History of Ukulele Music - You Can Get in on the Fun Too!

Instrumental ukulele music is on the verge to becoming just as popular as mainstream ukulele music is. People are finally starting to realize that the ukulele is capable of making very good music. This instrument has been around since 1879 and it is just now being realized how it can make such enjoyable quality music.

When the ukulele was first invented the Hawaiians where not impressed with the beautiful music that the instrument was capable of making. It wasn't till around 1915 that the ukulele popularity came over to the main land. It was after that the craze of the ukulele began which raised the popularity of the instrument. No matter what the history is behind it, the ukulele is now Hawaii's most popular musical instrument.

There was a great demand for ukuleles, which meant that production had to increase substantially. Of the original creators, by 1910, only one of them remained and he couldn't keep up with the demand. New competitors entered the field after time offering unique designs. Although there was a great deal of competition, there were still enough orders that each business was still being flooded.

Competition took a turn when the main land guitar manufactures started making ukuleles around 1915. The Hawaiians where angry when it was learned the mainland manufactures started stamping "Made in Hawaii" on their Ukuleles. The Hawaiian ukulele makers created an original stamp that the legislature backed. Sometime in the 1920's, main land makers started mass-producing the ukulele.

Today we are seeing surges of ukulele music popularity coming back. Hawaii is home to many musicians who have devoted their life to playing the music of the ukulele. The ukulele is very light and also very portable which means that it makes it very easy to practice it.

Even though ukulele music has been around for over 130 years and it is still a very popular musical instrument choice. The music has a lot of history behind it but no matter what the history is, it is now a very popular instrument in world-wide. Even now the demand of ukuleles is growing in South America and other unexpected places.

The ukulele is the little brother of the guitar family and is usually seen with four nylon stings. The volume and tone of the instrument depends solely on the size that it is. They come in four different sizes and are enjoyed by countless individuals all over the world. The three smaller ukulele sizes are the soprano, concert, and tenor, and are tuned to the Key of C with the reentrant "my dog has fleas" tuning. The largest ukulele, the baritone is tuned to the Key of G like a guitar and the baritone ukulele is tuned exactly as the 4 smallest strings of a guitar. All guitar players can immediately play the baritone ukulele, although they may not know it.

If you are looking for a really fun instrument to learn, you do well to find a ukulele.

Hawaiian Music History

Hawaiian music is a product of years of acculturation of different cultures and sounds, a wonderful melding of different  Its history is as diverse as the history of its peoples.

Hawaiians did not merely absorb music and instrument brought to the island. They adapted music based on how it  their own traditional songs and chants. As a result, the Hawaiians have given the world the slack key guitar, the steel guitar, and the ukulele among others.

Traditional Hawaiian folk music is primarily a celebration

of nature, their gods, and love of life. Religious in nature, Hawaiian music traditionally involved chant and hula. Chants were either accompanied with music and dance (mele hula) or without (mele oli).

Before the arrival of the Europeans and their guitars, traditional Hawaiian musical instruments included the ipu (gourd drum), ipu heke (double gourd drum), ili'ili (two flat stones clicked together),  ohe hanu inu (wooden nose flute), large Conch shell that produces deep resonant sounds when blown, pu ohe (bamboo trumpet), and puili (slit sticks made from bamboo). Hawaii has little metals and minerasl (besides lava) so their ancient musical instruments were mostly made from shells, plants, and trees.

Documented Hawaiian music history did not start until the 18th century upon the arrival of the haoles (non-Hawaiian) in the island. Hawaiian culture expert Elizabeth Tatar divides Hawaiian music history from the arrival of the Europeans to the present into seven periods:

1820 to 1872

Mexican cowboys (vaqueros) came to Hawaiian with their guitars. King Kamehameha III brought them to teach Hawaiians how to control overpopulation of cattle in 1832. They taught the Hawaiians how to play the guitar. The Hawaiians changed the tuning of the guitar to adapt it to their traditional Hawaiian songs and chants. They loosened or slackened the strings of the guitar, thus giving the world the slack key guitar.

Though slack key guitar became popular, families kept  their own string tuning styles a secret. For this reason, slack key guitar (called Ki ho 'alu by Hawaiians) was a "back porch" musical instrument until Gabby Pahinui popularized it in the 20th century.  

During this period, numerous styles of European  music including Protestant hymns and falsetto singing.

Classical Crossover Music - History and Growing Popularity

Over the years, certain classical music works have gained popularity amongst pop music fans, thereby achieving crossover status. Some of these classical music pieces include the Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Górecki, Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel, and the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467 from its appearance in the 1967 film Elvira Madigan.

Classical Crossover is used to refer to classical artists' recordings of popular repertoire including the Broadway show tunes, as well as collaborations between pop music artists and classical music performers. A good example that fits this definition is the album songs from the Labyrinth, by Sting and Edin Karamazov. An earlier example of classical crossover music is Deep Purple's 1969 album - Concerto for Group and Orchestra, while a recent example is Metallica's 1999 album S&M.

