Piano

The piano (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjaːno]; an abbreviation of pianoforte [pjanoˈfɔrte]) is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. It is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments.

An acoustic piano usually has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, and a row of 88 black and white keys (52 white, 36 black). The strings are sounded when the keys are pressed, and silenced when the keys are released. The note can be sustained, even when the keys are released, by the use of pedals.

Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a padded (often with felt) hammer to strike strings. The hammer rebounds, and the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion instrument because the strings are struck rather than plucked (as with a harpsichord or spinet); in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones. With technological advances, electric, electronic, and digital pianos have also been developed.

Dynamics (music)

In music, dynamics are instructions in musical notation to the performer about hearing the loudness of a note or phrase. More generally, dynamics may also include other aspects of the execution of a given piece.

Relative loudness

The two basic dynamic indications in music are:

More subtle degrees of loudness or softness are indicated by:

Beyond f and p, there are also

And so on.

Some pieces contain dynamic designations with more than three f's or p's. In Holst's The Planets, ffff occurs twice in Mars and once in Uranus often punctuated by organ and fff occurs several times throughout the work. It also appears in Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 (Prelude), and in Liszt's Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam". The Norman Dello Joio Suite for Piano ends with a crescendo to a ffff, and Tchaikovsky indicated a bassoon solo pppppp in his Pathétique Symphony and ffff in passages of his 1812 Overture and the 2nd movement of his Fifth Symphony.

Piano (Wynton Kelly album)

Piano, also released as Whisper Not, is an album by jazz pianist Wynton Kelly released on the Riverside label featuring performances by Kelly with Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones recorded in 1958.

Reception

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow states "Kelly became a major influence on pianists of the 1960s and 1970s and one can hear the genesis of many other players in these swinging performances".

Track listing

Personnel

References

The Ultimate Fighter: Team Edgar vs. Team Penn

The Ultimate Fighter: Team Edgar vs. Team Penn (also known as The Ultimate Fighter 19) is the nineteenth U.S.-based installment of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)-produced reality television series The Ultimate Fighter.

The coaches and participating weight classes were officially announced by the UFC in September 2013. Featured on this season was a mix of middleweight and light heavyweight competitors.

Cast

Coaches

Fighters

The Ultimate Fighter 1

The debut season of The Ultimate Fighter (later designated The Ultimate Fighter 1) premiered on January 17, 2005. Sixteen mixed martial arts fighters (eight Light Heavyweights weighing from 186 to 205 lbs and eight Middleweights weighing from 171 to 185 lbs) were invited to participate in the show where they would reside together and train in two separate teams coached by UFC Light Heavyweight fighters Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. The teams would compete in physical challenges, segments hosted by singer Willa Ford, to determine which team would have the right to pair one of their own fighters against an opponent of their choice in the same weight class, with the loser being eliminated.

The finale was broadcast live on April 9, 2005, where the two finalists in each weight class faced off for a contract with the UFC. It was the first ever live UFC broadcast on non-pay-per-view television, and it drew a very impressive 1.9 overall rating. The series was also broadcast in the UK in the spring of 2005 on Bravo. A 5-disc DVD set of "The Ultimate Fighter" was released on November 1, 2005.

The Ultimate Fighter 3

The Ultimate Fighter 3 was the third season of the mixed martial arts reality television series The Ultimate Fighter. It premiered on April 6, 2006, immediately after the conclusion of Ultimate Fight Night 4. The season featured sixteen fighters (eight light heavyweights and eight middleweights) with still-feuding former champion Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock as coaches. The finale aired on June 24, 2006 and tied the UFC's all-time record with a 2.0 overall rating..

There were several rule changes from the previous Ultimate Fighter seasons. There were to be no team challenges. All fighters would have to win a preliminary match before advancing to the semi-finals—which in practice started the single-elimination tournament at the beginning of the series instead of near the end. The first preliminary match was set by the team who won a coin toss. All subsequent first-round match-ups were set by the team that won the previous match. Each fight was set for two rounds instead of the normal three. If there was a draw after two rounds, the match would go to a final, five-minute tiebreaker round. In such a case, the judges' final decision on the match would be based solely on the third round (unless the fight was stopped by the referee before the end of the round). Coaches were allowed to bring two other assistant coaches to assist with training, whereas in previous seasons, assistant trainers hired by the UFC worked for both camps.