The Eagles

The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s.


With five number one singles, six Grammys, five American Music Awards, and six number one albums. At the end of the 20th century, two of their albums, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and Hotel California, ranked among the 20 best-selling albums in the U.S. according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Hotel California is ranked 37th in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the band was ranked 75 on the magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.


They also have the best-selling album in the U.S. with Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), which sold approximately 42 million copies worldwide. They have sold over 120 million albums worldwide and 100 million in the U.S. alone. They are the fifth highest-selling music act in U.S. history and the highest-selling American band in U.S. history. No other American band sold more than the Eagles during the 1970s.


The Eagles released their self-titled debut album in 1972 which spawned three Top 40 singles, "Take It Easy", "Witchy Woman", and "Peaceful Easy Feeling". They followed up the success of their debut album with Desperado in 1973. The album was less successful than the first, reaching only 41 on the charts and neither of its two singles reached the Top 40. However, the album contained two of the band's most popular and beloved tracks, "Desperado" and "Tequila Sunrise".


They released On the Border in 1974 and added guitarist Don Felder midway through the recording of the album. The album released two Top 40 singles, "Already Gone" and their first chart topper, "Best of My Love". It was not until 1975's One of These Nights, though, that the Eagles became America's biggest band. The album released three Top 10 singles, "One of These Nights", "Lyin' Eyes", and "Take It to the Limit". They continued with that success in late 1976 with the release of Hotel California, which would go on to sell over 16 million copies in the U.S. alone. The album yielded three Top 20 singles, "New Kid in Town", "Hotel California", and "Life in the Fast Lane".
They released their last studio album for nearly 28 years in 1979 with The Long Run. The album displayed that the Eagles were still at the top of their popularity at the time of their breakup and the album released three Top 10 singles, "Heartache Tonight", "The Long Run", and "I Can't Tell You Why".


The Eagles broke up in July 1980, but reunited in 1994 for Hell Freezes Over, a mix of live and new studio tracks. They have toured intermittently since then and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2007, the Eagles released Long Road out of Eden, their first full studio album in 28 years. The album would top the album charts, release five singles on the Adult Contemporary Charts and win the band two Grammys. The next year they launched The Long Road out of Eden Tour in support of the album.

Read More

EAGLES (Band) - Hotel California (1976-1978)

Hotel California released on December 8, 1976 as the band's fifth studio album and the first album to feature Joe Walsh, who replaced Leadon after One of These Nights. The album took a year and a half to make, a process which along with touring, drained the band. Hotel California is also the last album to feature founding member Randy Meisner, who would leave the band after the album to return to his native Nebraska and be with his family. He would eventually launch a solo career. His biggest contribution to the album would be the track "Try and Love Again", which he wrote and sang lead vocals on. He would be replaced by the same man who replaced him in Poco, Timothy B. Schmit. The album's first single was "New Kid in Town," which became the Eagles' third No. 1 single. 


The second single was the title track, which also topped the charts in February 1977. The song became the Eagles' signature song. It featured Henley on lead vocals, and the guitar duet at the end of the song was performed by Don Felder and Joe Walsh. The song was written by Felder, Henley and Frey. Felder wrote all the music to the song. The song is also known for its mysterious lyrics and has been interpreted in many ways in the past, some often controversial. Told during a 60 Minutes interview (November 25, 2007) that "everyone wants to know what this song [Hotel California] means," Don Henley replied, "I know, it's so boring... It's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America, which was something we knew about. 


Life in the Fast Lane" was also a major success, establishing Joe Walsh's position in the band with its more hard rock sound. It would be the third and final single from Hotel California and reached No. 11 on the charts. The ballad "Wasted Time" closed the first side of the album, while an instrumental reprise of it opened the second side. The album concluded with "The Last Resort", the song Frey, to this day, refers to as Don Henley's greatest work. 


The run-out groove on side two has the words "V.O.L. Is Five-Piece Live"; this means that the song "Victim of Love" was recorded live, with just the band and no overdubbing. Don Henley confirms this on the inner booklet of The Very Best of Eagles. Hotel California has appeared on several lists of the best albums of all time. It is also their best-selling studio album, with over 16 million copies sold to date in the U.S. The album would also win the band two more Grammys for "Record of the year" (Hotel California) and "Best arrangement for voices" (New Kid in Town). Hotel California topped the charts and was nominated for Album of the Year in the 1977 Grammys, but lost to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Nonetheless, the album further established the Eagles as America's number one band and made the Eagles household names. To support the album, the Eagles would go on another huge worldwide tour that further drained the band members and strained their personal and creative relationships. 


