Music Software 101

Further Reading: Music

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Prehistoric Music ... Prehistoric music thus technically includes all of the world's music that has existed before the advent of any currently-extant historical sources concerning that music, for example, traditional Native American music of preliterate tribes and Australian Aboriginal music... However, it is more common to refer to the "prehistoric" music which still survives as folk, indigenous or traditional music... Origins Research on the evolutionary origins of music mostly started in the second half of the 19th century, and was much discussed within Music Archaeology in the 20th Century...

Ancient Music ... Ancient music refers to the various musical systems that were developed across various geographical regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, China, Greece and Rome... Mesopotamia Anne Draffkorn Kilmer from the University of California at Berkeley published in 1986 her decipherment of cuneiform tablet from Nippur dated to about 2000 BCE, demonstrating that it represents fragmentary instructions for performing music and that the music was composed in harmonies of thirds, and that it was also written using a diatonic scale (Kilmer 1986)... Hurrian music Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are some of the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c.1400 BC and including one substantially complete song...

Film Industry ... Typically of commercial cinemas, its heart is a highly developed star system, which in this case also features substantial overlap with the pop music industry...

Futurism ... Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. "We want no part of it, the past", he wrote, "we the young and strong Futurists!" The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists...

Music Theory ... At and below about 1,000 Hz, the perceived loudness of a tone gets lower as sound frequency decreases, but above approximately 2,000 Hz, the perceived loudness increases as the sound's frequency gets higher. This is due to the ear's natural sensitivity to higher pitched sound, as well as the ear's particular sensitivity to sound around the 2000-4000Hz area, the frequency range most of the human voice occupies...

Musical Composition ... Similarly, music of the Middle East employs compositions that are rigidly based on a specific mode (maqam) often within improvisational contexts, as does Indian classical music in both the Hindustani and the Carnatic systems, gamelans of Java and Bali, and much music in Africa... Useful skills in composition include writing musical notation, music theory, instrumentation, and handling musical ensembles (orchestration)...

Music Of Egypt ... In general, modern Egyptian music blends these indigenous traditions with Turkish, Arabic, and Western elements... Early Arabic music was influenced by Byzantine, Indian and Persian forms, which were themselves heavily influenced by earlier Greek, Semitic, and ancient Egyptian music... The tonal structure of Arabic music is defined by the maqamat, loosely similar to Western modes, while the rhythm of Arabic music is governed by the awzan (wazn, sing.), formed by combinations of accented and unaccented beats and rests...

Wedding Music ... Some couples may consider the traditional wedding marches clichéd and choose a more modern piece of music or an alternate such as Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel...

Musician ... It's also a person who makes music a profession, anyone (professional or not) who's skilled in making music or performing music creatively, or one who composes, conducts, or performs music (especially instrumental music)...

Bebop ... In the 1940s, the younger generation of jazz musicians created a new style that came out of the 1930s' swing music... They partially strived to counter the popularization of swing with non-danceable music that demanded listening... These forerunners of the new music (which would later be termed "bebop," or "bop"-- although Parker himself never used that term, feeling it demeaned the music) began exploring advanced harmonies, complex syncopation, altered chords and chord substitutions...

Performing Arts ... Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft...

Record Producer ... Today, the recording industry has two kinds of producers: executive producer and music producer; they have different roles... While an executive producer oversees a project's finances, a music producer oversees the creation of the music... A music producer can, in some cases, be compared to a film director, with noted practitioner Phil Ek himself describing his role as "the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, like a director would a movie...

Ragtime ... Ragtime fell out of favor as jazz claimed the public's imagination after 1917, but there have been numerous revivals since the music has been re-discovered... The album won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance of the year and was named Billboard's Top Classical Album of 1974... Historical context Ragtime originated in African American music in the late 19th century, descending from the jigs and march music played by black bands...

Music ... The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context... Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms... Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial...

Medieval Music ... Genres Further information: Gregorian chant, Ars nova, Organum, Motet, Madrigal, Canon (music) and Ballata Medieval music was both sacred and secular...

Music Video ... Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film... Many music videos do not interpret images from the song's lyrics, making it less literal than expected... Other music videos may be without a set concept, being merely a filmed version of the song's live performance...

Modernism ... Modernism explicitly rejects the ideology of realism, and makes use of the works of the past, through the application of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms. Modernism also rejects the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking, as well as the idea of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator...

History Of Classical Music Traditions ... A culture's music is influenced by all other aspects of that culture, including social and economic organization and experience, climate, and access to technology... The emotions and ideas that music expresses, the situations in which music is played and listened to, and the attitudes toward music players and composers all vary between regions and periods... "Music history" is the distinct subfield of musicology and history which studies music (particularly Western art music) from a chronological perspective...

Theatre ... Modern Western theatre derives in large measure from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre scholar Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general...

The Arts ... Art is a global activity which encompasses a host of disciplines, as evidenced by the range of words and phrases which have been invented to describe its various forms. Examples of such phraseology include: Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Visual Arts, Decorative Arts, Applied Arts, Design, Crafts, Performing Arts, and so on...

Ethnomusicology ... Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos (nation) and μουσική mousike (music), it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music... Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of "people making music." Although it is often thought of as a study of non-Western musics, ethnomusicology also includes the study of Western music from an anthropological or sociological perspective... Bruno Nettl (1983) believes it is a product of Western thinking, proclaiming "ethnomusicology as western culture knows it is actually a western phenomenon." Nettl believes that there are limits to the extraction of meaning from a culture's music because of a Western observer's perceptual distance from the culture; however, the growing prevalence of scholars who study their own musical traditions, and an increasing range of different theoretical frameworks and research methodologies has done much to address criticisms such as Nettl's...

Music Education ... At the university level, students in most arts and humanities programs may receive academic credit for taking music courses, which typically take the form of an overview course on the history of music, or a music appreciation course that focuses on listening to music and learning about different musical styles... In addition, most North American and European universities have some type of music ensemble in which students from various fields of study may participate such as a choir, concert band, marching band, or orchestra... Many universities also offer degree programs in the field of music education, allowing their students to become certified educators of primary and secondary school ensembles as well as beginner music classes...

Piano History And Musical Performance ... The problem is that much of the most widely admired piano repertoire was composed for a type of instrument that is very different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today... The music of the early Romantics, such as Chopin and Schumann--and even of still later composers (see below) --was written for pianos substantially different from ours... However, many aspects of earlier music can be mentioned suggesting that it was composed very much with contemporary instruments in mind...

20th-century Music ... Electronic music For centuries, instrumental music had either been created by singing, drawing a bow across or plucking taught gut or metal strings (string instruments), constricting vibrating air (woodwinds and brass) or hitting or stroking something (percussion)...