- published: 04 Sep 2013
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Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence. The common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics (loudness and softness), and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture (which are sometimes termed the "color" of a musical sound). Different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and with vocal techniques ranging from singing to rapping, and there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces and pieces that combine singing and instruments. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses"). In its most general form, the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music (songs, tunes, symphonies, and so on), the criticism of music, the study of the history of music, and the aesthetic examination of music. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound."
National Public Radio (NPR) is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States.
NPR produces and distributes news and cultural programming. Individual public radio stations are not required to broadcast all NPR programs that are produced. Most public radio stations broadcast a mixture of NPR programs, content from rival providers American Public Media, Public Radio International and Public Radio Exchange, and locally produced programs. NPR's flagships are two drive time news broadcasts, Morning Edition and the afternoon All Things Considered; both are carried by most NPR member stations, and are two of the most popular radio programs in the country.
NPR manages the Public Radio Satellite System, which distributes NPR programs and other programming from independent producers and networks such as American Public Media and Public Radio International. Its content is also available on-demand via the web, mobile, and podcasts.
A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience.
The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir, or band. Concerts are held in a wide variety and size of settings, from private houses and small nightclubs, dedicated concert halls, entertainment centres and parks to large multipurpose buildings, and even sports stadiums. Indoor concerts held in the largest venues are sometimes called arena concerts or amphitheatre concerts. Informal names for a concert include show and gig.
Regardless of venue, musicians usually perform on a stage. Concerts often require live event support with professional audio equipment. Before recorded music, concerts provided the main opportunity to hear musicians play.
The nature of a concert varies by musical genre, individual performers, and the venue. Concerts by a small jazz combo or small bluegrass band may have the same order of program, mood, and volume—but vary in music and dress. In a similar way, a particular musician, band, or genre of music might attract concert attendees with similar dress, hairstyle, and behavior. For example, concert goers in the 1960s often had long hair (sometimes in dread lock form), sandals and inexpensive clothing made of natural fibers. Regular attendees to a concert venue might also have a recognizable style that comprises that venue's scene.
Tiny, meaning of small size, may refer to:
Bath may refer to:
Baths: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Chvrches: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Saintseneca: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Miramar: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Leon Bridges: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Chris Stapleton: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Joseph: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Common At The White House: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Alt-J: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Baths, a.k.a. Will Wiesenfeld, plays mysterious and textured electronic music. When Wiesenfeld came to the Tiny Desk, I expected contemplative tones and a laid-back performance; he does, after all, call his project Baths. But what sets him apart from the vast majority of like-minded performers is that his music doesn't get buried behind the buttons or lost in a hypnotic glaze. Wiesenfeld is an extrovert live, and at the Tiny Desk, he sounds vibrant and compelling as he performs songs from this year's Obsidian. His partner Morgan Greenwood, an accomplished music-maker in his own right, keeps the music dense but frees up Wiesenfeld to sing with few distractions; there's a mind-meld between the two that's undeniable. They're not accustomed to playing in the light of day, but they enchant in ...
For a brief moment, I imagined hearing Chvrches perform "Recover" or "Gun" with a couple of acoustic guitars and perhaps a shaker or two. And, though these songs would surely stand up well when broken down and bared, I'm thrilled that Chvrches came with a small arsenal of synthesizers to perform a few highlights from last year's album The Bones of What You Believe. Seeing these now-familiar earworms executed up close was nearly as much a campfire moment as an acoustic set might have been, except the flames burned brighter. Lauren Mayberry's voice felt powerful and vulnerable, while Iain Cook and Martin Doherty kept those memorable synth lines bubbling underneath. The result works as a perfect introduction to the Glasgow trio, but also a reaffirmation of talent and longevity for those alre...
