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This is a list of musical terms that are likely to be encountered in printed scores. Most of the defined terms are Italian (see also Italian musical terms used in English), in accordance with the Italian origins of many European musical conventions. Sometimes, the special musical meanings of these phrases differ from the original or current Italian meanings. Most of the other defined terms are taken from French and German, indicated by "(Fr)" and "(Ger)", respectively. Others are from languages such as Latin and Spanish. Unless specified, the terms are Italian or English. The list can never be complete: some terms are common, and others are used only occasionally, and new ones are coined from time to time. Some composers prefer terms from their own language rather than the standard definition of terms here.

A

• a, à (Fr) – at, to, by, for, in, in the style of
• aber (Ger) – but
• a cappella – in the manner of singing in a chapel; i.e., without instrumental accompaniment
• accelerando – accelerating; gradually increasing the tempo
• accentato – accented; with emphasis
• acciaccatura – crushing; i.e., a very fast grace note that is "crushed" against the note that follows and takes up no value in the measure
• accompagnato – accompanied; i.e., with the accompaniment following the soloist, who may speed up or slow down at will
• adagietto – rather slow
• adagio – at ease; i.e., slow
• adagissimo – very slow
• ad libitum (commonly ad lib; Latin) – at liberty; i.e., the speed and manner of execution are left to the performer
• affettuoso – tenderly
• affrettando – hurrying, pressing onwards
• agile – swiftly
• agitato – agitated
• al, alla – to the, in the manner of (al before masculine nouns, alla before feminine)
• alla breve – two minim (half-note) beats to a bar, rather than four crotchet (quarter-note) beats
• alla marcia – in the style of a march
• allargando – broadening, becoming a little slower
• allegretto – a little lively, moderately fast
• allegro – cheerful or brisk; but commonly interpreted as lively, fast
• als (Ger) – than
• altissimo – very high
• alto – high; often refers to a particular range of voice, higher than a tenor but lower than a soprano
• am Steg (Ger) – at the bridge; i.e., playing a bowed string instrument near its bridge (see sul ponticello in this list)
• amabile – amiable, pleasant
• amoroso – loving
• andante – at a walking pace; i.e., at a moderate tempo, just this side of slow
• andantino – slightly faster than andante (but earlier it sometimes used to mean slightly slower than andante)
• animato – animated, lively
• antiphon – a liturgical or other composition consisting of choral responses, sometimes between two choirs; a passage of this nature forming part of another composition
• apaisé (Fr) – calmed
• a piacere – at pleasure; i.e., the performer need not follow the rhythm strictly
• appassionato – passionately
• appoggiatura – a grace note that "leans" on the following note, taking up some of its value in the measure
• a prima vista – at first sight; i.e., playing something at first sight of the sheet music
• arietta – a short aria
• arioso – airy, or like an air (a melody); i.e., in the manner of an aria; melodious
• arpeggio – like a harp; i.e., the notes of the chords are to be played quickly one after another (usually ascending) instead of simultaneously. In music for piano, this is sometimes a solution in playing a wide-ranging chord whose notes cannot be played otherwise. Music generated by the limited hardware of video game computers uses a similar technique to create a chord from one tone generator. Arpeggios (or arpeggi) are also accompaniment patterns. See also broken chord in this list.
• arco – the bow used for playing some string instrument; i.e., played with the bow, as opposed to pizzicato (plucked), in music for bowed instruments; normally used to cancel a pizzicato direction
• assai – very
• assez (Fr) – enough, sufficiently; sometimes used in the same sense as assai
• a tempo – in time; i.e., the performer should return to the main tempo of the piece (after an accelerando or ritardando, etc.); also may be found in combination with other terms such as a tempo giusto (in strict time) or a tempo di menuetto (at the speed of a minuet)
• attacca – attack, or go on; i.e., at the end of a movement, a direction to begin (attack) the next movement immediately, without a gap or pause
• Ausdruck (Ger) – expression
• ausdrucksvoll (Ger) – expressively
• avec (Fr) – with

