Tone (musical instrument)

Tone and sound are terms used by musicians and related professions to refer to the audible characteristics of a player's sound. Tone is the product of all influences on what can be heard by the listener, including the characteristics of the instrument itself, differences in playing technique (e.g. embouchure for woodwind and brass players, fretting technique or use of a slide in stringed instruments, or use of different mallets in percussion), and the physical space in which the instrument is played. In electric and electronic instruments, tone is also affected by the amplifiers, effects, and speakers used by the musician. In recorded music, tone is also influenced by the microphones, signal processors, and recording media used to record, mix, and master the final recording, as well as the listener's audio system.

Stringed instruments

The tone of a stringed instrument is influenced by factors related to construction and player technique. The instrument's shape, particularly of its resonant cavity, as well as the choice of tonewood for the body, neck, and fingerboard, are all major determinants of its tone. The material and age of the strings is also an important factor. Playing technique also influences tone, including subtle differences in the amount of pressure applied with the fretting hand, picking or bowing intensity, use of muting and/or drone techniques.

Twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition devised by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and associated with the "Second Viennese School" composers, who were the primary users of the technique in the first decades of its existence. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th century composers. Many important composers who had originally not subscribed to or even actively opposed the technique eventually adopted it in their music, such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky.

Steel tongue drum

A steel tongue drum, tank drum or hank drum is a round steel slit/tongue drum originally fashioned from a propane tank.

Description

A steel tongue drum can be made from an empty (often 20 lb) propane tank. The tank is flipped over, the base cut/knocked off; and seven to ten tongues are cut radially into the bottom of the tank, forming the top of the instrument. Steel tongue drum can also be made from new unused tank heads. The tongues can be tuned by the maker by varying the length of the cuts, or by adding weights, often neodymium magnets to the tongues. The steel tongue drum is often tuned to pentatonic scales but can be tuned to the diatonic scale, the chromatic scale, or any set of notes the maker chooses. The instrument is played with the fingers or with mallets. The tone is bell-like.

 Sound example 

History

The steel tongue drum had several predecessors, most notably the Whale Drum by Jim Doble and the Tambiro by Felle Vega. In February 2007 Dennis Havlena, inspired by the physical properties of the Tambiro and the tone layout of the Hang, created a steel tongue drum with a circular cross pattern layout and from an empty 20-pound propane tank. The name 'Hank Drum' came from a combination of "Hang" and "tank".

Pan

Pan and panning can have many meanings as listed below in various categories.

Prefix

Pan (programming language)

The pan configuration language allows the definition of machine configuration information and an associated schema with a simple, human-accessible syntax. A pan language compiler transforms the configuration information contained within a set of pan templates to a machine-friendly XML or json format.

The pan language is used within the Quattor toolkit to define the desired configuration for one or more machines. The language is primarily a declarative language where elements in a hierarchical tree are set to particular values. The pan syntax is human-friendly and fairly simple, yet allows system administrators to simultaneously set configuration values, define an overall configuration schema, and validate the final configuration against the schema.

Implementation

The compiler panc serves as the defacto reference implementation of the language and is implemented in Java, at present it is not possible to execute the compiler with OpenJDK.

A configuration is defined by a set of files, called templates, written in the pan language. These templates define simultaneously the configuration parameters, the configuration schema, and validation functions. Each template is named and is contained in a file having the same name. The syntax of a template file is simple:

Pan (1995 film)

Pan (also released under the title Two Green Feathers) is a 1995 Danish/Norwegian/German film directed by the Danish director Henning Carlsen. It is based on Knut Hamsun's 1894 novel of the same name, and also incorporates the short story "Paper on Glahn's Death", which Hamsun had written and published earlier, but which was later appended to editions of the novel. It is the fourth and most recent film adaptation of the novel—the novel was previously adapted into motion pictures in 1922, 1937, and 1962.

Production

In 1966 Carlsen had directed an acclaimed version of Hamsun's Hunger. Thirty years later he returned to Hamsun to make Pan, a book he called "one big poem". The film was produced primarily with Norwegian resources, and classified as a Norwegian film; Carlsen later expressed his dissatisfaction with the film's promotion by the Norwegian Film Institute, saying that the Institute had preferred to promote films with Norwegian directors. Carlsen said that he had decided to incorporate the "forgotten" material from "Glahn's Death" in order to find a "new angle" for filming the book. The Glahn's Death portion was filmed in Thailand, standing in for the India location in the novel (the 1922 film version had placed this material in Algeria).

Greater Sudbury

Greater Sudbury (2011 census population 160,274) is a city in Ontario, Canada, which was founded following the discovery of nickel ore by Tom Flanagan, a Canadian Pacific Railway blacksmith in 1883, when the transcontinental railway was near completion. Greater Sudbury was formed in 2001 by merging the cities and towns of the former Regional Municipality of Sudbury with several previously unincorporated geographic townships. It is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population and the 24th largest metropolitan area in Canada. By land area, it is the largest city in Ontario and the seventh largest municipality by area in Canada. Sudbury, as it is commonly known, is administratively separate and thus not part of any district, county, or regional municipality.

Sudbury has a humid continental climate with warm and often hot summers and long, cold, snowy winters. The population resides in an urban core and many smaller communities scattered around 300 lakes and among hills of rock blackened by historical smelting activity. Sudbury was once a major lumber centre and a world leader in nickel mining. Mining and related industries dominated the economy for much of the 20th century. The two major mining companies which shaped the history of Sudbury were Inco, now Vale, which employed more than 25% of the population by the 1970s, and Falconbridge, now Glencore. Sudbury has since expanded from its resource-based economy to emerge as the major retail, economic, health and educational centre for Northeastern Ontario. Sudbury is also home to a large Franco-Ontarian population that influences its arts and culture.