The most popular vocal classical crossover artist is Mario Lanza, the American tenor and movie star who was popular in the 1950s, whose amazing voice caught the attention of even those who were not die-hard classical music fans. Lanza was signed as an artist to RCA Victor on its premium label - Red Seal. One of his most amazing musical feats was his recording of Be My Love, from The Toast of New Orleans, his second film, which hit Number One on the Billboard pop singles chart in February 1951 and sold more than 2-million copies. To-date, no classical label artist, including The Three Tenors, has been able to match this achievement.

However, the beginning of classical crossover as a truly popular form of music is credited to the famous "three tenors" Pavarotti, Careras, and Domingo. During their tours, these three top opera singers presented a mixture of operatic and popular material to huge crowds, which resulted in the production of enormously successful albums.

In recent years classical crossover has come into its own as a genre of music due to the commercial successes of artist such as Yo-Yo Ma and Josh Groban. Through the infusion of elements of pop, rock and influences such as African chants, Appalachian folk tunes and Nordic fishing songs, these musicians bring a new dimension to classical music.

An example of a successful classical crossover group is Il Divo, a creation of Simon Cowell of "American Idol" fame. According to Billboard magazine, the group's debut album has sold nearly five million copies, and over a million in the United States. Il Divo offers angelic operatic renditions of pop songs, which have been successful on Billboard's classical crossover chart. Their style is mainly referred to as "Popera" (Pop + opera) which refers to the singing of opera material in a popularized, but still operatic style. Some members of Il Divo have had operatic training and are able to sing many arias and other classical material using an operatic style of singing.

Singers such as the English soprano Sarah Brightman, Charlotte Church, and self-taught Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli also offer renditions of classical works. The fact that these are done by popular singers has also helped transform classical crossover into a popular genre of its own.

To reciprocate the entry of popular singers covering operatic and classical material, trained opera singers, such as Natasha Marsh, Bryn Terfel and Vittorio Grigolo have also produced classical crossover albums hoping to cash in on this genre's popularity.

Today, Classical crossover music is generally appealing to a bigger segment of the population, although purists criticize it as being an inferior, diluted version of real classical music. Nevertheless, the increasing popularity of this genre has resulted in more young people gaining interest in classical music enough to take up violin lessons or even lessons in opera singing. This has also been fuelled by the glossy, sexy marketing of most of the successful crossover artists that has transformed them into modern day pop stars.

Music Then and Now - A Brief History of Music and Woodwind Instruments

Music is all around us. It is a mainstay of our society and is inherent in the souls of our beings. Even in utero it is said that the fetus is able to respond to music that the mother plays or sings. Music can be found in just about every environment around us: calming or happy music in restaurants, grocery stores, doctor/dentist offices, department stores, schools, or weddings; majestic music at firework displays or parades; or even serene music at a funeral. It can be heard on almost every television commercial and in the theme of every television show. Some people crave music like a drug and just cannot live without it playing in the car and even singing in the shower.

Every person has the ability to produce music whether vocally or with an instrument. We may not all have accurate intonation or pitch vocally or may not produce a great sound due to a difference in how we process auditory information, as Simon Cowell so blatantly points out on "American Idol", but we have the capability of producing music. With some coaching or instruction, like many of the cast members of the television show "Glee" as reported by Emile Menasche', we can deliver a powerful vocal performance.

Over time, music has developed into an extensively large variety of categories and subclasses. These can include classical, jazz, blues, swing, symphony, opera, rock, rap/hip-hop, country, folk, pop, R n B, theatre, heavy metal, Latin, techno, tango, children's, electronic, Native American, inspirational, marching band, gospel, romantic, melancholy, or spiritual. Most of these types of music have come about as a part of the changes in the structure and function of our cultures.

Music also serves to be very therapeutic. From my own experience as an occupational therapist, music helps persons with a range of different disabilities to improve function whether it may be for communication or movement purposes. For example, in working with persons who have sustained a stroke and have expressive aphasia (able to understand language, but unable to formulate the words to verbally express it), singing allows them to say what they want since this involves a different part of the brain. In working with children with autism spectrum disorders, I have found music helps develop more coordinated movement and motor planning as it provides the timing and rhythm that these children are not able to access in their brain. Any instrument can also be therapeutic, whether it is woodwind instruments, brass musical instruments, or symphony orchestra instruments (string instruments), or even just dancing to music.

But where and when did woodwind instruments originate? If we look back in history we could find out what the first woodwind instruments were. However, as the late Curt Sachs so intelligently points out, music originates back to pre-instrumental music and primitive man. He states that "all higher creatures express emotion by motion" eg. stamping his foot on the ground, slapping his body, or clapping his hands. These audible actions were the precursors to our first woodwind instruments and most likely man was not even consciously aware of sound as a separate idea.