B

• barbaro – barbarous
• basso continuo – continuous bass; i.e., a bass part played continuously throughout a piece to give harmonic structure, used especially in the Baroque period
• beat – (1) the pronounced rhythm of music; (2) one single stroke of a rhythmic accent
• bellicoso – warlike, aggressive
• ben or bene – well, as in, for example, ben marcato (meaning "well-marked")
• bewegt (Ger) – moved, speeded
• bis – twice; i.e., repeat the relevant action or passage
• bisbigliando – whispering; i.e., a special tremolo effect on the harp where a chord or note is rapidly repeated ata low volume
• bocca chiusa – with closed mouth
• bravura – boldness; as in con bravura, boldly
• breit – broad
• brillante – brilliantly, with sparkle
• brio – vigour; usually in con brio (see in this list)
• brioso – vigorously (same as con brio)
• broken chord – a chord in which the notes are not all played at once, but in some more or less consistent sequence. They may follow singly one after the other, or two notes may be immediately followed by another two, for example. See also arpeggio in this list, which as an accompaniment pattern may be seen as a kind of broken chord; see Alberti bass.
• bruscamente – brusquely

C

• cadenza – a cadence; i.e., a florid solo, often improvised or (more commonly in modern practice) in improvisatory style, usually near the end of a movement (but sometimes played between the development and recapitulation sections), embellishing and elaborating on a perfect cadence, sometimes at considerable length
• calando – lowering; i.e., getting slower and softer: ritardando along with diminuendo
• cambiare – to change; i.e., any change, such as to a new instrument
• cantabile – singingly
• capo – head; i.e., the beginning (of a movement, normally)
• capriccioso – capriciously
• cédez (Fr) – yield, give way
• cesura or caesura (Latin form) – break, stop; i.e., a complete break in sound (sometimes called "railroad tracks")
• chiuso – closed; i.e., muted by hand (for a horn, or similar instrument; but see also bocca chiusa, which uses the feminine form, in this list)
• coda – a tail; i.e., a closing section appended to a movement
• codetta – a small coda (see last), but usually applied to a passage appended to a section of a movement, not to a whole movement
• col, colla – with the (col before a masculine noun, colla before a feminine noun); (see next for example)
• colla parte – with the soloist
• colla voce – with the voice
• col legno – with the wood; i.e., the strings (for example, of a violin) are to be struck with the wood of the bow; also battuta col legno: beaten with the wood
• coloratura – coloration; i.e., elaborate ornamentation of a vocal line, or (especially) a soprano voice suited to such elaboration
• colossale – tremendously
• col pugno – with the fist; i.e., bang the piano with the fist
• come prima – like the first (time); i.e., as before, typically referring to an earlier tempo
• come sopra – as above; i.e., like the previous tempo (usually)
• common time – the time signature 4/4: four beats per measure, each beat a quarter note (a crotchet) in length. 4/4 is often written on the musical staff as 'C'. The symbol is not a C as an abbreviation for common time, but a broken circle. The full circle at one time stood for triple time, 3/4.
• comodo – comfortable; i.e., at moderate speed
• con – with; used in very many musical directions, for example con allegrezza (with liveliness), con amore (with tenderness); (see also col, colla, above)
• con amore, or (in Spanish and sometimes in Italian) con amor – with love, tenderly
• con affetto – with affect (that is, with emotion)
• con brio – with spirit, with vigour
• con effetto – with effect
• con fuoco – with fire, in a fiery manner
• con moto – with motion
• con slancio – with enthusiasm
• con sordino – with the mute
• coperti (plural of coperto, which may also be seen) – covered; i.e., on a drum, muted with a cloth
• crescendo – growing; i.e., progressively louder (contrast diminuendo)
• cut time – same as the meter 2/2: two half-note (minim) beats per measure. Notated and played like common time (4/4), except with the beat lengths doubled. Indicated by three quarters of a circle with a vertical line through it, which resembles the cent symbol '¢'. This comes from a literal cut of the 'C' symbol of common time. Thus, a quarter note in cut time is only half a beat long, and a measure has only two beats. See also alla breve.

D

• da capo – from the head; i.e., from the beginning (see capo in this list)
• deciso – decisively
• decrescendo – same as diminuendo or dim. (see below)
• delicatamente – delicately
• devoto – religiously
• diminuendo, dim. – dwindling; i.e., with gradually decreasing volume (same as decrescendo)
• dissonante – dissonant
• divisi or div. – divided; i.e., in a part in which several musicians normally play exactly the same notes they are instead to split the playing of the written simultaneous notes among themselves. It is most often used for string instruments, since with them another means of execution is often possible. (The return from divisi is marked unisono: see in this list.)
• dolce – sweetly
• dolcissimo – very sweetly
• dolente – sorrowfully, plaintively
• doloroso – sorrowfully, plaintively
• D.S. al coda or dal segno al coda (or, strictly but rarely seen, ...alla coda) – from the sign to the coda; i.e., return to a place in the music designated by the sign (a marking resembling a letter S with a diagonal through it and a dot to either side) and continue until directed to move to the coda, a separate ending section. (See Coda in this list.)
• D.S. al fine or dal segno al fine – from the sign to the end; i.e., return to a place in the music designated by the sign (see preceding entry) and continue to the end of the piece.
• Duple Meter - A meter, or time signature, where the basic unit of pulse of the music recurs in groups of 2 (cut time or 2/2, 2/4, 4/4). Duple meter is historically associated with Marches but can be found in nearly all forms of contemporary music.
• dur (Ger) – major; used in key signatures as, for example, A-dur (A major), B-dur (B� major), or H-dur (B major). (See also moll (minor) in this list.)
• dynamics – refers to the relative volumes in the execution of a piece of music. (See dynamics (music)).