One of the many instruments you may hear Saintseneca play — beyond the banjo, baglama, bulbul, balalaika, bowed banjo, baritone ukulele, bass and bouzouki — is a stomp box. Basically, it's a roughly 2'x2' plywood floorboard meant for pounding the beat. At a show just before this Tiny Desk Concert, craftily bearded singer Zac Little put his boot right through that floorboard.Saintseneca had its beginnings in the heart of a small Appalachian town in Ohio, and the band grew up at college in Columbus. This year's Dark Arc is a pastiche of gentle lyrical moments and punk anthems, often within the same tune and often with that aforementioned stomp, straight from a small wooden porch.After Saintseneca left the Tiny Desk, I pointed the band to a hardware store to replace its broken floorboard — on...
Felix Contreras | January 27, 2017 — Some say you have to have loved and lost to appreciate the beauty of the bolero. Since its inception in Cuba in the early 20th century, the music has been designed for thoughtful and emotional consideration of the joys and pains that come with loving someone so intensely, it becomes like a religion to adore that special someone (an actual bolero lyric). When the members of Richmond, Virginia's Miramar first heard the music of Puerto Rican composer Sylvia Rexach, they were intrigued that she wasn't as well known as other popular bolero writers. So they came up with an album's worth of her songs to cover, and have been wowing audiences across the country with their exquisite renditions of her songs. When they pulled into NPR to play behind Bob Boilen's ...
September 08, 2015 by BOB BOILEN We probably should have shot this Tiny Desk Concert in black-and-white. Listening to Leon Bridges, I hear a sound with its heart and soul rooted in 1962. There's purity in his voice that's unadorned, untouched and unaffected by 21st-century pop. It's just soul. Still, the songs from this 26-year-old Fort Worth singer feel refreshing in the context of the day. Surely there's touches of Sam Cooke's spiritual sound, but Leon Bridges has a way of making the familiar feel adventurous and new. It may be because this is all new to him. He only picked up the guitar around the age of twenty and only began listening to classic soul music after friends told him he sounded like R&B; musicians from long ago. What Leon Bridges has tapped into on his debut album with fel...
August 15, 2016 by BOBBY CARTER • Good luck trying to classify Anderson .Paak and his band The Free Nationals. Much of their sound is layered atop a soulful hip-hop foundation; from there, your safest bet is to call it a hodgepodge of genres in the best way possible. Guitarist Jose Rios and bassist Kelsey Gonzalez inject a hard-rock edge into the Hi-Tek-produced "Come Down," this set's opening number. When you hear them play the first few jazz chords of "Heart Don't Stand A Chance," it's hard to simply call this R&B;. It's been a slow build for .Paak, who released a few mixtapes before his 2014 debut album Venice. This year has marked his official breakout with Malibu, on which he did what so many in his position fail to do: He capitalized. After bursting into the spotlight with his appear...
September 14, 2015 by JACOB GANZ As a songwriter in Nashville, Chris Stapleton has written hits for Kenny Chesney, George Strait and Darius Rucker. As a singer, he once led the bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, and more recently stepped into the solo spotlight with Traveller, his debut album. It's the kind of country record that gets better the more you wear it in: When NPR Music named it one of our favorite albums of the first half of 2015, critic Ann Powers compared it to a "soft denim jacket ... pulled out time after time, lending comfort, suiting every occasion, with treasure stuffed in every pocket." It's easy to understand why other singers took to his songs — Stapleton writes lyrics that sound classic but never dated — but his softly creaking voice gives them the home they deserve....
Bob Boilen | October 28, 2016 - My first experience seeing Joseph was in 2014 as an opening act in New York City. It was just the twins Meegan and Allison Closner and their older sister, Natalie Closner, and it was clear then they had something special. Over these two years, Joseph's sound has grown beyond the Closners' harmonies. Now, you're likely to see them with a band or hear songs from their latest record, which is filled with sounds far beyond voice and acoustic guitar. It's been a treat to witness Joseph's journey, but I was also fairly thrilled that for their Tiny Desk the sisters stripped it down to their original setup: three voices and one guitar. It's those essentials that will likely remain their strength, and hearing these songs from I'm Alone, No You're Not outside a studi...
