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

Peak Hour (album)

Peak Hour is an album by Psychic TV.

Credits and liner notes

Catalog numbers

Track listing

CD version

12" vinyl version

Side A

Side B

Very Important Person

A very important person (VIP) is a person who is accorded special privileges due to his or her status or importance.

Examples include celebrities, heads of state or heads of government, other politicians, major employers, high rollers, high-level corporate officers, wealthy individuals, or any other notable person who receives special treatment for any reason. The special treatment usually involves separation from common people, and a higher level of comfort or service. In some cases such as with tickets, VIP may be used as a title in a similar way to premium. These "VIP tickets" can be purchased by anyone, but still meaning separation from other customers, own security checks etc.

VIP syndrome

VIP syndrome is when a perceived VIP uses his/her status to influence a given professional to make unorthodox decisions under the pressure or presence of the individual. The phenomenon can occur in any profession that has relationships with wealthy, famous, and powerful clients or patients, particularly medical or airline professions. One example is the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash.

VIP (magazine)

VIP (standing for Very Important Person) is both the title of a magazine and a publishing group owned by the Irish publisher Michael O'Doherty.

O'Doherty is a well-known and controversial public figure and media pundit who writes a long-running column for the Independent Newspaper Group and has appeared on the reality TV programme Come Dine With Me. His speeches at the high-profile VIP Style Awards, in which he annually satirises members of the Irish celebrity scene, have been widely circulated.

The VIP group currently consists of three titles (VIP, TV Now, Stellar) and four companies (Minjara Limited ("Minjara"), Vymura Limited ("Vymura"), Barndee Limited ("Barndee") and VIP Publishing Limited).

VIP (hip hop group)

VIP (Vision In Progress) is a Ghanaian Hiplife group.

Made up of Promzy (Emmanuel Promzy Ababio), Prodigal (Joseph Nana Ofori), and Lazzy, now Zeal (Abdul Hamid Ibrahim) from a ghetto suburb in Accra, Ghana called Nima.

Formation

The founder of this group is actually Friction (Musah Haruna) who formed this group with a friend of his who later had to leave the group for the U.S. to finish his education. So Friction proposed the idea to four people (Promzy, Lazzy, Prodigal, Bone-later left the group) and before they knew it, the five of them were performing at ghetto parties, clubs, street festivals etc.

Friction's dog, Chicago, was also an official member of the group. You could hear the dog growling at the end of their tracks from the late 1990s. Eventually Chicago died.

Albums