E

• echo – an effect in which a group of notes is repeated, usually more softly, and perhaps at a different octave, to create an echo effect
• Empfindung (Ger) – feeling
• encore (Fr) – again; i.e., perform the relevant passage once more
• energico – energetic, strong
• enfatico – emphatically
• eroico – heroically
• espirando – expiring; i.e., dying away
• espressivo – expressively
• estinto – extinct, extinguished; i.e., as soft as possible, lifeless

F

• facile – easily
• fermata – finished, closed; i.e., a rest or note is to be held for a duration that is at the discretion of the performer or conductor (sometimes called bird's eye)
• feroce – ferociously
• fieramente – proudly
• fine – the end, often in phrases like al fine (to the end)
• flebile – mournfully
• focoso or fuocoso – fiery; i.e., passionately
• forte or f (usually) – strong; i.e., to be played or sung loudly
• fortepiano – strong-gentle; i.e., 1. loud, then immediately soft (see dynamics), or 2. an early pianoforte
• fortissimo – as loudly as possible (see note at pianissimo, in this list)
• forzando or fz – see sforzando in this list
• fresco – freshly
• fuoco – fire; con fuoco means with fire
• furioso – wildly

G

• gaudioso – with joy
• gentile – gently
• geschwind (Ger) – quickly
• getragen (Ger) – sustainedly
• giocoso – gaily
• giusto – strictly, exactly
• glissando (simulated Italian) – a continuous sliding from one pitch to another (a true glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another (an effective glissando). See glissando for further information; and compare portamento in this list.
• grandioso – grandly
• grave – slowly and seriously
• grazioso – gracefully
• gustoso – with gusto

H

• Hauptstimme (Ger) – "head" voice, chief part; i.e., the contrapuntal line of primary importance, in opposition to Nebenstimme

I

• immer (Ger) – always
• imperioso – imperiously
• impetuoso – impetuously
• improvisando – with improvisation
• in altissimo – in the highest; i.e., play or sing an octave higher
• incalzando – getting faster and louder (the exact opposite of calando)
• in modo di – in the art of, in the style of
• intimo – intimately
• irato – angrily

K

• kräftig (Ger) – strongly

L

• l'istesso – the same
• lacrimoso – tearfully; i.e., sadly
• lamentando – lamenting, mournfully
• lamentoso – lamenting, mournfully
• langsam (Ger) – slowly
• larghetto – somewhat slowly; not as slow as largo
• largo – broadly; i.e., slowly
• lebhaft (Ger) – briskly, lively
• legato – joined; i.e., smoothly, in a connected manner (see also articulation)
• leggiero – lightly, delicately
• lent (Fr) – slowly
• lento – slowly
• liberamente – freely
• libero – free, freely
• loco – [in] place; i.e., perform the notes at the pitch written (generally used to cancel an 8va direction)
• lugubre – lugubrious
• luminoso – luminously
• lusingando – coaxingly