October 4, 2016 by BOB BOILEN • We've never done a Tiny Desk Concert that wasn't behind my desk at NPR. But when the White House called and said they were putting on an event called South by South Lawn, a day-long festival filled with innovators and creators from the worlds of technology and art, including music, we jumped at the chance to get involved. We chose Common as the performer and the White House library as the space. This Tiny Desk Concert was a convergence of art and soul, mixing politics with heart. Common's choice of songs dealt with incarceration as the new slavery, imagined a time where women rule the world and honored the man he looked up to all his life, his father. For this occasion Common put together a special six-piece band of close friends that includes the great Rob...
There's mystery in the music of Alt-J: The band's songs are wrapped in enigmatic textures, with swift shifts in arrangements inside every song and an oddness to the drums. Mere glimpses of lyrics are discernible, even after listening over and over — and if you can decipher the words, the meanings don't necessarily follow immediately. Still, those words reside at the core of Alt-J, and they're cinematic and stunning and sometimes brutal. Seeing Alt-J live in concert — or here at the Tiny Desk — reveals a few of those mysteries, making a band that can be difficult on first listen a bit easier to digest. For one, seeing Joe Newman sing makes his words less oblique; for another, that curious rhythm at the foundation of the songs reveals not a hint of cymbals. And, though the drums are strippe...
Baths, a.k.a. Will Wiesenfeld, plays mysterious and textured electronic music. When Wiesenfeld came to the Tiny Desk, I expected contemplative tones and a laid-back performance; he does, after all, call his project Baths. But what sets him apart from the vast majority of like-minded performers is that his music doesn't get buried behind the buttons or lost in a hypnotic glaze. Wiesenfeld is an extrovert live, and at the Tiny Desk, he sounds vibrant and compelling as he performs songs from this year's Obsidian. His partner Morgan Greenwood, an accomplished music-maker in his own right, keeps the music dense but frees up Wiesenfeld to sing with few distractions; there's a mind-meld between the two that's undeniable. They're not accustomed to playing in the light of day, but they enchant in ...
For a brief moment, I imagined hearing Chvrches perform "Recover" or "Gun" with a couple of acoustic guitars and perhaps a shaker or two. And, though these songs would surely stand up well when broken down and bared, I'm thrilled that Chvrches came with a small arsenal of synthesizers to perform a few highlights from last year's album The Bones of What You Believe. Seeing these now-familiar earworms executed up close was nearly as much a campfire moment as an acoustic set might have been, except the flames burned brighter. Lauren Mayberry's voice felt powerful and vulnerable, while Iain Cook and Martin Doherty kept those memorable synth lines bubbling underneath. The result works as a perfect introduction to the Glasgow trio, but also a reaffirmation of talent and longevity for those alre...
One of the many instruments you may hear Saintseneca play — beyond the banjo, baglama, bulbul, balalaika, bowed banjo, baritone ukulele, bass and bouzouki — is a stomp box. Basically, it's a roughly 2'x2' plywood floorboard meant for pounding the beat. At a show just before this Tiny Desk Concert, craftily bearded singer Zac Little put his boot right through that floorboard.Saintseneca had its beginnings in the heart of a small Appalachian town in Ohio, and the band grew up at college in Columbus. This year's Dark Arc is a pastiche of gentle lyrical moments and punk anthems, often within the same tune and often with that aforementioned stomp, straight from a small wooden porch.After Saintseneca left the Tiny Desk, I pointed the band to a hardware store to replace its broken floorboard — on...
Felix Contreras | January 27, 2017 — Some say you have to have loved and lost to appreciate the beauty of the bolero. Since its inception in Cuba in the early 20th century, the music has been designed for thoughtful and emotional consideration of the joys and pains that come with loving someone so intensely, it becomes like a religion to adore that special someone (an actual bolero lyric). When the members of Richmond, Virginia's Miramar first heard the music of Puerto Rican composer Sylvia Rexach, they were intrigued that she wasn't as well known as other popular bolero writers. So they came up with an album's worth of her songs to cover, and have been wowing audiences across the country with their exquisite renditions of her songs. When they pulled into NPR to play behind Bob Boilen's ...
