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User blog:AriClark/Spread the word!

2009-12-19T23:53:13Z

Created page with 'Instrument Wiki needs to be known! You can help expand it by letting others know about it, since the larger the number of members and editors, the more infromation can be ammass…'

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Instrument Wiki needs to be known!

You can help expand it by letting others know about it, since the larger the number of members and editors, the more infromation can be ammassed!
[[Category:Blog posts]]

Saxaphone

2009-12-19T23:29:42Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:29, December 19, 2009
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		+	[[File:499_saxaphone_c203ed62dbb2e7b81a4f4b1339172c531be1f963.jpg\|thumb\|144px\|A Saxaphone]]
	The saxophone was invented by a Belgian-born man named Adolphe Sax in 1841. In addition to being an instrument-maker, Sax was a flautist and a clarinetist. He also previously made key advancements in regards to the bass clarinet, enhancing it acoustically and expanding its range. He designed the brass instrument to be a loud, versatile instrument, and he was successful. With the help of composer Hector Berlioz, Sax introduced the saxophone to the musical world.		The saxophone was invented by a Belgian-born man named Adolphe Sax in 1841. In addition to being an instrument-maker, Sax was a flautist and a clarinetist. He also previously made key advancements in regards to the bass clarinet, enhancing it acoustically and expanding its range. He designed the brass instrument to be a loud, versatile instrument, and he was successful. With the help of composer Hector Berlioz, Sax introduced the saxophone to the musical world.

File:499 saxaphone c203ed62dbb2e7b81a4f4b1339172c531be1f963.jpg

2009-12-19T23:28:05Z

uploaded "[[File:499 saxaphone c203ed62dbb2e7b81a4f4b1339172c531be1f963.jpg]]"

New page

Saxaphone

2009-12-19T23:23:55Z

Created page with 'The saxophone was invented by a Belgian-born man named Adolphe Sax in 1841. In addition to being an instrument-maker, Sax was a flautist and a clarinetist. He also previously mad…'

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The saxophone was invented by a Belgian-born man named Adolphe Sax in 1841. In addition to being an instrument-maker, Sax was a flautist and a clarinetist. He also previously made key advancements in regards to the bass clarinet, enhancing it acoustically and expanding its range. He designed the brass instrument to be a loud, versatile instrument, and he was successful. With the help of composer Hector Berlioz, Sax introduced the saxophone to the musical world.

The first saxophone was created similarly to the clarinet, an instrument the saxophone was designed to outplay in volume. The two had a single reed mouthpiece in common. The saxophone also borrowed from another instrument, the ophicleide, another work of Sax. From the ophicleide the saxophone took a cone-shaped body. From the oboe the saxophone took its acoustics. The properties from these three instruments made the saxophone an unusual and immediately well-liked instrument. In fact, a saxophone school opened up in 1847.

After Sax’s patent on the saxophone ran out, musicians took to altering the original design. One manufacturer extended the bell and further increased the lower range of the saxophone. Other musicians added keys and different fingerings to change the way the saxophone could be played, opening it up to new, more complicated pieces.

The first saxophone to be built in the US was constructed in 1885 by a man named Gus Buesher.<br />The saxophone became widely popular as an instrument in the military band. Then its popularity spread and the saxophone became a major part of big band, blues and jazz music.Today the saxophone is a part of many different types of music including the aforementioned big band, blues and jazz, as well as rock, classical and ska. The saxophone adds a certain sound that can’t be replicated by other instruments.

Electric Guitar

2009-12-19T23:18:47Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:18, December 19, 2009
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-	[[File:Telecaster-guitar.jpg\|thumb\|A Fender Telecaster Thinline Guitar]]	+	[[File:Gibson-les-paul-standard-lg.jpg\|thumb\|134px\|Gibson Les Paul Standard]]

	'''Electric Guitar''' is a [[guitar]] that uses Pickups and an amplifier to produce sound. It usually has six strings, just like an acustic guitar, but doesn't have the same depth or a sound hole. By using an amp or computer program, the sound can be changed and manipulated, as well as turned up. When unplugged, however, it produces barely any sound at all.		'''Electric Guitar''' is a [[guitar]] that uses Pickups and an amplifier to produce sound. It usually has six strings, just like an acustic guitar, but doesn't have the same depth or a sound hole. By using an amp or computer program, the sound can be changed and manipulated, as well as turned up. When unplugged, however, it produces barely any sound at all.