M

• ma – but
• ma non troppo – but not too much
• maestoso – majestically, in a stately fashion
• magico – magically
• magnifico – magnificent
• main droite (Fr) – [played with the] right hand (abbreviation: MD or m.d.)
• main gauche (Fr) – [played with the] left hand (abbreviation: MG or m.g.)
• malinconico – melancholy
• mano destra – [played with the] right hand (abbreviation: MD or m.d.)
• mano sinistra – [played with the] left hand (abbreviation: MS or m.s.)
• marcatissimo – very accentuatedly
• marcato – marked; i.e., accentuatedly, play every note as if it were to be accented
• marcia – a march; alla marcia means in the manner of a march
• martellato – hammered out
• marziale – in the march style
• mässig (Ger) – moderately
• MD – see mano destra and main droite
• melancolico – melancholic
• melisma – the technique of changing the note (pitch) of a syllable of text while it is being sung
• measure – the period of a musical piece that encompasses a complete cycle of the time signature, e.g., in 4/4 time, a measure has four quarter-note beats
• meno – less; see meno mosso, for example, under mosso
• mesto – mournful, sad
• meter (or metre) – the pattern of a music piece's rhythm of strong and weak beats
• mezza voce – half voice; i.e., with subdued or moderated volume
• mezzo – half; used in combinations like mezzo forte (mf), meaning moderately loud
• mezzo forte – half loudly; i.e., moderately loudly. See dynamics.
• mezzo piano – half softly; i.e., moderately softly. See dynamics.
• mezzo-soprano – a female singer with a range usually extending from the A below middle C to the F an eleventh above middle C. Mezzo-sopranos generally have a darker vocal tone than sopranos, and their vocal range is between that of a soprano and that of an alto.
• MG – see main gauche
• misterioso – mysteriously
• mobile – flexible, changeable
• moderato – moderate; often combined with other terms, usually relating to tempo; for example, allegro moderato
• modesto – modest
• moll (Ger) – minor; used in key signatures as, for example, a-moll (A minor), b-moll (B� minor), or h-moll (B minor) (see also dur (major) in this list)
• molto – very
• morendo – dying; i.e., dying away in dynamics, and perhaps also in tempo
• mosso – moved, moving; used with a preceding più or meno (see in this list), for faster or slower respectively
• MS – see mano sinistra
• moto – motion; usually seen as con moto, meaning with motion or quickly
• Moto primo - First (the feminine form) motion
• munter (Ger) – lively

N

• narrante – narratingly
• naturale or nat. – natural; i.e., discontinue a special effect, such as col legno, sul tasto, sul ponticello, or playing in harmonics
• Nebenstimme (Ger) – under part; i.e., a secondary contrapuntal part, always occurring simultaneously with, and subsidiary to, the Hauptstimme
• nicht (zu) schnell (Ger) – not (too) fast
• nobile – in a noble fashion
• notes inégales (Fr) – unequal notes; i.e., a principally Baroque performance practice of applying long-short rhythms to pairs of notes written as equal

O

• omaggio – homage, celebration
• ossia – or instead; i.e., according to some specified alternative way of performing a passage, which is marked with a footnote, additional small notes, or an additional staff
• ostinato – obstinate, persistent; i.e., a short musical pattern that is repeated throughout an entire composition or portion of a composition

P

• passionato – passionately
• pesante – heavy, ponderous
• peu à peu (Fr) – little by little

Note: it should be noted that any dynamics in a piece should always be played relative to the other dynamics found in the music. Thus, pp should be played as softly as possible, but if ppp is found later in the piece, pp should be markedly louder than ppp. Likewise, ff should be played as loud as possible, but if fff is found later in the piece, ff should be noticeably quieter. More than three ps (ppp) or three fs (fff) are uncommon.

• pianissimo or pp (usually) – very gently; i.e., perform very softly, even softer than piano. This convention can be extended; the more p's that are written, the softer the composer wants the musician to play, thus ppp (pianississimo) would be softer than pp.
• piano or p (usually) – gently; i.e., played or sung softly (see dynamics)
• piano-vocal score – the same as a vocal score, a piano arrangement along with the vocal parts of an opera, cantata, or similar
• piacevole – pleasant
• piangevole – plaintive
• più – more; see mosso for an example
• pizzicato – pinched, plucked; i.e., in music for bowed strings, plucked with the fingers as opposed to played with the bow; compare arco (in this list), which is inserted to cancel a pizzicato instruction
• pochettino or poch. – very little
• poco – a little, as in poco più allegro (a little faster)
• poco a poco – little by little
• poco moto - a little motion
• poi – then, indicating a subsequent instruction in a sequence; diminuendo poi subito fortissimo, for example: getting softer then suddenly very loud
• portamento – carrying; i.e., 1. generally, sliding in pitch from one note to another (especially in singing; more often called glissando in instrumental music); or 2. in piano music, an articulation between legato and staccato, like portato, in this list
• portato – carried; i.e., non-legato, but not as detached as staccato (same as portamento [2], in this list)
• posato – settled
• potpourri or pot-pourri (Fr) – potpourri (as used in other senses in English); i.e., a kind of musical form structured as ABCDEF... etc.; the same as medley or, sometimes, fantasia
• precipitato – precipitately
• prestissimo – extremely quickly, as fast as possible
• presto – very quickly
• prima volta – the first time; for example prima volta senza accompanimento (the first time without accompaniment)
• primo or prima (the feminine form) – first

