The Nelsonian
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The Nelsonian
The Nelsonian is a 32-piece One-Man Band contraption, that Albert Nelson (1884-1964) designed, built and played. Nelson began building the device in 1915, because the Cello player in his band would often fail to show up. This led him to invent a device, that would allow him to play the Violin and Cello at the same time. His work on the machine concluded in 1957, when he added the 32nd and final instrument. The Nelsonian was a featured exhibit at Ripley's Believe it Or Not Odditorium during the 1933 World Fair in Chicago, Illinois. Albert Nelson Albert Nelson was born November 14, 1884. He grew up in Sacred Heart, Minnesota, the youngest of fourteen children. As a child, Albert was interested in music. He could play violin by the age of seven. By age fourteen he could play fourteen different instruments. As an adult, Albert learned photography from his brother and started his own studio in Wheaton, Minnesota. Albert married Jennie Erickson of Evansville, Minnesota on May 29, ...
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One-man Band
A one-man band is a musician who plays a number of instruments simultaneously using their hands, feet, limbs, and various mechanical or electronic contraptions. One-man bands also often sing while they perform. The simplest type of "one-man band" is a singer accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and playing a harmonica mounted in a metal "harp rack" below the mouth. This approach is often taken by buskers and folk music singer-guitarists. More complicated setups may include wind instruments strapped around the neck, a large bass drum mounted on the musician's back with a beater which is connected to a foot pedal, cymbals strapped between the knees or triggered by a pedal mechanism, tambourines and maracas tied to the limbs, and a stringed instrument strapped over the shoulders (e.g., a banjo, ukulele or guitar). Since the development of Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) in the 1980s, musicians have also incorporated chest-mounted MIDI drum pads, foot-mounted ele ...
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Trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column inside the instrument to vibrate. Nearly all trombones use a telescoping slide mechanism to alter the Pitch (music), pitch instead of the brass instrument valve, valves used by other brass instruments. The valve trombone is an exception, using three valves similar to those on a trumpet, and the superbone has valves and a slide. The word "trombone" derives from Italian ''tromba'' (trumpet) and ''-one'' (a suffix meaning "large"), so the name means "large trumpet". The trombone has a predominantly cylindrical bore like the trumpet, in contrast to the more conical brass instruments like the cornet, the euphonium, and the French horn. The most frequently encountered trombones are the tenor trombone and bass trombone. These are treated as trans ...
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Tom-tom Drum
A tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snares, named from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala language. It was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Most toms range in size between in diameter, though floor toms can go as large as . It is not to be confused with a tam-tam, a gong. Design history The drum called "Thammattama", played by the Sinhala people of Sri Lanka, is used in a number of Buddhist rituals in that country. It is commonly heard in Buddhist temples paired along with the reed instrument called horanava. This may be etymologically derived from the Tamil term "Thappattam" or "Thappu", a frame drum associated with South Indian Tamil culture. However, the tom-tom drums on the Western drum set clearly resemble the Sri Lankan version more than the frame drum. The British colonists complained loudly about the noise generated by the "tom-toms" of the natives throughout South Asia. It is likely that the term tom-toms thus comes from their experiences ...
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Snare Drum
The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used in orchestras, concert bands, marching bands, parades, drumlines, drum corps, and more. It is one of the central pieces in a drum set, a collection of percussion instruments designed to be played by a seated drummer and used in many genres of music. Snare drums are usually played with drum sticks, but other beaters such as the brush or the rute can be used to achieve different tones. The snare drum is a versatile and expressive percussion instrument due to its sensitivity and responsiveness. The sensitivity of the snare drum allows it to respond audibly to the softest strokes, even with a wire brush. It can be used for complex rhythmic patterns and engaging solos at moderate volumes. Its high dynamic range allows the player to produce po ...
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Crash Cymbal
A crash cymbal is a type of cymbal that produces a loud, sharp "crash" and is used mainly for occasional accents, as opposed to a ride cymbal. It can be mounted on a stand and played with a drum stick, or by hand in pairs. One or two crash cymbals are a standard part of a drum kit. Suspended crash cymbals are also used in bands and orchestras, either played with a drumstick or rolled with a pair of mallets to produce a slower, swelling crash. Sometimes a drummer may hit two different crash cymbals in a kit at the same time to produce a very loud accent, usually in rock music. Although crash cymbals range in thickness from paper-thin to very heavy, all crash cymbals have a fairly thin edge. They are typically in diameter, but sizes down to and up to are manufactured. Custom crash cymbals up to in diameter have been used by big bands. Different thicknesses are used for different kinds of music, and the alloy for each manufacturer's models varies. A thick cymbal is likely to ...
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Bass Drum
The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The heads may be made of calfskin or plastic and there is normally a means of adjusting the tension either by threaded taps or by strings. Bass drums are built in a variety of sizes, but size does not dictate the volume produced by the drum. The pitch and the sound can vary much with different sizes, Del Mar, Norman (1981). ''Anatomy of the Orchestra''. . but the size is also chosen based on convenience and aesthetics. Bass drums are percussion instruments and vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. * 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). It is the largest dr ...
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Drum Kit
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player ( drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks, one in each hand, and uses their feet to operate a foot-controlled hi-hat and bass drum pedal. A standard kit may contain: * A snare drum, mounted on a stand * A bass drum, played with a beater moved by a foot-operated pedal * One or more tom-toms, including rack toms and/or floor toms * One or more cymbals, including a ride cymbal and crash cymbal * Hi-hat cymbals, a pair of cymbals that can be manipulated by a foot-operated pedal The drum kit is a part of the standard rhythm section and is used in many types of popular and traditional music styles, ranging from rock and pop to blues and jazz. __TOC__ History Early development Before the development of the drum set, drums and cymbals used in military and orchestral m ...
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Banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso and mento. Histo ...
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Xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use. The term ''xylophone'' may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term ''xylophone'' refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused. A person who plays the xylophone is known as a ''xylophonist'' or simply a ''xylophone player''. The term is also popularly used to refer to ...
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Double Bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, viola, and cello, ''The Orchestra: A User's Manual''
, Andrew Hugill with the Philharmonia Orchestra
as well as the concert band, and is featured in Double bass concerto, concertos, solo, and chamber music in European classical music, Western classical music.Alfred Planyavsky

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Cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, scientific pitch notation, C2, G2, D3 and A3. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages. Played by a ''List of cellists, cellist'' or ''violoncellist'', it enjoys a large solo repertoire Cello sonata, with and List of solo cello pieces, without accompaniment, as well as numerous cello concerto, concerti. As a solo instrument, the cello uses its whole range, from bassline, bass to soprano, and in chamber music such as string quartets and the orchestra's string section, it often plays the bass part, where it may be reinforced an octave lower by the double basses. Figure ...
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Trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B or C trumpet. Trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to at least 1500 BC. They began to be used as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century. Trumpets are used in art music styles, for instance in orchestras, concert bands, and jazz ensembles, as well as in popular music. They are played by blowing air through nearly-closed lips (called the player's embouchure), producing a "buzzing" sound that starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the instrument. Since the late 15th century, trumpets have primarily been constructed of brass tubing, usually bent twice into a rounded rectangular shape. There are many distinc ...
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