File:Gibson-les-paul-standard-lg.jpg

2009-12-19T23:18:29Z

uploaded "[[File:Gibson-les-paul-standard-lg.jpg]]"

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Piano

2009-12-19T23:15:33Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:15, December 19, 2009
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		+	[[File:CabinetG_000.jpg\|thumb\|A Grand Piano]]
	The piano, that common instrument of school music programs, appears to be the ultimate expression of the stringed musical instrument, which date back to the lyre and the harp.		The piano, that common instrument of school music programs, appears to be the ultimate expression of the stringed musical instrument, which date back to the lyre and the harp.

	Pianos (a shortening of the compound term "piano-forte") work by striking wires with felted (or leather headed) hammers, with a redaction mechanism that pulls the hammerhead away from the wire before it can dampen out the sound. Because the force of the hammer strike is generally proportional to the stroke on the key, this allows a piano to play a note softly (piano) or loudly (forte), leading to its name.The immediate predecessors of the pianoforte were the clavichord and the harpsichord, both of which tried to combine the ease of play of a traditional organ keyboard with the expressive range (and general portability) of a large concert harp. Of the two predecessor instruments, the harpsichord was the more common, and used a mechanism that plucked the strings (and later wires) of the instrument when a key was hit. This lead to a distinctive "plinking" or "plucking" sound, more like a strung harp, but lacked the ability to adjust the volume of a given note, and had only limited ability to change the duration of a note.		Pianos (a shortening of the compound term "piano-forte") work by striking wires with felted (or leather headed) hammers, with a redaction mechanism that pulls the hammerhead away from the wire before it can dampen out the sound. Because the force of the hammer strike is generally proportional to the stroke on the key, this allows a piano to play a note softly (piano) or loudly (forte), leading to its name.The immediate predecessors of the pianoforte were the clavichord and the harpsichord, both of which tried to combine the ease of play of a traditional organ keyboard with the expressive range (and general portability) of a large concert harp. Of the two predecessor instruments, the harpsichord was the more common, and used a mechanism that plucked the strings (and later wires) of the instrument when a key was hit. This lead to a distinctive "plinking" or "plucking" sound, more like a strung harp, but lacked the ability to adjust the volume of a given note, and had only limited ability to change the duration of a note.