Q

• quasi (Latin and Italian) – as if, almost

R

• rallentando or rall. – progressively slower
• rapido – fast
• rasch (Ger) – fast
• religioso – religiously
• repente – suddenly
• restez (Fr) – stay; i.e., remain on a note or string
• rinforzando (rf) – reinforced; i.e., emphasized; sometimes like a sudden crescendo, but often applied to a single note
• risoluto – resolutely
• rit. – an abbreviation for ritardando[1][2][3][4]; also less frequently considered an abbreviation for ritenuto[5][6][7]
• ritardando, ritard. – slowing down; decelerating; opposite of accelerando (see in this list)
• ritenuto, riten. – held back; i.e., slower (usually more so but more temporarily than a ritardando, and it may, unlike ritardando, apply to a single note)
• roulade (Fr) – a rolling; i.e., a florid vocal phrase
• rubato – robbed; i.e., flexible in tempo, applied to notes within a musical phrase for expressive effect

S

• sanft (Ger) – gently
• scherzando – playfully
• scherzo – a joke; i.e., a musical form, originally and usually in fast triple time, often replacing the minuet in the later Classical period and the Romantic period, in symphonies, sonatas, string quartets and the like; in the 19th century some scherzi were independent movements for piano, etc.
• schnell (Ger) – fast
• schneller (Ger) – faster
• scordatura – out of tune; i.e., an alternative tuning used for the strings of a string instrument
• secco – dry
• sehr (Ger) – very
• sempre – always
• senza – without
• senza sordino – without the mute
• serioso – seriously
• sforzando or sfz – made loud; i.e., a sudden strong accent
• silencio – silence
• simile – similarly; i.e., continue applying the preceding directive, whatever it was, to the following passage.
• smorzando or smorz. – dying away, extinguishing or dampening; usually interpreted as a drop in dynamics, and very often in tempo as well
• soave – smoothly, gently
• solo, plural soli – alone; i.e., played by a single instrument. The instruction soli requires more than one player; in a jazz big band this refers to an entire section playing in harmony.
• sostenuto – sustained
• sotto voce – under voice; i.e., softly and subdued, as if speaking under one's breath
• spiccato – distinct, separated; i.e., a way of playing the violin and other bowed instruments by bouncing the bow on the string, giving a characteristic staccato effect
• spiritoso – spiritedly
• staccato – an indication to play with a sharp attack, and briefly. In music notation a small dot under or over the note indicates that it is to be sounded staccato.
• stanza – a verse of a song
• strepitoso – noisy
• stretto – tight, narrow; i.e., faster or hastening ahead; also, a passage in a fugue in which the contrapuntal texture is denser, with close overlapping entries of the subject in different voices; by extension, similar closely imitative passages in other compositions
• stringendo – tightening, narrowing; i.e., with a pressing forward or acceleration of the tempo (that is, becoming stretto, see preceding entry)
• subito – suddenly
• sul ponticello – on the bridge; i.e., in string playing, an indication to bow (or sometimes to pluck) very near to the bridge, producing a characteristic glassy sound, which emphasizes the higher harmonics at the expense of the fundamental; the opposite of sul tasto
• sul tasto – on the fingerboard; i.e., in string playing, an indication to bow (or sometimes to pluck) over the fingerboard; the opposite of sul ponticello

T

• tacet – silent; do not play
• tempo – time; i.e., the overall speed of a piece of music
• teneramente – tenderly
• tenuto – held; i.e., touch on a note slightly longer than usual, but without generally altering the note's value
• tranquillo – calmly, peacefully
• tremendo – frightening
• tremolo – shaking; i.e., a rapid repetition of the same note, or an alternation between two or more notes. It can also be intended (inaccurately) to mean a rapid and repetitive variation in pitch for the duration of a note (see vibrato). It is notated by a strong diagonal bar across the note stem, or a detached bar for a set of notes (or stemless notes).
• tre corde or tc (or sometimes inaccurately tre corda) – three strings; i.e., release the soft pedal of the piano (see una corda)
• troppo – too much; usually seen as non troppo, meaning moderately or, when combined with other terms, not too much, such as allegro [ma] non troppo (fast but not too fast)
• tutti – all; i.e., all together, usually used in an orchestral or choral score when the orchestra or all of the voices come in at the same time, also seen in Baroque-era music where two instruments share the same copy of music, after one instrument has broken off to play a more advanced form: they both play together again at the point marked tutti. See also: ripieno.

