All About Musical Instruments and National Music Supply Co

Napster ... Its ease of use led to massive copyright violations of music and film media, as well as other intellectual property... History Although there were already networks that facilitated the distribution of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface... The result was a robust system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download – at its peak there were 25 million users and 80 million songs, and the system never once crashed...

Schenkerian Analysis ... This reflects Schenker's belief that the deep, long–range structure of a piece of music has no particular rhythm... This long–range structure is called the Fundamental Structure (Ursatz) in Schenkerian analysis, while the more surface aspects of the music are called the foreground or surface layer... Although it is a subject of debate among music theorists whether there is a single correct hearing and analysis of a piece of tonal music, even those who hold that there is a unique correct analysis agree that the analysis can only be arrived at and evaluated subjectively by an expert listener...

Kodály Method ... Beginning in 1935, along with his colleague Jenő Ádám, he embarked on a long term project to reform music teaching in the lower and middle schools by actively creating a new curriculum and new teaching methods, as well as writing new musical compositions for children... The school was so successful that over one hundred music primary schools opened within the next decade (Eösze 1962:79)... After about fifteen years approximately 50% of the schools in Hungary were music schools (Russell-Smith 1967:44)...

Bluegrass Music ... Immigrants from England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland arrived in Appalachia in the 18th (and in some cases 17th) century, and brought with them the musical traditions of these countries. These traditions consisted primarily of English and Scottish ballads— which were essentially unaccompanied narratives— and dance music, such as Irish reels, which were accompanied by a fiddle...

Early Music ... However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence." Revival Performance practice According to Margaret Bent, "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness...

MMCP – Manhattanville Music Curriculum Project ... Fostering the continued relevance of music to a student in school and contemporary society is a key purpose for MMCP in the areas of: Artistic Relevance – How can students recognize the aesthetic value of music? Personal Relevance – How can music satisfy the personal needs of students? Social Relevance – How can the changing nature of music in our society stay relevant to students as they grow older? MMCP believes presenting music as changing and evolving rather than “static” like western art music increases the interest in new creation... Rather, learning and acquisition of musical information are the byproduct of the “doing” in performing and creating the music... Attitudinal – Students excited about their own creative musical potential and their aesthetic sensitivity to music...

Four-part Harmony ... A special genre in this music is the "barbershop quartet" usually consisting of 4 men who sing tenor, countertenor, baritone, and bass parts... Four parts for instruments Some music is written, in four-part harmony, for small groups of only 4 instruments, such as a string quartet, a brass quartet, or a woodwind quartet (might include a French horn)... However, due to the range of musical instruments covering more pitches than a typical human voice, a quartet might play some harmonies with very high notes or very low notes, rather than the blended range of choral music...

Suzuki Method ... The essential components of his method spring from the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music (he believed that this positive environment would also help to foster excellent character in every student)... These components include: Saturation in the musical community, including attendance at local concerts of classical music, exposure to and friendship with other music students, and listening to music performed by "artists" (professional classical musicians of high caliber) in the home every day (starting before birth if possible)... Suzuki firmly believed that teachers who test for musical aptitude before taking students, or teachers who look only for "talented" students, are limiting themselves to people who have already started their music education...

Consonance And Dissonance ... These may be summarized as simplicity. "A stable tone combination is a consonance; consonances are points of arrival, rest, and resolution." —Roger Kamien (2008), p.41 Dissonance "An unstable tone combination is a dissonance; its tension demands an onward motion to a stable chord...

Music Of China ... According to Mencius, a powerful ruler once asked him whether it was moral if he preferred popular music to the classics... The Imperial Music Bureau, first established in the Qin Dynasty (221–07 BC), was greatly expanded under the Emperor Han Wu Di (140–87 BC) and charged with supervising court music and military music and determining what folk music would be officially recognized... In subsequent dynasties, the development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by foreign music, especially Central Asia...

Musical Analysis ... The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèse's claim that, “to explain by means of is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work” (quoted in Bernard 1981, 1). Analyses Some analysts, such as Donald Francis Tovey (whose Essays in Musical Analysis are among the most accessible musical analyses) have presented their analyses in prose...

Aspect Of Music ... Universal aspect Often a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music under that definition... In classical music of the common practice period, for instance, melody and harmony are often considered to be given more importance at the expense of rhythm and timbre... John Cage considers duration the primary aspect of music as, being the temporal aspect of music, it is the only aspect common to both "sound" and "silence"...

Sheet Music ... (Note: the term score can also refer to incidental music written for a play, television programme or film; for the last of these, see film score.) Purpose and use Sheet music can be used as a record of, a guide to, or a means to perform, a piece of music... Although it does not take the place of the sound of a performed work, sheet music can be studied to create a performance and to elucidate aspects of the music that may not be obvious from mere listening... Many composers have been capable of producing music in printed form without the capacity themselves to read or write in musical notation, as long as an amanuensis of some sort is available...

Country Music ... The term country music gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to the earlier term hillbilly music... In 2009 Country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute... Early history Immigrants to the Maritime Provinces and Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of the Old World along with them for nearly 300 years...

Blues ... World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners... Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition... Form The blues form is a cyclic musical form in which repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music...

Dynamics (music) ... In music for marching band, passages louder than ƒƒƒ are sometimes colloquially referred to by descriptive terms such as "blastissimo"...