September 08, 2015 by BOB BOILEN We probably should have shot this Tiny Desk Concert in black-and-white. Listening to Leon Bridges, I hear a sound with its heart and soul rooted in 1962. There's purity in his voice that's unadorned, untouched and unaffected by 21st-century pop. It's just soul. Still, the songs from this 26-year-old Fort Worth singer feel refreshing in the context of the day. Surely there's touches of Sam Cooke's spiritual sound, but Leon Bridges has a way of making the familiar feel adventurous and new. It may be because this is all new to him. He only picked up the guitar around the age of twenty and only began listening to classic soul music after friends told him he sounded like R&B; musicians from long ago. What Leon Bridges has tapped into on his debut album with fel...
August 15, 2016 by BOBBY CARTER • Good luck trying to classify Anderson .Paak and his band The Free Nationals. Much of their sound is layered atop a soulful hip-hop foundation; from there, your safest bet is to call it a hodgepodge of genres in the best way possible. Guitarist Jose Rios and bassist Kelsey Gonzalez inject a hard-rock edge into the Hi-Tek-produced "Come Down," this set's opening number. When you hear them play the first few jazz chords of "Heart Don't Stand A Chance," it's hard to simply call this R&B;. It's been a slow build for .Paak, who released a few mixtapes before his 2014 debut album Venice. This year has marked his official breakout with Malibu, on which he did what so many in his position fail to do: He capitalized. After bursting into the spotlight with his appear...
September 14, 2015 by JACOB GANZ As a songwriter in Nashville, Chris Stapleton has written hits for Kenny Chesney, George Strait and Darius Rucker. As a singer, he once led the bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, and more recently stepped into the solo spotlight with Traveller, his debut album. It's the kind of country record that gets better the more you wear it in: When NPR Music named it one of our favorite albums of the first half of 2015, critic Ann Powers compared it to a "soft denim jacket ... pulled out time after time, lending comfort, suiting every occasion, with treasure stuffed in every pocket." It's easy to understand why other singers took to his songs — Stapleton writes lyrics that sound classic but never dated — but his softly creaking voice gives them the home they deserve....
Bob Boilen | October 28, 2016 - My first experience seeing Joseph was in 2014 as an opening act in New York City. It was just the twins Meegan and Allison Closner and their older sister, Natalie Closner, and it was clear then they had something special. Over these two years, Joseph's sound has grown beyond the Closners' harmonies. Now, you're likely to see them with a band or hear songs from their latest record, which is filled with sounds far beyond voice and acoustic guitar. It's been a treat to witness Joseph's journey, but I was also fairly thrilled that for their Tiny Desk the sisters stripped it down to their original setup: three voices and one guitar. It's those essentials that will likely remain their strength, and hearing these songs from I'm Alone, No You're Not outside a studi...
October 4, 2016 by BOB BOILEN • We've never done a Tiny Desk Concert that wasn't behind my desk at NPR. But when the White House called and said they were putting on an event called South by South Lawn, a day-long festival filled with innovators and creators from the worlds of technology and art, including music, we jumped at the chance to get involved. We chose Common as the performer and the White House library as the space. This Tiny Desk Concert was a convergence of art and soul, mixing politics with heart. Common's choice of songs dealt with incarceration as the new slavery, imagined a time where women rule the world and honored the man he looked up to all his life, his father. For this occasion Common put together a special six-piece band of close friends that includes the great Rob...
There's mystery in the music of Alt-J: The band's songs are wrapped in enigmatic textures, with swift shifts in arrangements inside every song and an oddness to the drums. Mere glimpses of lyrics are discernible, even after listening over and over — and if you can decipher the words, the meanings don't necessarily follow immediately. Still, those words reside at the core of Alt-J, and they're cinematic and stunning and sometimes brutal. Seeing Alt-J live in concert — or here at the Tiny Desk — reveals a few of those mysteries, making a band that can be difficult on first listen a bit easier to digest. For one, seeing Joe Newman sing makes his words less oblique; for another, that curious rhythm at the foundation of the songs reveals not a hint of cymbals. And, though the drums are strippe...