Through archeological findings, the first true instrument noted in history was the strung rattle which consisted of nutshells, seeds, teeth, or bones strung in cords or tied in bunches and suspended from a part of the body (ankle, knee, waist, or neck) as a means of adding sound to body movements or dancing. However, this was a delayed sound after the body movement. Later, the sound became more direct, but not exact, as gourd rattles filled with pebbles or small hard objects were shaken in tribal dances. From there, other more direct sounding instruments were developed which used the feet or hands to produce sounds eg. stampers (used stamping sticks or devices to make sound on board or bark covering hole in ground), slit-drums (stamping on hollowed out tree trunk over a pit), drums (used hands or later sticks to hit membrane stretched over opening of hollow body of any shape), friction instruments (using a tortoise shell or rounded piece of hard wood with four notches cut into it and rubbing it on palms to make a humming or squeaking noise), bull roarers (quickly whirling a thin board attached to a cord overhead making a roaring sound), and scrapers (scraping a notched stick, shell, bone, or gourd with a hard object).

The ribbon reed was the first simple instrument to be played with the mouth like the woodwind instruments. This was just a blade of grass taken from a reed stretched between the two thumbs held side by side and by blowing into the crack the blade would vibrate with a high pitched screeching noise (what young child hasn't done this even today?). More developed civilizations rolled up a wide blade of grass spirally to form a funnel tube with the thin end of the blade crossing the upper opening. Eventually, the flute was developed which was played like most other woodwind instruments: by blowing into the air column of the tube a vibration was created and produced a specific tone. Flutes and other reed woodwind instruments have been played since the Middle Ages (476-1400) and Renaissance period (1400-1600) as they have undergone various changes in design, however, orchestral woodwind instruments are of more recent origin.

The Baroque period (1600-1750) is noted for its radical revolution in music with the need for novelty in the style of composition. There was an emphasis on strong emotion ("What passion cannot music raise and quell" sung by Dryden) requiring a wide range of sound to express passion and the sudden changes from joy to grief. Just like the Middle Ages, the monodic style of singular parts being emphasized returned to music versus the polyphonic style of the Renaissance period in which equal weight was given to all the string, brass, or woodwind instruments played in concert. To achieve this sound, woodwind instruments underwent a variety of improvements and alterations. Instead of being made from one piece of wood or other material, they were now made of two or more pieces fitting tightly together in order to be able to regulate pitch by adjusting the length. Reed woodwind instruments changed the cut of reed and the bore was changed for a smoother tone. Oboe-like instruments were dismissed and only bassoons, smaller oboes, and flutes made up the woodwind instruments of an orchestra.

Romanticism (1750-1900) created additional transformations for woodwind instruments, although the musical style was reminiscent of the 16th century. The expressive emotional music brought about a significant increase in the quantity of timbres and woodwind instruments were changed to be able to modulate from timbre to timbre with greater ease through a variety of technical enhancements. Woodwind instruments were required to have a stronger, more powerful sound in concurrence to society's change from an aristocratic to democratic culture. Overall, the arts evolved from aristocratic reserve to unrestrained passion. To advance the woodwind instruments to meet the changing musical style, technical changes were made for improved musical flexibility, fluency of tonalities, accuracy of pitch, and freer modulation. Addition of keys, position of holes, key placement, key mechanisms, key padding, and sizes of bores were altered. This created more efficient woodwind instruments that were easier to play and maneuver through the ranges. The woodwind instruments section of an orchestra now included not just the oboe, flute, and bassoon, but also the saxophone and clarinet. Families of woodwind instruments were also created eg. soprano, alto, tenor, baritone to enhance the melodies and harmonies and create a fuller sound.

The twentieth century brought about many radical changes in musical styles such as jazz, swing, pop, and rock. However, aside from the introduction of electric instruments (eg. piano, organ, stringed instruments), the amount of changes to woodwind instruments were not as great. Woodwind instruments in the twenty first century today still retain their prototype of the nineteenth century, but can be made from different metals, their mouthpieces are made of differing lengths/widths and reed sizes, and some persons prefer varying colors for their woodwind instruments.

Woodwind instruments have certainly made great strides in their evolution as cultures and societal demands have dictated. Luckily, the preference for certain sounds evolved as well. The music emanating from these woodwind instruments has become pleasurable with the ability to affect our well being deep into our hearts and souls versus the screeching and roaring sounds of some primitive instruments. Let us all enjoy the music deep within us by freely singing a song, dancing to music, or playing woodwind instruments! At http://www.musiciansdreamstore.com you can find highly crafted woodwind instruments at very reasonable prices if you would like to pursue a musical passion or aspiration!