-	While the harpsichord provided the mechanism for tying keys to striking particular strings that was used to make the first pianos, the clavichord (an earlier instrument, invented in the 15th century, was the first keyboard instrument to strike the strings by key stroke, hitting them from the side with a small (dull) blade called a tangent. Clavichords fell out of favor in the 17th century, and were virtually unheard of from roughly 1750 to 1890, when a number of musical instrument shops began making them again as a smaller complement to the piano.Prior to the clavichord, the first real stringed instrument that used hammers was the dulcimer, with variations such as the cymbalon and the readis spreading through the Balkan regions. All of these instruments relied on the player to strike strings with small hammers, often times holding multiple hammers with different heads in the gaps between their fingers, to get different tonal ranges, including a felted head for dampening a string.The first true pianoforte was built in 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. His patrons, the Medicis, commissioned the first ones; there are three Cristofori pianofortes still in existence, dating back to the 1720s.Cristofori's original pianos had several differences from the modern pianos we've come to expect - for one, they only covered four octaves, rather than the modern piano's seven-and-a-half octaves. Second, because of the materials used at the time, it was considerably softer in sound than the modern instrument. Third, it had no damper pedals for lifting the dampers from the string. The damper pedals were an invention of Gottfried Silbermann, who made near direct copies of the Cristofori piano otherwise, and tried to get Johann Sebastian Bach interested in the instrument for compositions and concert performances.Bach was notably unimpressed with Silbermann's early pianos, claiming that the upper range would be too quiet to make an effective concert hall instrument. While this brooked a fair bit of animosity between the instrument maker and the reknowned composer and concert artist, in the end, Bach was right. It wasn't until 40 years later that Bach actually endorsed the creation of a piano, mostly after Silbermann's apprentices worked on variations of the design.Nearly from its inception, the main driving force in the evolution of the piano was to make it louder and brighter in the high notes. Several innovations have been incorporated into the design to do this. Among them include more precise mechanisms for swinging the hammers, high tensile steel replacing the catgut strings, and changes to the surfaces of the hammers and their materials, plus innovations in resonator and fretboard spaces to give the instruments a greater range, such as the double key escarpment, which allowed a note to be repeated even if the hammer hadn't risen back to its full resting position.The high point of piano evolution happened in the 19th century, with the development of felted hammers (allowing higher string tension), better quality steel for the wire, iron frames on the sounding board, and several other innovations of note; it was in the late 19th century that the upright piano was perfected, allowing the piano to move from the concert hall to the parlors of the middle class, where the ability to play the piano was a sign of culture and refinement, a place that it still holds today, albeit to a much reduced extent.	+	While the harpsichord provided the mechanism for tying keys to striking particular strings that was used to make the first pianos, the clavichord (an earlier instrument, invented in the 15th century, was the first keyboard instrument to strike the strings by key stroke, hitting them from the side with a small (dull) blade called a tangent. Clavichords fell out of favor in the 17th century, and were virtually unheard of from roughly 1750 to 1890, when a number of musical instrument shops began making them again as a smaller complement to the piano.Prior to the clavichord, the first real stringed instrument that used hammers was the dulcimer, with variations such as the cymbalon and the readis spreading through the Balkan regions. All of these instruments relied on the player to strike strings with small hammers, often times holding multiple hammers with different heads in the gaps between their fingers, to get different tonal ranges, including a felted head for dampening a string.The first true pianoforte was built in 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. His patrons, the Medicis, commissioned the first ones; there are three Cristofori pianofortes still in existence, dating back to the 1720s.
		+
		+	Cristofori's original pianos had several differences from the modern pianos we've come to expect - for one, they only covered four octaves, rather than the modern piano's seven-and-a-half octaves. Second, because of the materials used at the time, it was considerably softer in sound than the modern instrument. Third, it had no damper pedals for lifting the dampers from the string. The damper pedals were an invention of Gottfried Silbermann, who made near direct copies of the Cristofori piano otherwise, and tried to get Johann Sebastian Bach interested in the instrument for compositions and concert performances.Bach was notably unimpressed with Silbermann's early pianos, claiming that the upper range would be too quiet to make an effective concert hall instrument. While this brooked a fair bit of animosity between the instrument maker and the reknowned composer and concert artist, in the end, Bach was right. It wasn't until 40 years later that Bach actually endorsed the creation of a piano, mostly after Silbermann's apprentices worked on variations of the design.Nearly from its inception, the main driving force in the evolution of the piano was to make it louder and brighter in the high notes. Several innovations have been incorporated into the design to do this. Among them include more precise mechanisms for swinging the hammers, high tensile steel replacing the catgut strings, and changes to the surfaces of the hammers and their materials, plus innovations in resonator and fretboard spaces to give the instruments a greater range, such as the double key escarpment, which allowed a note to be repeated even if the hammer hadn't risen back to its full resting position.The high point of piano evolution happened in the 19th century, with the development of felted hammers (allowing higher string tension), better quality steel for the wire, iron frames on the sounding board, and several other innovations of note; it was in the late 19th century that the upright piano was perfected, allowing the piano to move from the concert hall to the parlors of the middle class, where the ability to play the piano was a sign of culture and refinement, a place that it still holds today, albeit to a much reduced extent.

File:CabinetG 000.jpg

2009-12-19T23:12:52Z

uploaded "[[File:CabinetG 000.jpg]]"

