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Lap Steel Guitar
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional acoustic guitar, in which the performer's fingertips press the strings against frets, the pitch of a steel guitar is changed by pressing a polished steel bar against plucked strings (from which the name "steel guitar" derives). Though the instrument does not have frets, it displays markers that resemble them. Lap steels may differ markedly from one another in external appearance, depending on whether they are acoustic or electric, but in either case, do not have pedals, distinguishing them from pedal steel guitar. The steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music. It originated in the Hawaiian Islands about 1885, popularized by an Oahu youth named Joseph Kekuku, who became known for pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
String Instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum—and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. Other musical instruments generate sound by striking the string. With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks a wheel whose rosined edge touches the strings. Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the orchestra in Western classical music (violin, viola, cello and double bass) and a number of other instruments (e.g., viols and gambas used in early music from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slack-key Guitar
Slack-key guitar (from Hawaiian ''kī hōalu'', which means "loosen the uningkey") is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaii after Portuguese cowboys introduced Spanish guitars there in the late 19th century. The Hawaiians did not embrace the tuning of the traditional Spanish guitars they encountered. They re-tuned the guitars to sound a chord (now called an " open tuning") and developed their own style of playing, not using a flat pick, but plucking the strings. Most slack-key tunings can be achieved by starting with a guitar in standard tuning and detuning or "slacking" one or more of the strings until the six strings form a single chord, frequently G major. In the early 20th century, the steel guitar and the ukulele gained wide popularity in the mainland, but the slack-key style remained a folk tradition of family entertainment for Hawaiians until about the 1960s and 1970s during the second Hawaiian renaissance. Devotees of the slack-key guitar sty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Helms
Donald "Don" Hugh Helms (February 28, 1927 – August 11, 2008) was a steel guitarist best known as the steel guitar player of Hank Williams's Drifting Cowboys group. He was a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame (1984). Biography Helms was a featured musician on over 100 Hank Williams recordings and provided the high, piercing signature steel guitar sound on more than 100 Hank Williams songs and on 10 of his 11 number-one country hits. Bill Lloyd, the curator of stringed instruments at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said of Helms: “After the great tunes and Hank’s mournful voice, the next thing you think about in those songs is the steel guitar. It is the quintessential honky-tonk steel sound — tuneful, aggressive, full of attitude.” Lloyd also credits Helms's sound as a major influence in shifting the sound of country music away from the hillbilly string-band sound popular in the 1930s and toward the more modern electric style that became prominent in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerry Byrd
Gerald Lester Byrd (March 9, 1920 – April 11, 2005) was an American musician who played the lap steel guitar in country and Hawaiian music, as well as a singer-songwriter and the head of a music publishing firm. He appeared on numerous radio programs. Career Byrd was born in Lima, Ohio, United States, one of five siblings, his interest in the instrument began after a "tent show" when he was 12 and by 15 he was playing in bars. Although his initial interest was Hawaiian music much of his work was country. In 1944/1945 he joined the Grand Ole Opry. He was important to the early career of Dolly Parton being one of the first to sign her. He also was an educator of the steel guitar giving lessons to Jimmie Vaughan and Jerry Garcia among others. The list of artists that Byrd played or recorded with included Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline and Red Foley and countless others. With Hank Williams he played songs such as "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", " Lovesick Blues" and " A M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Dunn (musician)
Robert Lee Dunn (February 5, 1908 – May 27, 1971) was a pioneer Western swing steel guitarist. Influenced by influential Hawaiian lap steel guitar player Sol Hoʻopiʻi, Dunn played in his own original bluesy style and was one of the first to record an electric guitar, preceding other country & western guitarists following him shortly. He preceded by over three years George Barnes (with Big Bill Broonzy in 1938), Leonard Ware and, slightly later, Eddie Durham. On January 27, 1935, Dunn became one of the first musicians to record an electrically amplified instrument as a member of Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. Dunn also played steel guitar in numerous other Western swing groups including those of Cliff Bruner and one of Moon Mullican's earlier bands. Dunn also had his own group, The Vagabonds, featuring Mullican and Cliff Bruner. Dunn was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1992. References Bibliography *DeCurtis, Anthony. ''Present Tense: Rock & Roll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sol Hoopii
Sol or SOL may refer to: Astronomy * The Sun Currency * SOL Project, a currency project in France * French sol, or sou * Argentine sol * Bolivian sol, the currency of Bolivia from 1827 to 1864 * Peruvian sol, introduced in 1991 * Peruvian sol (1863–1985) * Solana (blockchain platform) (SOL), a cryptocurrency Entertainment, arts and media Music * G (musical note) or sol, a note of the solfege music scale * G major or sol, a musical key * Sol (band), a Canadian indie rock band active in the 1990s * ''Sol'' (album), an album by electronic musician Eskmo * ''Sol'', an album by Ougenweide * ''Shit Out of Luck'', a 1996 album by The Lillingtons Gaming * ''SOL'', or ''The Shadows of Luclin'', an expansion to ''Everquest'' computer game * Sol Badguy, a character in the ''Guilty Gear'' video games * ''Sol Squadron'', an enemy squadron in the video game Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Newspapers * ''Sol'' (newspaper), a weekly newspaper published in Portugal * ''soL'' (newspaper), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bluegrass Music
Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Like mainstream country music, it largely developed out of old-time string music, though in contrast, bluegrass is traditionally played exclusively on acoustic instruments and also has roots in traditional English, Scottish, and Irish ballads and dance tunes as well as in blues and jazz. Bluegrass was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt. Monroe characterized the genre as: " Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's a part of Methodist, Holiness and Baptist traditions. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound." Bluegrass features acoustic stringed instruments and emphasizes the off-beat. Notes are anticipated, in contrast to laid back blues where notes are behin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honky-tonk
A honky-tonk (also called honkatonk, honkey-tonk, or tonk) is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano (tack piano) used to play such music. Bars of this kind are common in the South and Southwest United States. Many eminent country music artists, such as Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Horton, and Merle Haggard, began their careers as amateur musicians in honky-tonks. The origin of the term "honky-tonk" is disputed, originally referring to bawdy variety shows in areas of the old West (Oklahoma, the Indian Territories and mostly Texas) and to the actual theaters showing them. The first music genre to be commonly known as honky-tonk was a style of piano playing related to ragtime but emphasizing rhythm more than melody or harmony; the style evolved in response to an environment in which pianos were often poorly cared ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.''Stomping the Blues''. Albert Murray. Da Capo Press. 2000. page 109, 110. , The movement was an outgrowth of jazz. The music is an amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, old-time, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing; and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound.Wolff, ''Country Music'', "Big Balls in Cowtown: Western Swing From Fort Worth to Fresno", p. 71. Later incarnations have also included ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacred Steel (musical Tradition)
Sacred Steel is a musical style and African-American gospel tradition that features the steel guitar as part of religious services. The style developed in a group of related Pentecostal churches in the 1930s, and is associated in particular with some branches of the Church of the Living God. The Church of the Living God was founded in 1903 by Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate. Following her death in 1930, the church divided into three branches, known as the Keith, Jewell and Lewis dominions. The steel guitar was embraced in the worship of two of these dominions, the Keith Dominion (officially known as The House of God Which Is the Church of the Living God the Pillar and Ground of the Truth Without Controversy), headquartered in Nashville, and the Jewell Dominion (officially known as Church of the Living God, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Which He Purchased With His Own Blood, Inc.), headquartered in Indianapolis. Brothers Troman and Willie Eason introduced lap steel guitar to worship ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz Music
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
