|
Musical Keyboard
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine ( acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard). Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard or simply piano keys. Description The twelve notes of the Western musical scale are laid out with the lowest note on the left. The longer keys (for the seven "natural" notes of the C major scale: C, D, E, F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clavecin Flamand
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one or more strings. 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 levers 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. The harpsichord was widely used in Renaissance and Baroque music, both as an acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pump Organ
The pump organ or reed organ is a type of organ that uses free reed aerophone, free reeds to generate sound, with air passing over vibrating thin metal strips mounted in a frame. Types include the pressure-based harmonium, the suction reed organ (which employs a vacuum system), and the Indian harmonium. Historical examples include the ''Kunstharmonium'' and the American reed organ, while earlier forms include the physharmonica and the Seraphine (instrument), seraphine. More portable than pipe organs, free-reed organs became widespread in smaller churches and private homes during the 19th century, although their volume and tonal range were limited. They generally featured one, or occasionally two, Manual (music), manuals, while pedal keyboard, pedal-boards were rare. Higher-end pump organs offered a broader range of tones, and models intended for churches or affluent households were often housed in finely crafted Cabinet (furniture), cabinets. Between the 1850s and the 1920s, se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
C♯ (musical Note)
C (C-sharp) is a musical note lying a chromatic semitone above C and a diatonic semitone below D; it is the second semitone of the solfège. C-sharp is thus enharmonic to D. It is the second semitone in the French solfège and is known there as ''do dièse''. In some European notations, it is known as Cis. In equal temperament it is also enharmonic with B (B-double sharp/Hisis). When calculated in equal temperament with a reference of A above middle C as 440 Hz, the frequency of C4 (the C above middle C) is about 277.183 Hz. See pitch (music) for a discussion of historical variations in frequency. Designation by octave Scales Common scales beginning on C * C major: C D E F G A B C * C natural minor: C D E F G A B C * C harmonic minor: C D E F G A B C * C melodic minor ascending: C D E F G A B C * C melodic minor descending: C B A G F E D C Diatonic scales * C Ionian: C D E F G A B C * C Dorian: C D E F G A B C * C Phrygian: C D E F G A B C * C Lydian: C D E F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle C
C or Do is the first note of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale (the relative minor of C major), and the fourth note (G, A, B, C) of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63 Hz. The actual frequency has depended on historical pitch standards, and for transposing instruments a distinction is made between written and sounding or concert pitch. It has enharmonic equivalents of B and D. In English the term ''Do'' is used interchangeably with C only in the context of fixed Do solfège; in the movable Do system Do refers to the tonic of the prevailing key. Frequency Historically, concert pitch has varied. For an instrument in equal temperament tuned to the A440 pitch standard widely adopted in 1939, middle C has a frequency around 261.63 Hz (for other notes see piano key frequencies). Scientific pitch was originally proposed in 1713 by French physicist Joseph Sauveur and based on the numerically convenient frequency of 256 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manual (music)
The word "manual" is used instead of the word "keyboard" when referring to any hand-operated keyboard on a keyboard instrument that has a Pedal keyboard, pedalboard (a keyboard on which notes are played with the feet), such as an organ; or when referring to one of the keyboards on an instrument that has more than one hand-operated keyboard, such as a two- or three-manual harpsichord. (On instruments that have neither a pedalboard nor more than one hand-operated keyboard, the word "manual" is ''not'' a synonym for "keyboard".) Music written to be played only on the manuals (and not using the pedals) can be designated by the word manualiter (first attested in 1511, but particularly common in the 17th and 18th centuries). Overview Organs and synthesizers can, and usually do, have more than one manual; most home instruments have two manuals, while most larger organs have two or three. Elaborate pipe organs and theater organs can have four or more manuals. The manuals are set into th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Registration (organ)
