MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS:(CONTINUES)

FLUTE:
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or Reedles

wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornobostel-sachs, flutes are categorized as edge blown aerophone.A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a flute player, a flautist a flutist,or, less commonly, a fluter. The term flutenist, found in English up to the 18th century, is no longer used.

Aside from the voice, flutes are the earliest known musical instrument. A number of flutes dating to about 43,000 to 35,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.The oldest flute ever discovered may be a fragment of the femur of a juvenile cave bear, with two to four holes, found at Divje Babe in Slovenia and dated to about 43,000 years ago. However, this has been disputed.

 In 2008 another flute dated back to at least 35,000 years ago was discovered in Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, Germany. The five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a vulture wing bone. The researchers involved in the discovery officially published their findings in the journal Nature, in August 2009.The discovery was also the oldest confirmed find of any musical instrument in history,until a redating of flutes found in Geißenklösterle cave revealed them to be even older with an age of 42.000 to 43.000 years.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence." -Leopold Stokowski

There are lots of musical instrument in this world. Naming some Guitar, keyboard, drum, flute, violin, congo, piano, etc. Lets see a brief description about them.

GUITAR:

The guitar is a string instrument of the Chordophone family constructed from wood and strung with either nylon or steel strings. The modern guitar was preceded by the lute, vihuela, four- course renaissance guitar and five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument.

There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (nylon-string guitar), the steel string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar.

The tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the vibration of the strings, which is amplified by the body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive finger picking technique.

Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930's, use an amplifier that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but a solid body was eventually found more suitable, as it was less prone to feedback. Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture. Guitars are recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flameco, folk, jazz, jota,mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.

Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides".The modern word guitar, and its antecedents, have been applied to a wide variety of cordophones since ancient times and as such is the cause of confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, and the French guitare were adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة qitara, itself derived from the latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient greek κιθάρα kithara.

Although the word guitar is descended from the Latin word cithara, the modern guitar itself is not generally believed to have descended from the Roman instrument. Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. One commonly cited influence is of the arrival of the four-string Oud, which was introduced to Spain by the invading Moors in the 8th century.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENT : MEANING

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional. But beside there are many more musical instument in this world to support the natural musical instrument voice.

so what actually is musical instrument??A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have used for ritual: such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications.
The date and origin of the first device considered a musical instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some scholars refer to as a musical instrument, a simple flute, dates back as far as 67,000 years. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 37,000 years ago. However, most historians believe that determining a specific time of musical instrument invention is impossible due to the subjectivity of the definition and the relative instability of materials used to make them. Many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials.

Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the middle ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were in Maritime southeast Asia, and Europeans played instruments from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in many areas and was dominated by the Occident.

THE MUSICAL ERA: PRESENT (PART, 3)

The musical taste was developing and was improving with bands like nirvana, guns and roses, spice girls in 90's. then the musical era entered the year 2000.While 'N Sync , Britney Spears , and Sisqo battled Eminem , Nelly , and Limp Bizkit for chart

superiority, some of the year's most significant noise was being made far from studios and concert stages. The controversy over music sharing program ‘ Napster ’ began here. The creator Shawn Fanning was only 18 when he wrote the source codes that shook the music world. His free, Internet song-swapping service was the hype of downloaders everywhere. Napster came under heavy legal fire during this year from the five giants of the recording industry - Warner Brothers, EMI, Sony, BMG, and Universal, who sued to shut down the service, citing alleged copyright infringement. Eminem has often been described as vile, violent, insensitive, misogynistic, and offensive, but Eminem's ability to throw down rhymes that outraged nearly everyone helped The Marshall Mathers LP rack up massive sales throughout 2000. Britney Spears became a prominent figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture during the 2000’s. Her first two albums established her as a pop icon and broke sales records, while title tracks "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!... I Did It Again" became international number-one hits.

Then the musical taste entered the year 2010.During this year we see a complete change in the way music is brought. There is now a heavier outside influence on the songs that we purchase, an example of this being the Facebook influence in which outraged X-factor haters (sick of christmas number 1’s always being the X-factor winners) created a group called “ Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the name of for chirtsmas number 1”. This saw to the single reaching number 1 in Christmas 2009. Another example of this is with many of the most popular songs of 2009 re-entering the top 40 in early 2010 due to the iTunes gift card effect , including Lady Gaga 's "Poker Face", the biggest seller of 2009, which re-entered at No. 32. Tinie Tempah is an English rapper from Plumstead, South London. His debut album, Disc-Overy , debuted at number-one on 10 October 2010 and was preceded by the number-one singles "Pass Out" and "Written in the Stars“. He even brought forward Timothy McKenzie better known by his stage name Labrinth , who helped co-write some of Tempah’s hits and then released a top 3 single of his own. The genre they portray was popular worldwide and even carried forward by American arstists such as Bruno Mars

THE MUSICAL ERA: PRESENT (PART, 2)

The music started to become more and more popular with the reach of 1980's. With the 80’s came one of the biggest revelations in music to date, MTV (1981). Standing for “Music Television”, this channel was created to show music videos, guided by a Video Jockey (an on-air host). MTV proved most popular within society at this time with popular slogans like “MTV is here” spoken throughout the public. The Buggles were a ‘new wave’ band who are most remembered for their 1979 single ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’

which was also MTV’s first video premier, ironically with the lyrics “ pictures came and broke your heart ”. The single was number 1 on the singles chart in 16 different countries. The New Wave genre incorporated aspects like electronica and experimental music. It was also often associated with the Mod subculture. The 80’s also saw to Blondie ’s biggest hit ‘Call Me’. It peaked at number 1 for 6 weeks, and was certified Gold (for one million copies sold). Blondie was another creator of the New Wave genre however also became noted for its eclectic mix of musical styles incorporating elements of disco, pop, rap, and reggae.
Hard rock, heavy metal, and glam metal experienced extreme popularity in 1980s, becoming one of the most dominant music genres of the decade, peaking with the arrival of such bands as Guns n' Roses and Bon Jovi .

