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Les Fradkin
Les Fradkin (born 1951) is an American MIDI guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter, composer, and record producer. He is best known for being a member of the original cast of the hit Broadway show ''Beatlemania''. In addition to playing MIDI guitar, he plays 12 string guitar, the Starr Labs Ztar, guitar synthesizer, SynthAxe, Hammond organ, Mellotron, piano, bass guitar, and Moog synthesizer. Early years Fradkin was born in New York City and raised in Riverdale, Bronx, Riverdale in the Bronx. He travelled extensively in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean as a youngster. He began his musical education at the age of 10 being taught the basics of classical piano from his mother, a former concert pianist. Inspired by seeing the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and hearing "Walk Don't Run '64" by the Ventures on the radio at the age of 13, he began to teach himself guitar. Other music that inspired him ranged from the British Invasion sounds of the day to American rock acts su ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Beatlemania (musical)
''Beatlemania'' was a Broadway theatre, Broadway musical theater, musical revue focused on the music of the Beatles as it related to the events and changing attitudes of the tumultuous 1960s. A "rockumentary," advertised as "''Not the Beatles, but an incredible simulation'',""Four Young Musicians to Simulate Beatles,"
''New York Times'' (April 5, 1977).
it ran from May 1977 to October 1979 for a total of 1,006 performances.


Synopsis

''Beatlemania'' took the form of a roughly chronological history of the Beatles via their music. A total of 29 songs were performed during the show. Other than some unscripted onstage banter, there was very little dialogue during the production, which consisted mostly of exact re-enactments of the Beatles' music. The gro ...
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Guitar Synthesizer
A guitar synthesizer is any one of a number of musical instrument systems that allow a guitarist to access synthesizer capabilities. Overview Today's guitar synths are direct descendants of 1970s devices from manufacturers (often in partnership) such as Hammond Innovex and Ovation, Ludwig, EMS, 360 Systems, Norlin Music and Maestro, Ampeg and Hagström, Arp, Roland Corporation and FujiGen ( GR-500 and GR-300), New England Digital, Electro-Harmonix, Casio, Terratec/Axon, Starr Labs, Ibanez, Holt Electro Acoustic Research, Zeta Systems, and Yamaha. In the early days, there were three main types of guitar-synthesizers: * Multi-effects type * Frequency-to-voltage converter type (using guitar with pickups) * Guitorgan type (using guitar with fretboard switches) Later, the multi-effects type evolved into modeling guitar, and the other two types evolved into current devices. Presently, there are two main groups: * Guitar-synth using guitars: regular guitars equipped with ...
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Ztar
A guitar synthesizer is any one of a number of musical instrument systems that allow a guitarist to access synthesizer capabilities. Overview Today's guitar synths are direct descendants of 1970s devices from manufacturers (often in partnership) such as Hammond Innovex and Ovation, Ludwig, EMS, 360 Systems, Norlin Music and Maestro, Ampeg and Hagström, Arp, Roland Corporation and FujiGen ( GR-500 and GR-300), New England Digital, Electro-Harmonix, Casio, Terratec/Axon, Starr Labs, Ibanez, Holt Electro Acoustic Research, Zeta Systems, and Yamaha. In the early days, there were three main types of guitar-synthesizers: * Multi-effects type * Frequency-to-voltage converter type (using guitar with pickups) * Guitorgan type (using guitar with fretboard switches) Later, the multi-effects type evolved into modeling guitar, and the other two types evolved into current devices. Presently, there are two main groups: * Guitar-synth using guitars: regular guitars equipped with sp ...
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Starr Labs
Starr Labs is a musical instrument manufacturer that was founded in 1986 in San Diego, California by musician and inventor Harvey Starr, former singer and guitarist with 1960s' band The Richard Kent Style of Manchester, England. The company manufactures a diverse product line of MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ... (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) interactive guitars, keyboards, percussion and unique music devices for professional musicians, semi-pro musicians, and music students. Current products include: Ztars keyboards guitar electronics. The company also offers custom versions of their products for professional musicians. The guitar products range from the simple RockController, a six-string, full-fretted neck controller for music-based video games to ...
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12 String Guitar
A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in octaves, with those of the upper two courses tuned in unison. The gap between the strings within each dual-string course is narrow, and the strings of each course are fretted and plucked as a single unit. The neck is wider, to accommodate the extra strings, and is similar to the width of a classical guitar neck. The sound, particularly on acoustic instruments, is fuller and more harmonically resonant than six-string instruments. The 12-string guitar can be played like a 6-string guitar as players still use the same notes, chords and guitar techniques like a standard 6-string guitar, but advanced techniques might be tough as players need to play or pluck two strings simultaneously. Structurally, 12-string guitars, especially those built befo ...
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Record Producer
A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure.Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music'' (Cambridge, MA & London, UK: MIT Press, 2005).Richard James Burgess, ''The History of Music Production'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)pp 12–13Allan Watson, ''Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio'' (New York: Routledge, 2015)pp 25–27 The record producer, or simply the producer, is likened to film director and art director. The executive producer, on the other hand, enables the recording project through entrepreneurship, and an audio engineer operates the technology. Varying by project, the producer may or may not choose all of the artists. If employing only synthesized or sampled instrumentation, the producer may be the sole artist. Conversely, some artists ...
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Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Definition The term is descended from Latin, ''compōnō''; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Thomas Morley's 1597 ''A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'', where he says "Some wil be good descanters ..and yet wil be but bad composers". 'Composer' is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms 'songwriter' or ' singer-songwriter' are more often used, particularl ...
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Songwriter
A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. A songwriter who mainly writes the lyrics for a song is referred to as a lyricist. The pressure from the music industry to produce popular hits means that song writing is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed between a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with the task of creating original melodies. Pop songs may be composed by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own music publishers, while others have external publishers. The old-style apprenticeship approach to learning how to write songs is being supplemented by university degrees, c ...
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Keyboardist
A keyboardist or keyboard player is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, such as synthesizers and digital piano, requiring a more general term for a person who plays them. In the 2010s, professional keyboardists in popular music often play a variety of different keyboard instruments, including piano, tonewheel organ, synthesizer, and clavinet. Some keyboardists may also play related instruments such as piano accordion, melodica, pedal keyboard, or keyboard-layout bass pedals. Notable electronic keyboardists There are many famous electronic keyboardists in metal, rock, pop and jazz music. A complete list can be found at List of keyboardists. The use of electronic keyboards grew in popularity throughout the 1960s, with many bands using the Hammond organ, Mel ...
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Guitarist
A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar by singing or playing the harmonica, or both. Techniques The guitarist may employ any of several methods for sounding the guitar, including finger picking, depending on the type of strings used (either nylon or steel), and including strumming with the fingers, or a guitar pick made of bone, horn, plastic, metal, felt, leather, or paper, and melodic flatpicking and finger-picking. The guitarist may also employ various methods for selecting notes and chords, including fingering, thumbing, the barre (a finger lying across many or all strings at a particular fret), and guitar slides, usually made of glass or metal. These left- and right-hand techniques may be intermixed in performance. Notable guitarists Rock, metal, ja ...
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MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music. The specification originates in the paper ''Universal Synthesizer Interface'' published by Dave Smith and Chet Wood of Sequential Circuits at the 1981 Audio Engineering Society conference in New York City. A single MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of MIDI data, each of which can be routed to a separate device. Each interaction with a key, button, knob or slider is converted into a MIDI event, which specifies musical instructions, such as a note's pitch, timing and loudness. One common MIDI application is to play a MIDI keyboard or other controller and use it to trigger a digital sound module (which contains synthesized musical sounds) to generate sounds, which t ...
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