and similar instruments) with hollow bodies have been in use for over a thousand years. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (nylon-string guitar), the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar...

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)...

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

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...

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...

3rd Bridge ... Third bridge instruments can be custom-made by experimental luthiers (as with guitars designed and played by Hans Reichel); modified from a non-third bridge instrument (as with conventional guitars modified with a pencil or screwdriver under the strings); or may take advantage of design quirks of factory-built instruments (as with the Fender Jazzmaster, which has strings that continue from the "standard" bridge to the tremolo piece). Perhaps the best-known examples of this technique come from No Wave artists like Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth...

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...

Chitarra Battente ... Locals refer to the instrument, simply, as the "guitar," using the term “French guitar” for what is general called elsewhere “guitar,” meaning the classical guitar. That designation of “French” is almost certainly wrong, since all reliable sources claim a Spanish origin for the modern six-string six-course classical guitar...

Musical Ensemble ... Other common groupings in classical music are the woodwind quintet, usually consisting of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn and the brass quintet, consisting of two trumpets, one french horn, a trombone and a tuba... A pops orchestra is an orchestra that mainly performs light classical music (often in abbreviated, simplified arrangements) and orchestral arrangements and medleys of popular jazz, music theater, or pop music songs...

Resonator Guitar ... Resonator guitars are of two styles: Square necked guitars designed to be played in steel guitar style. Round necked guitars, which may be played in either the conventional classical guitar style or in the lap steel guitar style...

School Band ... School bands tend to be more common in the United States than others due to a vast increase in funding to music education in recent years... Middle school bands Although some children learn an instrument prior to entering a middle school (or junior high), students in music education programs within the United States and Canada generally start daily band classes in the 6th or 7th Grade... These bands are given easy but challenging music to learn, often with many duplicate parts and simple rhythms...

Extended-range Classical Guitar ... Vynograd writes his music on a grand staff in a different key and plays as if the guitar was tuned EBEADGBE... Brahms Guitar The Brahms guitar was developed by guitarist Paul Galbraith and luthier David Rubio to allow the music of Brahms to be played more comfortably on the guitar...

Classical Guitar Repertoire ... Baroque era See also: Baroque and Baroque music Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 to 1750 (see Dates of classical music eras for a discussion of the problems inherent in defining the beginning and end points)... This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and to be followed by the Classical music era... The original meaning of "baroque" is "irregularly shaped pearl", a strikingly fitting characterization of the architecture and design of this period; later, the name came to be applied also to its music...

Percussion Notation ... Key or legend Each line and space of the staff is assigned a different part or "voice" of the drum kit and these are often laid out at the beginning of a piece of music in what is known as a key or legend or occasionally labeled when initially appear in the piece...

Quidam ... The entire show is imagined by a bored young girl named Zoé who is alienated and ignored by her parents. She dreams up the whimsical world of Quidam as a means of escaping the monotony of her life...

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...

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"...

Ride Cymbal ... The ride can fulfill any function or rhythm the hi-hat does, with the exclusion of an open and closed sound. Terminology The term ride means to ride with the music, describing the cymbal's sustain after it is struck...

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

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...

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...