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Piano

2009-12-19T23:10:06Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:10, December 19, 2009
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-	The Piano has been around for a loooong time, although it used to be called a paino forte (pronounced four-tay). It used to be that everyone could play the piano, but now only thiry percent of the population knows how. The piano could also be called a percussion instrument because each key that is struck with the finger pushes a mechanism that eventually makes a hammer hit a string, producing sound. This is also why it's classified as a string instrument.	+	The piano, that common instrument of school music programs, appears to be the ultimate expression of the stringed musical instrument, which date back to the lyre and the harp.
		+
		+	Pianos (a shortening of the compound term "piano-forte") work by striking wires with felted (or leather headed) hammers, with a redaction mechanism that pulls the hammerhead away from the wire before it can dampen out the sound. Because the force of the hammer strike is generally proportional to the stroke on the key, this allows a piano to play a note softly (piano) or loudly (forte), leading to its name.The immediate predecessors of the pianoforte were the clavichord and the harpsichord, both of which tried to combine the ease of play of a traditional organ keyboard with the expressive range (and general portability) of a large concert harp. Of the two predecessor instruments, the harpsichord was the more common, and used a mechanism that plucked the strings (and later wires) of the instrument when a key was hit. This lead to a distinctive "plinking" or "plucking" sound, more like a strung harp, but lacked the ability to adjust the volume of a given note, and had only limited ability to change the duration of a note.
		+
		+	While the harpsichord provided the mechanism for tying keys to striking particular strings that was used to make the first pianos, the clavichord (an earlier instrument, invented in the 15th century, was the first keyboard instrument to strike the strings by key stroke, hitting them from the side with a small (dull) blade called a tangent. Clavichords fell out of favor in the 17th century, and were virtually unheard of from roughly 1750 to 1890, when a number of musical instrument shops began making them again as a smaller complement to the piano.Prior to the clavichord, the first real stringed instrument that used hammers was the dulcimer, with variations such as the cymbalon and the readis spreading through the Balkan regions. All of these instruments relied on the player to strike strings with small hammers, often times holding multiple hammers with different heads in the gaps between their fingers, to get different tonal ranges, including a felted head for dampening a string.The first true pianoforte was built in 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. His patrons, the Medicis, commissioned the first ones; there are three Cristofori pianofortes still in existence, dating back to the 1720s.Cristofori's original pianos had several differences from the modern pianos we've come to expect - for one, they only covered four octaves, rather than the modern piano's seven-and-a-half octaves. Second, because of the materials used at the time, it was considerably softer in sound than the modern instrument. Third, it had no damper pedals for lifting the dampers from the string. The damper pedals were an invention of Gottfried Silbermann, who made near direct copies of the Cristofori piano otherwise, and tried to get Johann Sebastian Bach interested in the instrument for compositions and concert performances.Bach was notably unimpressed with Silbermann's early pianos, claiming that the upper range would be too quiet to make an effective concert hall instrument. While this brooked a fair bit of animosity between the instrument maker and the reknowned composer and concert artist, in the end, Bach was right. It wasn't until 40 years later that Bach actually endorsed the creation of a piano, mostly after Silbermann's apprentices worked on variations of the design.Nearly from its inception, the main driving force in the evolution of the piano was to make it louder and brighter in the high notes. Several innovations have been incorporated into the design to do this. Among them include more precise mechanisms for swinging the hammers, high tensile steel replacing the catgut strings, and changes to the surfaces of the hammers and their materials, plus innovations in resonator and fretboard spaces to give the instruments a greater range, such as the double key escarpment, which allowed a note to be repeated even if the hammer hadn't risen back to its full resting position.The high point of piano evolution happened in the 19th century, with the development of felted hammers (allowing higher string tension), better quality steel for the wire, iron frames on the sounding board, and several other innovations of note; it was in the late 19th century that the upright piano was perfected, allowing the piano to move from the concert hall to the parlors of the middle class, where the ability to play the piano was a sign of culture and refinement, a place that it still holds today, albeit to a much reduced extent.

User:AriClark

2009-12-19T23:05:02Z

Added or changed avatar

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:05, December 19, 2009
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-	[[File:Placeholder\|thumb\|300px]]	+
	==About Me==		==About Me==

File:13552 1090854529898 1782549756 183230 4963687 n.jpg

2009-12-19T22:57:23Z

uploaded "[[File:13552 1090854529898 1782549756 183230 4963687 n.jpg]]"

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User:AriClark

2009-12-19T22:54:39Z

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-	[[File:Placeholder\|thumb\|300px]]	+	[[File:Placeholder\|thumb\|300px]]
-	==About me==	+	==About Me==

-	''This is your user page. Please edit this page to tell the community about yourself!''	+	I live in Dublin, Ireland, and have recently taken up guitar and piano.

-	==My favorite pages==	+	I have a particular interest in electric guitar, but like to learn and play many different instruments!

