|
The Turn Of A Friendly Card
''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' is the fifth studio album by the British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project, released in 1980 by Arista Records. The title piece, which appears on side 2 of the LP, is a 16-minute suite broken up into five tracks. ''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' spawned the hits " Games People Play" and "Time", the latter of which was Eric Woolfson's first lead vocal appearance. An edited version of the title piece combining the opening and ending parts of the suite was also released as a single along with an official video. As other band's albums, ''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' is a Concept album with its theme focused on the gambling industry and the fate of gamblers, with more than one reference to Las Vegas (e.g. "there's a sign in the desert that lies to west" from the title piece). Musically it's a more melodic and accessible album than its predecessors. Up to this album, all Alan Parsons Project albums had been packaged in gatefold slee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project was a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They were accompanied by varying session musicians and some relatively consistent session players such as guitarist Ian Bairnson, arranger Andrew Powell, bassist and vocalist David Paton, drummer Stuart Elliott, and vocalists Lenny Zakatek and Chris Rainbow. Parsons and Woolfson shared writing credits on almost all of the Project's songs, with Parsons producing or co-producing all of the band's recordings. The Alan Parsons Project released eleven studio albums in its 15-year career, the most successful being '' I Robot'' (1977) and '' Eye in the Sky'' (1982). Many of their albums are conceptual in nature and focus on science fiction, supernatural, literary and sociological themes. Among the group's most popular songs are "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You", " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart Elliott (drummer)
Stuart Elliott (born Stuart Alexander Elliott, 22 May 1953) is an English drummer, composer and producer. He was the original drummer for Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and during his time with this band he became a session drummer playing for top artists such as Kate Bush, Al Stewart, The Alan Parsons Project, Roger Daltrey, Paul McCartney, Claudio Baglioni, Lucio Battisti, among others. Biography Elliott was born in London, England. He started to be interested in playing drums at the age of three by watching his father who was a jazz drummer. "Until I was fifteen, I was educated at St. Michael's School, Belgravia. Since then I have done a bit of session work, including a tour with Adam Faith and drifted through a number of rock bands until someone who heard me do a gig with a band called Monksilver mentioned me to Steve Harley. We soon discovered we could communicate on the same level, and having joined the band, I quickly realised that I had found my niche in rock music." W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clavinet
The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tensioned string, and was designed to resemble the Renaissance-era clavichord. Although originally intended for home use, the Clavinet became popular on stage, and could be used to create electric guitar sounds on a keyboard. It is strongly associated with Stevie Wonder, who used the instrument extensively, particularly on his 1972 hit "Superstition", and was regularly featured in rock, funk and reggae music throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Modern digital keyboards can emulate the Clavinet sound, but there is also a grass-roots industry of repairers who continue to maintain the instrument. Description The Clavinet is an electromechanical instrument that is usually used in conjunction with a keyboard amplifier. Most models have 60 keys ranging ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whistling
Whistling without the use of an artificial whistle is achieved by creating a small opening with one's lips, usually after applying moisture (licking one's lips or placing water upon them) and then blowing or sucking air through the space. The air is moderated by the lips, curled tongue, teeth or fingers (placed over the mouth or in various areas between pursed lips) to create turbulence, and the curled tongue acts as a resonant chamber to enhance the resulting sound by acting as a type of Helmholtz resonator. By moving the various parts of the lips, fingers, tongue and epiglottis, one can then manipulate the types of whistles produced. Techniques Pucker whistling is the most common form in much Western music. Typically, the tongue tip is lowered, often placed behind the lower teeth, and pitch altered by varying the position of the tongue. Although varying the degree of pucker will change the pitch of a pucker whistle, expert pucker whistlers will generally only make small varia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pedal Steel Guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can play unlimited glissando, glissandi (sliding notes) and deep vibrato, vibrati—characteristics it shares with the human voice. Pedal steel is most commonly associated with American country music and Music of Hawaii, Hawaiian music. Pedals were added to a lap steel guitar in 1940, allowing the performer to play a major scale without moving the Steel bar, bar and also to push the pedals while striking a chord, making passing notes slur or bend up into harmony with existing notes. The latter creates a unique sound that has been popular in country and western music— a sound not previously possible on steel guitars before pedals were added. From its first use in Hawaii in the 19th century, the steel guitar sound became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Guitar
The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor of the modern acoustic and electric guitars, both of which use metal strings. Classical guitars derive from the Spanish vihuela and gittern of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Those instruments evolved into the seventeenth and eighteenth-century baroque guitar—and by the mid-nineteenth century, early forms of the modern classical guitar. For a right-handed player, the traditional classical guitar has twelve frets clear of the body and is properly held up by the left leg, so that the hand that plucks or strums the strings does so near the back of the sound hole (this is called the classical position). However, the right-hand may move closer to the fretboard to achieve different tonal qualities. The player typically holds the left leg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acoustic Guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, resonating through the air in the body, and producing sound from the sound hole. The original, general term for this stringed instrument is ''guitar'', and the retronym 'acoustic guitar' distinguishes it from an electric guitar, which relies on electronic amplification. Typically, a guitar's body is a sound box, of which the top side serves as a sound board that enhances the vibration sounds of the strings. In standard tuning the guitar's six strings are tuned (low to high) E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4. Guitar strings may be plucked individually with a pick (plectrum) or fingertip, or strummed to play chords. Plucking a string causes it to vibrate at a fundamental pitch determined by the string's length, mass, and tension. (Overtones are also pres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electric Guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic guitar exist). It uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals, which ultimately are reproduced as sound by loudspeakers. The sound is sometimes shaped or electronically altered to achieve different timbres or tonal qualities on the amplifier settings or the knobs on the guitar from that of an acoustic guitar. Often, this is done through the use of effects such as reverb, distortion and "overdrive"; the latter is considered to be a key element of electric blues guitar music and jazz and rock guitar playing. Invented in 1932, the electric guitar was adopted by jazz guitar players, who wanted to play single-note guitar solos in large big band ensembles. Early proponents of the electric guitar on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Bairnson
Ian Bairnson (born 3 August 1953 as ''John Bairnson'') is a Scottish musician, best known for being one of the core members of The Alan Parsons Project. He is a multi-instrumentalist, who has played saxophone and keyboards, although he is best known as a guitarist. He is also known for preferring the sound of a sixpence to a plectrum. Bairnson was born in Lerwick, Shetland Isles, Scotland. He grew up in Levenwick, in Shetland, before his family moved to Edinburgh, Midlothian, when he was nine years old, following the death of his father. He was a session guitarist before joining up in 1973 with former Bay City Rollers musicians David Paton and Billy Lyall in the band Pilot and contributed the harmony guitar parts to their hit single, "Magic." During this time with Pilot, he first collaborated with Alan Parsons, the record producer on their debut self-titled album. It was this relationship that helped incorporate most of the band's members (bassist/lead singer Paton and drum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass Guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music. The four-string bass is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played primarily with the fingers or thumb, or with a pick. To be heard at normal performance volumes, electric basses require external amplification. Terminology According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', an "Electric bass guitar sa Guitar, usually with four heavy strings tuned E1'–A1'–D2–G2." It also defines ''bass'' as "Bass (iv). A contraction of Double bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
