Étude
An étude (/ ˈeɪtjuːd/; French pronunciation: [eˈtyd], a French word meaning study) is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, of considerable difficulty, and designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of études from that era some are still used as teaching material (particularly pieces by Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi), and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Claude Debussy, achieved a place in today's concert repertory. Études written in the 20th century include those related to traditional ones (György Ligeti), those that require wholly unorthodox technique (John Cage), and ones that are unusually easy to play.
19th century
Studies, lessons and other didactic instrumental pieces composed before the 19th century are very varied, without any established genres. The pieces in lute instruction books, such as the celebrated Varietie of Lute-Lessons (1610), may be arranged in order of increasing difficulty, but will usually include both simple teaching pieces and masterworks by renowned composers. Domenico Scarlatti's 30 Essercizi per gravicembalo ("30 Exercises for harpsichord", 1738) do not differ in scope from his other keyboard works, and Johann Sebastian Bach's four volumes of Clavier-Übung ("keyboard practice") contain everything from simple organ duets to the extensive and difficult Goldberg Variations.
Étude (instrumental)
"Étude" is a single by musician Mike Oldfield, released in 1984 (see 1984 in music). It is from the album The Killing Fields, the soundtrack album for the film of the same name . It was reissued in 1990, when it was used in a commercial for Nurofen. The 1990 release also featured a track called "Gakkaen" by The Ono Gagaku Kai Society.
"Étude" is taken from the Francisco Tárrega piece "Recuerdos de la Alhambra".
Music video
The music video for "Étude" which appears on the Elements – The Best of Mike Oldfield video shows a boy watching parts of The Killing Fields on a television from a reel-to-reel tape machine and looking through photographs. The boy also plays with a Fairlight CMI, which the soundtrack album was composed on.
Track listing
7-inch vinyl
12-inch vinyl
1990 release
References
Etude (Stockhausen)
The Konkrete Etüde (Concrète Étude) is the earliest work of electroacoustic tape music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1952 and lasting just three-and-a-quarter minutes. The composer retrospectively gave it the number "⅕" in his catalogue of works.
History
In January 1952 Stockhausen travelled to Paris to study with Olivier Messiaen, and by March had become familiar with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, and Michel Philippot who were working with musique concrète at Pierre Schaeffer's Club d’Essai. Beginning in November, Stockhausen was able to work in the studio, but only recording and cataloguing natural sounds, mainly of percussion instruments. In December, at last, Stockhausen was allowed to make his own piece. Using sounds recorded from a prepared piano, he cut the tape into short pieces, spliced the pieces together, and superimposed the results (Toop 1976, 295–96). This involved taking the attack segment of each sound and repeating it to produce a relatively constant sound (Toop 1979, 387). The result was then transposed using a transposition machine called a phonogène (Stockhausen 1992, 5, 95). The entire process was accomplished in twelve days, concluded on 15 December 1952 (Blumröder 1993, 92). It was the first piece by a non-French composer made in the Paris studio (Frisius 2008, 61). Even before completing the piece, Stockhausen was becoming disillusioned with musique concrète (Toop 1979, 388), and in a letter to Henri Pousseur written only a few months later, Stockhausen described the Etude as a "negative result" (Toop 1976, 297).
Bassé
Bassé is a town in the Bourzanga Department of Bam Province in northern Burkina Faso. It has a population of 2,138.
References
External links
Bass note
In music theory, the bass note of a chord or sonority is the lowest note played or notated. If there are multiple voices it is the note played or notated in the lowest voice. (the note furthest in the bass) While the bass note is often the root or fundamental of the chord, it does not have to be, and sometimes one of the other pitches of the chord will be found in the bass. See: inversion (music).
In pre-tonal theory (Early music), root notes were not considered and thus the bass was the most defining note of a sonority. See: thoroughbass. In pandiatonic chords the bass often does not determine the chord, as is always the case with a nonharmonic bass.
Bass guitar
The bass guitar (also called electric bass, or simply bass; /ˈbeɪs/) is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb, by plucking, slapping, popping, strumming, tapping, thumping, or picking with a plectrum, often known as a pick.
The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and four to six strings or courses. The four-string bass, by far the most common, is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest pitched strings of a guitar (E, A, D, and G). The bass guitar is a transposing instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds (as is the double bass) to avoid excessive ledger lines. Like the electric guitar, the bass guitar is plugged into an amplifier and speaker for live performances.
Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of bass lines vary widely from one style of music to another, the bassist usually fulfills a similar role: anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. Many styles of music utilise the bass guitar, including rock, metal, pop, punk rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues, and jazz. It is often a solo instrument in jazz, jazz fusion, Latin, funk, progressive rock and other rock and metal styles.
Spoke
A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel (the hub where the axle connects), connecting the hub with the round traction surface.
The term originally referred to portions of a log that had been split lengthwise into four or six sections. The radial members of a wagon wheel were made by carving a spoke (from a log) into their finished shape. A spokeshave is a tool originally developed for this purpose. Eventually, the term spoke was more commonly applied to the finished product of the wheelwright's work, than to the materials he used.
History
The spoked wheel was invented to allow the construction of lighter and swifter vehicles. The earliest known examples are in the context of the Andronovo culture, dating to ca. 2000 BC. Soon after this, horse cultures of the Caucasus region used horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots for the greater part of three centuries. They moved deep into the Greek peninsula where they joined with the existing Mediterranean peoples to give rise, eventually, to classical Greece after the breaking of Minoan dominance and consolidations led by pre-classical Sparta and Athens. Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BC. The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire wheels and rubber tires were invented.
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