-	* Add links to your favorite pages on the wiki here!	+	==My Favorite Pages==
-	* Favorite page #2	+
-	* Favorite page #3	+	* [[Electric Guitar\|http://instruments.wikia.com/wiki/Electric_Guitar]]
		+	* [[Piano\|http://instruments.wikia.com/wiki/Piano]]

Electric Guitar

2009-12-19T22:27:43Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:27, December 19, 2009
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	{{stub}}		{{stub}}
	[[Category:Electric]]		[[Category:Electric]]
		+	[[Category:History]]

User talk:AriClark

2009-12-19T22:27:03Z

welcoming new contributor

New page

==Welcome==
Hi, welcome to The Instruments Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the Electric Guitar page.

Please leave a message on [[User talk:Sannse|my talk page]] if I can help with anything! -- [[User:Sannse|Sannse]] ([[User_talk:Sannse|Talk]]) 22:27, 19 December 2009

User:AriClark

2009-12-19T22:27:02Z

New page

[[File:Placeholder|thumb|300px]]
==About me==

''This is your user page. Please edit this page to tell the community about yourself!''

==My favorite pages==

* Add links to your favorite pages on the wiki here!
* Favorite page #2
* Favorite page #3

Electric Guitar

2009-12-19T22:26:36Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:26, December 19, 2009
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	'''Electric Guitar''' is a [[guitar]] that uses Pickups and an amplifier to produce sound. It usually has six strings, just like an acustic guitar, but doesn't have the same depth or a sound hole. By using an amp or computer program, the sound can be changed and manipulated, as well as turned up. When unplugged, however, it produces barely any sound at all.		'''Electric Guitar''' is a [[guitar]] that uses Pickups and an amplifier to produce sound. It usually has six strings, just like an acustic guitar, but doesn't have the same depth or a sound hole. By using an amp or computer program, the sound can be changed and manipulated, as well as turned up. When unplugged, however, it produces barely any sound at all.
		+
		+	The Electric guitar was first manufactured in the 1930s by Rickenbacker. Original Electric guitars used tungsten pickups. Pickups basically convert the vibration of the strings into electrical current, which is then fed into the amplifier to produce the sound.
		+
		+	The very earliest Electric guitars featured smaller soundholes in the body. These guitars are known as semi-hollow body Electric guitars and still are somewhat popular today, mainly due to the fact that they are flexible guitars.
		+
		+	However, with the use of pickups, it was possible to create guitars without soundholes (like the Acoustic and Classical guitars have) that still had the ability to be heard, if plugged into amplifiers. These guitars are called solid body Electric guitars.
		+
		+	The Electric guitar’s popularity began to increase during the Big Band era of the ‘30s and 40s. Due to the loudness of the brass sections in jazz orchestras, it was necessary to have guitars that could be heard above the sections. Electric guitars, with the ability to be plugged into amplifiers, filled this void.
		+
		+	The Electric guitar that is most prevalent today is the solid body Electric guitar. The solid body guitar was created by musician and inventor Les Paul in 1941. It is a guitar made of solid wood with no soundholes. The original solid body guitar created by Paul was very plain—it was a simple rectangular block of wood connected to a neck with six steel strings. Les Paul’s original solid body guitar shape has, of course, changed from the original rectangular shape to the more rounded shape Les Paul guitars have today.
		+
		+	During the 1950s, Gibson introduced Les Paul’s invention to the world. The Gibson Les Paul, as it was and still is called, quickly became a very popular Electric guitar. It has remained the most popular guitar for 50 years.
		+
		+	Around the same period of time, another inventor named Leo Fender came up with a solid body Electric guitar of his own. In the late 1940s, Fender introduced the Fender Broadcaster Electric guitar. The Broadcaster, which was renamed the Stratocaster, was officially introduced to the public in 1954. The Strat, as it is now known, was a very different guitar in comparison to the Les Paul. It had a different shape, different hardware and was significantly lighter. Fender’s Stratocaster Electric guitar is the second most popular guitar in the world, second to only the Les Paul.
		+
		+	Over the years, other companies, such as Ibanez, Jackson, Paul Reed Smith, ESP and Yamaha have all produced solid body Electric guitars of their own. However, most Electric guitars still feature the familiar shape of a Les Paul or Strat guitar.

	{{stub}}		{{stub}}