In music, a glissando is a glide from one pitch to another. It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, "to glide". In some contexts, it is equivalent to portamento, which is a continuous, seamless glide between notes. In other contexts, it refers to discrete, stepped glides across notes, such as on a piano. Some terms that are similar or equivalent in some contexts are slide, sweepbend, smear, rip, lip, plop, or falling hail. On wind instruments, a scoop is a glissando ascending to the onset of a note achieved entirely with the embouchure, except on instruments that have a slide.
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or concerts. Its most common form is triangular in shape and made of wood. Some have multiple rows of strings and pedal attachments.
A harpsichord 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.
Lyon & Healy Harps, Inc. is an American musical instrument manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois and is a subsidiary of Salvi Harps. Today best known for concert harps, the company's Chicago headquarters and manufacturing facility contains a showroom and concert hall. George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy began the company in 1864 as a sheet music shop. By the end of the 19th century, they manufactured a wide range of musical instruments—including not only harps, but pianos, guitars, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and various brass and other percussion instruments.
A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
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, plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or, on electric and electronic keyboards, completing a circuit. Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard.
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when the keys are pressed. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys raised above the white keys and set further back, for sharps and flats. This means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, spanning a range of a bit over seven octaves. The black keys are for the "accidentals", which are needed to play in all twelve keys.
The violin, colloquially known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term autoharp was once a trademark of the Oscar Schmidt company, but has become a generic designation for all such instruments, regardless of manufacturer.
Piano construction is by now a rather conservative area; most of the technological advances were made by about 1900, and indeed it is possible that some contemporary piano buyers might actually be suspicious of pianos that are made differently from the older kind. Yet piano manufacturers, especially the smaller ones, are still experimenting with ways to build better pianos.
The Gravikord is a 24 string electric double bridge-harp invented by Robert Grawi in 1984, which is closely related to both the West African kora and the mbira. It was designed to employ a separated double tonal array structure making it possible to easily play cross-rhythms in a polyrhythmic musical style in a modern electro-acoustic instrument. The Gravi-kora is a similar instrument, also developed by Grawi, which is tuned identically to a traditional 21 string kora.
The octobass is an extremely large and rare bowed string instrument that was first built around 1850 in Paris by the French luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1798–1875). It has three strings and is essentially a larger version of the double bass – the specimen in the collection of the Musée de la Musique in Paris measures 3.48 metres in length, whereas a full-size double bass is generally approximately 2 m in length.
The electric harp is an instrument based on its acoustic original. There are both solid-body and hollow body electro-acoustic models available. True electric harps have a solid body versus a hollow body electro-acoustic harp, which can be played either acoustically or electronically. A true electric solid-body harp cannot be played acoustically since it has no hollow soundbox, and must be amplified when played.
The cross-strung harp or chromatic double harp is a multi-course harp that has two rows of strings which intersect without touching. While accidentals are played on the pedal harp via the pedals and on the lever harp with levers, the cross-strung harp features two rows so that each of the twelve semitones of the chromatic scale has its own string.
Sébastien Érard was a French instrument maker of German origin who specialised in the production of pianos and harps, developing the capacities of both instruments and pioneering the modern piano.
The triple harp is a type of multi-course harp employing three parallel rows of strings instead of the more common single row. One common version is the Welsh triple harp, used today mainly among players of traditional Welsh folk music.
Among alternative tunings for guitar, a major-thirds tuning is a regular tuning in which each interval between successive open strings is a major third. Other names for major-thirds tuning include major-third tuning, M3 tuning, all-thirds tuning, and augmented tuning. By definition, a major-third interval separates two notes that differ by exactly four semitones.
The medieval harp refers to various types of harps played throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. The defining features are a three-sided frame and strings made of wire or gut. The instrument was most popular in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, and Scandinavia. Most information about the medieval harp comes from art and poetry of the era, though some original instruments survive and are available to view in museums. Performers play modern reconstructions of medieval harps today. The instrument is the predecessor to the concert grand pedal harp.
The Bohemian Harp, also referred to as the Hakenharfe, is a Central European lever harp, similar to the Celtic harp, with a straight, tenoned neck. It was played foremostly by travelling musicians going through Europe in the 19th century, occasionally in bands. When played in bands, it was often used as an accompaniment for bass violin and bock. The instrument was also popular as a folk instrument. The harp was far lighter than other European harps used in royal courts, for ease of portability.