U

• un, uno, or una – one, as for example in the following entries
• una corda – one string; i.e., in piano music, depress the soft pedal, altering, and reducing the volume of, the sound. In some pianos, this literally results in the hammer striking one string rather than two or three. (For most notes on modern instruments, in fact it results in striking two rather than three strings.) Its counterpart, tre corde (three strings; see in this list), is the opposite: the soft pedal is to be released.
• un poco – a little
• unisono or unis (Fr) – in unison; i.e., several players in a group are to play exactly the same notes within their written part, as opposed to splitting simultaneous notes among themselves. Often used to mark the return from divisi (see in this list).

V

• vibrato – vibrating; i.e., a more or less rapidly repeated slight alteration in the pitch of a note, used to give a richer sound and as a means of expression. Often confused with tremolo, which refers either to a similar variation in the volume of a note, or to rapid repetition of a single note.
• vittorioso – victoriously
• vivo – lively
• vivace – very lively, up-tempo
• vivacissimo – very lively
• vocal score or piano-vocal score – a music score of an opera, or a vocal or choral composition with orchestra (like oratorio or cantata) where the vocal parts are written out in full but the accompaniment is reduced to two staves and adapted for playing on piano.
• volante – flying
• VS (volti subito) – turn suddenly; i.e., turn the page quickly

W

• wolno (Polish) – loose, slowly; found as a directive in The Elephant from The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns

Z

• Zählzeit (Ger) – beat
• zart (Ger) – tender
• Zartheit (Ger) – tenderness
• zärtlich (Ger) – tenderly
• Zeichen (Ger) – sign
• Zeitmass, also spelled Zeitmaß (Ger) – time-measure, i.e., tempo
• zelo, zeloso, zelosamente (It.) – zeal, zealous, zealously
• ziehen (Ger) – to draw out
• zitternd (Ger) trembling; i.e., tremolando
• zögernd (Ger) – doubtful, delaying; i.e., rallentando

Why is it so hard to improve on your instrument, even though you know you've practiced? Unfortunately, the adage "practice makes perfect" isn’t always true. Instead, improper practice often leads to poor results, not perfect playing. Why? Many of us simply don't know how to practice productively. The following overview of the fundamentals of practicing will provide you with useful ways you can create your own productive practice sessions.

Know what to work on

Know what needs to be achieved in each practice time

Work on small sections of a piece

Small sections practised slowly and thoroughly are always more successful than longer passages given less care

Don't over practice

Know when to stop. Focused work for a short period is better than playing through for longer

Take hard things slower

What you can't play slowly you can't play fast

Practice sightreading

The only way to learn to sight read is to sight read

Don't practise when you're tired

You will make more mistakes

Don't make practice a chore

The more like a chore the practice it, the less enjoyable it is

Practice daily

Daily practice is best. If you need to take off one day a week, that's OK, but don't skip the day just after your lesson. Right after your lesson is when your memory retention is at its peak - your best practice time!

Quality practice

The quality of your practice is at least as important as the quantity. You will get more benefit from really concentrating for 15 minutes than from mechanically going through songs for 30 minutes

Remember dynamics and phrasing

Once you know the notes and the rhythm, add the dynamics and phrasing

Have a Pencil

In your practice area... at rehearsal...at lessons... havea pencil at hand! Yes, I know we all have astounding memories, but a pencil never forgets. A mistake such as a wrong note or incorrect dynamic is forgivable ONCE! Mark it and it won't happen again. Besides these obvious mistakes, a pencil can remind you of alternate positions, accidentals, or certain inflections in a given phrase. In short, the pencil IS your memory! Many great players have developed their own "shorthand" of symbols and markings they use to help them in performance.

Musical Lines

No matter what lies in front of us on the stand, we should always treat it as MUSIC. This goes for warm-ups, scales, etudes, concertos,... absolutely everything that you play. Don't allow your brain to go on "auto-pilot" when warming up; try to make expressive and meaningful musical lines from the most mundane material. This can be very challenging indeed when working on scales! But remember, 99.9% of the music you'll play is based on scales.

Location

When you practice, find a quiet room where you won't be disturbed. Turn off the TV, put away your CD player, and turn on the answering machine.

The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, initially named the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, was founded by Clarence Leonidas Fender in 1946, and is one of the most widely recognised manufacturers of electric guitars, electric basses and guitar amplifiers, while it also manufactures acoustic guitars and other audio-related products.

