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"...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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)...
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...
Guitar Tunings ... In some regions of Europe, especially Germany, Serbia and Poland, and in Russia and Ukraine, where classical musicians use the German system, the B natural is indicated with the letter H: in music notation, H is B♮ (B natural) and B is B♭ (B flat)...
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...
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...
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...
Musical Instrument ... The date and origin of the first device considered to be a musical instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some scholars refer to as a musical instrument, a simple flute, dates back as far as 67,000 years...
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...
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...
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...
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)...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...