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Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It is often "peaceful" sounding and lacks composition, beat, and/or structured melody. It uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual", or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and the sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer.
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz ; above the medium frequency band (MF), to the bottom of the VHF band.
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave transmissions, but also on the longwave and shortwave radio bands.
Easy listening is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to the 1970s. It is related to middle of the road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, non-rock vocals and instrumental covers of selected popular rock songs. It mostly concentrates on music that pre-dates the rock and roll era, characteristically on music from the 1940s and 1950s. It was differentiated from the mostly instrumental beautiful music format by its variety of styles, including a percentage of vocals, arrangements and tempos to fit various parts of the broadcast day.
Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments.
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The station has described itself as "the world's most significant commissioner of new music".
Monaural sound or monophonic sound is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or stereo, which uses two separate audio channels to reproduce sound from two microphones on the right and left side, which is reproduced with two separate loudspeakers to give a sense of the direction of sound sources. In mono, only one loudspeaker is necessary, but, when played through multiple loudspeakers or headphones, identical audio signals are fed to each speaker, resulting in the perception of one-channel sound "imaging" in one sonic space between the speakers. Monaural recordings, like stereo ones, typically use multiple microphones fed into multiple channels on a recording console, but each channel is "panned" to the center. In the final stage, the various center-panned signal paths are usually mixed down to two identical tracks, which, because they are identical, are perceived upon playback as representing a single unified signal at a single place in the soundstage. In some cases, multitrack sources are mixed to a one-track tape, thus becoming one signal. In the mastering stage, particularly in the days of mono records, the one- or two-track mono master tape was then transferred to a one-track lathe used to produce a master disc intended to be used in the pressing of a monophonic record. Today, however, monaural recordings are usually mastered to be played on stereo and multi-track formats, yet retain their center-panned mono soundstage characteristics.
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music–influenced instrumentals, modern electronica, while remaining thematically focused on its retro–space age cultural elements. The earliest type of lounge music appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, and was known as light music.
Background music is a mode of musical performance in which the music is not intended to be a primary focus of potential listeners, but its content, character, and volume level are deliberately chosen to affect behavioral and emotional responses in humans such as concentration, relaxation, distraction, and excitement. Listeners are uniquely subject to background music with no control over its volume and content. The range of responses created are of great variety, and even opposite, depending on numerous factors such as, setting, culture, audience, and even time of day.
Beautiful music is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in North American radio from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Easy listening, elevator music, light music, mood music, and Muzak are other terms that overlap with this format and the style of music that it featured. Beautiful music can also be regarded as a subset of the middle of the road radio format.
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting that uses frequency modulation (FM) of the radio broadcast carrier wave. Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to transmit high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting offers higher fidelity—more accurate reproduction of the original program sound—than other broadcasting techniques, such as AM broadcasting. It is also less susceptible to common forms of interference, having less static and popping sounds than are often heard on AM. Therefore, FM is used for most broadcasts of music and general audio. FM radio stations use the very high frequency range of radio frequencies.
A radio format or programming format describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelled to develop new and exclusive ways to programming by competition with television. The formula has since spread as a reference for commercial radio programming worldwide.
Subsidiary Communications Authorization (SCA) in the United States, and Subsidiary Communications Multiplex Operation (SCMO) in Canada, is a subcarrier on a radio station, allowing the station to broadcast additional services as part of its signal.
Space music, also called spacemusic or space ambient, is a subgenre of ambient music and is described as "tranquil, hypnotic and moving". It is derived from new-age music and is associated with lounge music, easy listening, and elevator music.
WKSS is an American radio station operated by iHeartMedia, Inc. in the Greater Hartford area. It broadcasts from its original transmitter site in Meriden, and has a rare dual city of license of Hartford–Meriden.
EZ Communications, Inc. was a corporation with its headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. In the 1970s, the small company was one of the pioneers of the easy listening on the FM broadcasting radio spectrum with 2 stations in Manassas and Richmond. Within 25 years, the company grew to 20 stations across the United States.
WVKS also known as 92.5 KISS-FM is an iHeartMedia-owned station serving Toledo, Ohio with a top 40 (CHR) format; it is the most popular Toledo station in this format.
Light music is a less-serious form of Western classical music, which originated in the 18th and 19th centuries and continues today. Its heyday was in the mid‑20th century. The style is through-composed, usually shorter orchestral pieces and suites designed to appeal to a wider context and audience than more sophisticated forms such as the concerto, the symphony and the opera.
Production music is recorded music that can be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Often, the music is produced and owned by production music libraries.
Marlin Raymond Taylor is an American former radio broadcaster, program director, and radio executive who is credited as the "father of beautiful music," an update of the older easy listening radio format popular from the 1960s to the 1980s. He initially developed the format, which primarily featured instrumental versions of popular songs and classical melodies, while working at WDVR in Philadelphia between 1963 and 1966.
References
- ↑ Kate Mossman. 'The science of background muzak' in The New Statesman, 31 March 2021
- ↑ The Day the Muzak Died, BBC radio documentary by Falling Tree Productions, broadcast 30 March 2021
- ↑ Reynolds, Brian (2006). Music While You Work: An Era in Broadcasting. Leicester: The Book Guild Publishing. p. 2. ISBN 1-84624-004-2.
- ↑ Lanza, Joseph. Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-listening, and Other Moodsong, University of Michigan Press (2004)
- ↑ Murphy, Michael (August 26, 2015). "People are confusing computer-generated music with the works of J.S. Bach". Quartz. New York. Archived from the original on July 10, 2022. Retrieved June 16, 2021.
- ↑ Wilson, Chris (May 19, 2010). "I'll Be Bach: A computer program is writing great, original works of classical music. Will human composers soon be obsolete?". Slate. New York. Archived from the original on June 28, 2021. Retrieved June 16, 2021.
- ↑ Mark Ammons (6 Aug 2010). American Popular Music, Grades 5 – 8. Mark Twain Media. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-58037-983-0.