Fender is particularly important because of its role in bringing solid body electric guitars to the masses. Fender offered the first mass-produced solid-body Spanish-style electric guitar, the Telecaster (originally named the 'Broadcaster', 'Esquire' is a single pickup version); the first mass-produced electric bass, the Precision Bass (P-Bass); and the enormously popular Stratocaster (Strat) guitar. While Fender was not the first to manufacture electric guitars, as other companies and luthiers had produced electric guitars since the late 1920s, none were as commercially successful as Fender's. Furthermore, while nearly all other electric guitars then were either hollow-body guitars or more specialized instruments such as Rickenbacker's solid-body Hawaiian lap steel guitars, Fender had created a versatile solid body electric guitar.

Other popular and/or notable Fender instruments include the Mustang, Jazzmaster, Jaguar, Starcaster, Duosonic, and Bronco guitars; basses such as the Jazz Bass, the 'Telecaster Bass' reissue of the original 1950s Precision Bass; a line of lap steels; three models of electric violin, and the Fender Rhodes electric piano.

Its headquarters are in Scottsdale, Arizona, with manufacturing facilities in Corona (United States of America), Ensenada (Mexico), Korea and Japan.

History

Origins

The company began as Fender's Radio Service in late 1938 in Fullerton, California, USA. As a qualified electronics technician, Leo was asked to repair not only radios, but phonograph players, home audio amplifiers, public address systems and musical instrument amplifiers. (Technical note: at the time, most of the above were simply variations on a few simple vacuum-tube circuits). The business also sidelined in carrying records for sale and the rental of self-designed-and-built PA systems. He became intrigued by design flaws in current musical instrument amplifiers, and he began custom-building a few amplifiers based on his own designs or modifications to designs. By the early 1940s, he had partnered with another local electronics enthusiast named Clayton Orr (Doc) Kauffman, and they formed a company named K & F Manufacturing Corp. to design, manufacture, and sell electric instruments and amplifiers. Production began in 1945 with Hawaiian lap steel guitars (incorporating a patented pickup) and amplifiers, which were sold as sets. By the end of the year, Fender had become convinced that manufacturing was more profitable than repair, and he decided to concentrate on that business. Kauffman remained unconvinced, however, and they had amicably parted ways by early 1946. At that point Leo renamed the company the Fender Electric Instrument Company. The service shop remained open until 1951, although Leo Fender did not personally supervise it after 1947.

Sale to CBS

In early 1965, Leo Fender sold his company to the Columbia Broadcasting System, or CBS. This had far-reaching implications. At first, the sale was taken as a positive development, considering CBS's ability to bring in money and personnel. However, on hindsight, the sale is now looked back upon unfavorably, due to the reduction of the quality of Fender's guitars while under the management of CBS. In the early 1970s, the usual four-bolt neck joint was changed in favor of using only three. This change was made in an effort to save money, but it also resulted in a greater propensity toward mechanical failure in the guitars. The culmination of this "cost-cutting" occurred in 1983, when the Fender Stratocaster received a short-lived redesign without a second tone control and a bare-bones output jack. In addition, previous models such as the Swinger (also known as Musiclander) and Custom (also known as Maverick) had been little more than attempts to squeeze profits out of factory stock. The so-called "Pre-CBS cult" refers to the popularity of Fenders made before the sale.

After selling the Fender company, Leo Fender designed products for Music Man and later founded the G&L company which manufactures electric guitars and basses designed by Leo Fender

Current

In 1985, in a campaign initiated by a company employee named William Schultz (1926-2006), the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company was bought from CBS by its own employees, and renamed Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.

Behind the Fender name, the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continued to grow, retaining Fender's older models along with newer designs and concepts.

While Fender mantains extensive production facilities across the world, its highest quality models are manufactured in the factory in Corona, California, United States of America. From around the world, it owns manufacturing facilities in Japan, Ensenada (Mexico), China, Indonesia (under Cort) and Korea (under Cort), such that most novice guitarists will be able to afford a new guitar with the Fender brand name. The older and American-built guitars are by far the most favoured, but pre-1990 Japan-made Fender guitars are now highly regarded as well. Fenders built in Ensenada, Mexico took over the role of the Japanese factory to produce the majority of Fender's guitars, while Japanese Fenders are now meant for the Japanese market and with only a small number marked for export.

Squier was previously a string manufacturer bought up by Fender, but has been used since 1982 to produce inexpensive variants of Fender guitars to compete with the rise of strat copies, as the Stratocaster was slowly made popular. Later, production facilities were moved to India (for a short time) and then Korea, for budget versions of Fender designs, of varying manufacture of good quality, especially the Squier II, with its 1962 neck profile and guitars with the VN serial numbers, some of which were alder body guitars, some VN Squier guitars were made of plywood. The name adorns many inexpensive guitars based on Fender designs but with generally cheaper materials and hardware. Many Squiers made from 1987 through the mid-1990s featured plywood bodies irrespective of where they were made.