The hip hop scene developed massively in the 80’s, exhibiting a much stronger influence on the music industry… Run-D.M.C. were one of the most influential groups of this genre during the 80’s. They were the first group in their genre to have a Gold record and be nominated for a Grammy and they were among the first to show how important the MC/DJ relationship was. They were even named the Greatest Hip Hop Group of All Time by our old 70’s friend MTV.comBy this point in time the 90’s saw to several diverse genres of music on the scene... Grunge music alongside similar subgenres peaked in popularity during 1990/91 with the success of bands such as Nirvana .

This style today is still strongly associated with this decadFemale pop icons such as the “Spice Girls" manage to break America, taking the world by storm and becoming the most commercially successful British Group since The Beatles. Their impact brings about a widespread invasion of teen pop acts around the world such as Britney Spears,Christina Aguilera, 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys.

MUSICAL ERA : THE PRESENT , (PART 1)

"People havn't always been there for me but music always has"- Taylor Swift

Music has and are always been there from past till present and still continues.Life knocks you down, music helps you to get up. Past music were instrumental and mostly sung or played in church. 

Talking about the present music, the rock and roll genre started from 1950s which is still popular today.one of the 1st group to start this type of music is Bill Haley and his comets. Formed in 1952, the band is considered the  revolutionary era

with their energetic behaviour, which is still used by the present day band. No doubt the most popular figure of 1950s was Elvis Presley also know as the  "king of rock and roll". He started his career in 1954 and showed his rock and roll genre.

After the successful start of the rock and roll genre in 50's came the same trend still continued in 60's. In 1960 came the "Motown Record Corporation" first recording music center.It was in 60's when Bob Dylan lead us from the days of audio and brought us the music video. His single "subterranean homesick blues" brought with it a first ever music video.

After 60's, music took a great new step. Came 1970 where the music entered the rock genre.This century brought us many of the most famous rock bands of all time, for example Aerosmith (officially formed in 1971) a worldly famous American hard-rock band, so much so they are often referred to as " America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band ". The band signed a record deal with Columbia records in 1972 after which they released some of their most memorable songs such as Sweet Emotion (1975) which became the band’s first single within the top 40. The hard-rock was a subgenre of rock taken to a whole new level by 70’s band KISS (formed 1973) were famous for their overly-creative outfits and highly distinctive face paints. KISS’s fame arose mostly with their crazed life performances which mostly consisted of, blood spitting, fire breathing and even levitating instruments. This helped KISS to remain a well-known group today, their unique style even appearing in the 2008 comedy ‘Role Models’. The rock genre began to become more associated with the younger generations as they could relate their angst to the aggression shown by these bands in performances etc… It was during this century (1974/76) that Punk Rock , the worldly-known subgenre was formed.

MUSIC ERA : THE BEGINNING

“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”- Aaron Copland 

From the research we can say that music was discovered from both Africa and Europe but Africa just stayed with the tribal unique music, European countries began to move ahead in every field including music. After the the middle age came "The Renaissance period(1450-1600)". Renaissance period was consider to be the most developed and golden period for Europe. Europe excelled in most of the filed during this period.During the Renaissance Period, vocal music was still more important then instrumental. A humanistic interest in language created a close relationship between words and music during this time. Composers began to write music to give deeper meaning and emotion to the words in their songs. They wrote in a style referred to as word painting, where the music and words combine to form a representation of poetic images. Renaissance music is very emotional music, although to us it seems to be much calmer. This is because the emotion is expressed in a balanced way, without extreme contrasts of dynamics, tone color, and rhythm. Renaissance music has a mostly polyphonic texture, which means there are many lines of music being played at the same time. As opposed to medieval times, this music has a more full sound, because the bass register was used, expanding the range of music to about four octaves. Each line of melody has rhythmic independence, giving Renaissance music a more flowing rhythm and not a sharply defined beat. The melodies are also easy to sing because they move along scales with few large leaps.

Music was becoming more popular during this time. Much of this was due to the invention of the printing press, which could circulate copies of music. The number of composers also began to increase. The Renaissance had the ideal of the “universal man” and believed that every educated person was to be trained in music. Musicians still worked in the churches, courts, and towns. The size of church choirs grew. But unlike the Middle Ages where just a few soloists performed in the church, an entire male choir would now sing. Music was still important in the church, although it has shifted more to the courts. The kings, princes, and dukes were all fine composers. One court alone might have had ten to sixty composers consisting of vocalists and instrumentalists. There was a music director for each court that would compose and direct the court’s performers. The town musicians would perform for civic processions, weddings, and religious services. Musicians now had a higher status in society with better pay, and they wanted to be known and sought credit for their work.

Before middle age and The Renaissance, music was there but the practice of music only started from middle age.