In 1977, the group, minus Don Felder, performed some instrumental work and backing vocals for Randy Newman's album Little Criminals, including the controversial surprise hit "Short People", which has backing vocals by Frey and Schmit.

Read More

Acoustic Guitar

Acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board.
The sound is a complex mixture of harmonics that give the guitar its distinctive sound. And the air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound again depending on whether the air in the box is moving in phase or out of phase with the strings. When in phase, the sound is increased by about 3 decibels and when in opposing phase, it is decreased about 3 decibels. As a Helmholtz resonator, the air at the opening is vibrating in or out of phase with the air in the box and in or out of phase with the strings.

These resonance interactions attenuate or amplify the sound at different frequencies, boosting or damping various harmonic tones. Also, the air in the box is coupled to the resonance of the top plate. Together, which cause further interactions. The back of the guitar will also vibrate to a lesser extent, driven by the air in the cavity.

Some sound is ultimately projected through the sound hole (some variants of the acoustic guitar omit this hole, or have f holes, like a violin family instrument). This sound mixes with the sound produced by the front face of the soundboard. All these complex air coupling interactions, along with the resonant properties of the panels, are a key reason that different guitars will have different tonal qualities.

Read More

Acoustic Music

Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means. The retronym "acoustic music" appeared after the advent of electric instruments, such as the electric guitar, electric violin, electric organ and synthesizer.

Performers of acoustic music often increase the volume of their output using electronic amplifiers. However, these amplification devices remain separate from the amplified instrument and reproduce its natural sound accurately. Often a microphone is placed in front of an acoustic instrument which is then wired up to an amplifier.

Following the increasing popularity of the television show MTV Unplugged during the 1990s, acoustic (though in most cases still electrically-amplified) performances by musical artists who usually rely on electronic instruments became colloquially referred to as "unplugged" performances.

Writing for Splendid, music reviewer Craig Conley suggests, "When music is labeled acoustic, unplugged, or unwired, the assumption seems to be that other types of music are cluttered by technology and overproduction and therefore aren't as pure.

Read More

Early History of Piano

The piano is founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings. By the 17th century, the mechanisms of keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. In a clavichord the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord they are plucked by quills. Centuries of work on the mechanism of the harpsichord in particular had shown the most effective ways to construct the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard. 

The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments. He was an expert harpsichord maker, and was well acquainted with the body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700, another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. A friend of the family by the name of Sebastian LeBlanc suggested the idea to switch the black and white keys. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today and date from the 1720s.

While the clavichord allowed expressive control of volume and sustain, it was too quiet for large performances. The harpsichord produced a sufficiently loud sound, but had little expressive control over each note. The piano was likely formed as an attempt to combine loudness with control, avoiding the trade-offs of available instruments.

Read More

Piano

The word piano is a shortened form of pianoforte, the Italian word for the instrument (which in turn derives from the previous terms "gravicembalo col piano e forte" and fortepiano). 

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments. 

The musical terms "piano" and "forte" mean "quiet" and "loud," and in this context refers to the variations in volume of sound the instrument produces in response to a pianist's touch on the keys: the greater a key press's velocity, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the string(s), and the louder the note produced.

Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a felt-covered hammer to strike steel strings. The hammers rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a sounding board that more efficiently couples the acoustic energy to the air. The sound would otherwise be no louder than that directly produced by the strings. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration. See the article on Piano key frequencies for a picture of the piano keyboard and the location of middle-C. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones.

Read More

History of Trumpet

The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BCE and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BCE) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 CE. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense; and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition. 

In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. 

Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The natural trumpets of this era consisted of a single coiled tube without valves and therefore could only produce the notes of a single overtone series. Changing keys required the player to swap out the crooks of the instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters—notably Cesare Bendinelli—would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet." During this period, a vast body of music was written for virtuoso trumpeters. The art was revived in the mid-20th century and natural trumpet playing is again a thriving art around the world. Most successful players nowadays use a version of the natural trumpet dubbed the baroque trumpet which is fitted with one or more vent holes to aid in correcting out-of-tune notes in the harmonic series. 

The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers owing to the limitations of the natural trumpet. Berlioz wrote in 1844.

Read More

TRUMPET

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into a rounded oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. 

There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B♭ with a tubing length of about 134 cm. The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves, but modern trumpets generally have either three piston valves or, more rarely, three rotary valves. Each valve increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. 

The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.

A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.

Read More