Registration is the technique of choosing and combining the stops of a pipe organ in order to produce a particular sound. ''Registration'' can also refer to a particular combination of stops, which may be recalled through combination action. The registration chosen for a particular piece will be determined by a number of factors, including the composer's indications (if any are given), the time and place in which the piece was composed, the organ the piece is played upon, and the acoustic environment within which the organ resides. Pitch and timbre The pitch produced by a pipe is a function of its length. An organ stop may be tuned to sound (or "speak at") the pitch normally associated with the key that is pressed (the "unison pitch"), or it may speak at a fixed interval above or below this pitch (an "octave pitch"). Some stops are tuned to notes "in-between" the octaves and are called "mutations" ( see below). The pitch of a rank of pipes is denoted by a number on the stop kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korg Poly-800
The Korg Poly-800 is an 8-voice analog synthesizer released by Korg in 1983. Its initial list price of $795 made it the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer that sold for less than $1,000. It was designed for portability, featuring battery power and a lightweight design that allowed the user to play with it strapped around their neck. It utilized digitally controlled oscillators (DCOs), and was a paraphonic synth with a single filter shared between its eight voices. Sounds and features Each DCO offers sawtooth and square waveforms, which are mixed together with a white noise generator before being sent to a voltage-controlled filter (VCF). The Poly-800 features 2 polyphony modes: Whole mode offers 8-voice polyphony with one DCO per voice, while Double mode places the DCOs in pairs for a richer sound, albeit at the expense of reducing polyphony to four voices. The VCF is shared across all voices, which means the Poly-800 is technically a paraphonic synth, instead ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clavinet
The Clavinet is an electric clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds with rubber pads, each matching one of the keys and responding to a keystroke by striking a given point on a tensioned string, and was designed to resemble the Renaissance music, 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 the musician Stevie Wonder, who used the instrument extensively, particularly on his 1972 hit "Superstition (song), Superstition", and was regularly featured in rock music, 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 elec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentatonic Scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to heptatonic scales, which have seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations and are still used in various musical styles to this day. As Leonard Bernstein put it: "The universality of this scale is so well known that I'm sure you could give me examples of it, from all corners of the earth, as from Scotland, or from China, or from Africa, and from American Indian cultures, from East Indian cultures, from Central and South America, Australia, Finland ...now, that is a true musico-linguistic universal." There are two types of pentatonic scales: Those with semitones (hemitonic) and those without (anhemitonic). Types Hemitonic and anhemitonic Musicology commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either ''hemitonic'' or ''anhemitonic''. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flat (music)
In music, flat means lower in pitch. It may either be used in a general sense to mean any lowering of pitch, or to specifically refer to lowering pitch by a semitone. A flat is the opposite of a sharp () which indicates a raised pitch in the same way. The flat symbol () appears in key signatures to indicate which notes are flat throughout a section of music, and also in front of individual notes as an accidental, indicating that the note is flat until the next bar line. Pitch change The symbol is a stylised lowercase ''b'', derived from Italian ''be molle'' for "soft B" and German ''blatt'' for "planar, dull". It indicates that the note to which it is applied is played one semitone lower. In the standard modern tuning system, 12 tone equal temperament, this corresponds to 100 cents. In older tuning systems (from the 16th and 17th century), and in modern microtonal tunings, the difference in pitch indicated by a sharp or flat is normally smaller than the stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharp (music)
In music, sharp – eqv. (from French) or (from Greek ) – means higher in pitch. The sharp symbol, ♯, indicates that the note to which the symbol is applied is played one semitone higher. The opposite of sharp is flat, indicating a lowering of pitch. The symbol derives from a square form of the letter ''b''. Examples The sharp symbol is used in key signatures or as an accidental applied to a single note. Below is a staff with a key signature containing three sharps ( A major or F♯ minor) and a sharp symbol placed on the note, indicating that it is an A♯ instead of an A♮. : In twelve-tone equal temperament tuning (the predominant system of tuning in Western music), raising a note's pitch by a semitone results in a note that is enharmonically equivalent to another named note. For example, E♯ and F would be equivalent. This is not the case in most non-standard tuning systems. Variants A double sharp is indicated by the symbol and raises a note ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