Early Japanese and Korean Fender and Squier Stratocasters are well-regarded (and where the model is the same except for the decal), and are now traded on the used-guitar market as JV, which stands for 'Japanese Vintage', and equates to the prefix of the serial numbers of some of the 1982-84 Squier guitars. The earliest 1982 Squiers had the big Fender logo with 'Squier Series' written in script on the ball of the headstock, which was changed by the end of 1982 to the big Squier logo. However, the 'big Fender, little Squier Series' decal has featured on some 1990s Korean and Mexican (usually using up superceded parts, or seconds) guitars.

The core of its instrument line, the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Precision Bass, and Jazz Bass, remains largely unchanged from the 1950s and 1960s originals. On nearly every stage in the country, small or large, featuring blues, country and western or rock and roll, it is common to see a Fender guitar or bass in the hands of one or more of the musicians, plugged into a Fender amplifier. Fender guitars have been the instrument of choice for many noted artists including Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Richie Sambora, John Frusciante, Eric Clapton, Buddy Holly, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, The Edge, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Billy Corgan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ritchie Blackmore, Hank Marvin, Joe Walsh, Pete Townshend, George Harrison, and Keith Richards. In addition, at least two artistes, Freddy Fender and The Fendermen, have named themselves after the company.

In recent years, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has branched out into making and selling acoustic guitars, and has purchased a number of other instrument firms, including the Guild Guitar Company, the Sunn Amplifier Company, and other brands such as SWR Sound Corporation. In early 2003, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation made a deal with Gretsch, and began manufacturing and distributing new Gretsch guitars.

In 1946 Clarence Leo Fender began building guitar amplifiers in Fullerton, California. He first targeted country players, and spenta lot of time in consultation with musicians to improve his designs. He initially trained as an electrical engineer, and was never much of a musician, so this process of consultation was his main guide through the years to development of his designs. As we shall see, it often lead to truly significant improvements to amplifier design, although it occasionally lead him down the wrong path. All of Leo's designs were based on the research developed and released to the public domain by Western Electric in the 30s, and used vacuum tubes for amplification. A much more detailed description of the individual amplifiers is available atThe Fender Amp Field Guide.

After a few prototype amps, he began building his first big series of amplifiers in 1948. These were known as tweed amps because they were covered in the same kind of cloth used for luggage at the time. These amps varied in output from 3 watts (the Champion or Champ) to 75 watts (the high power Tweed Twin). They were characterized by a warm clean tone-with more harmonic complexity than the input signal, and a gradual onset of a sweet to raunchy distorted tone. They introduced Fender's first use of Tremolo-a rhythmic variation in the volume of the amp. This is often mislabelled Vibrato by Fender.

In the interests of more clean headroom (volume before distortion) to please his country players, Fender moved to the brown and blond amps in 1960. These were named for their harder plastic covering (DuPont Tolex) colored off-white, pinkish or darker brown. There is often a lot of overlap between series of amps. You'll see brown amps with tweed internals and tweed amps with some of the innovations that went into brown amps. These amps were higher powered than their tweed counterparts. In general, they have a cleaner clean tone with slightly less harmonic complexity, and a similar overdrive tone. To achieve more volume, Fender also started using JBL speakers at this point-much more efficient and louder than the original Jensens. JBLs were usually available on most higher-powered models on custom order. Fender also began using Oxford, Utah and CTS speakers interchangeably with the Jensens; generally the speaker that could be supplied most economically would be used. Jensens and Oxfords remained the most common during this period by far, however. The Jensens offer a more traditional Fender sound and are preferred by most collectors. The Brown/Blond amps also introduced an effect sometimes known as "harmonic vibrato," a phase-shifting tremolo system that required two and one half 12AX7/7025 tubes but had a sweet swirl that has been imitated but not improved on in 40 years. Much of this tremolo's character results from the fact that it separates the low and high frequencies and applies the tremolo effect to each separately and out of phase.

By 1963 Fender wanted more power, less distortion and less cost, so the amps changed to what is commonly known as "blackface" cosmetics. These amplifiers had a black Tolex covering, silver grille cloth, and black forward-facing control panel. By reducing the amount of midrange frequencies in the signal, Fender was able to increase volume without increasing distortion. This resulted in the classic Fender "sparkle"-a bright clean tone most beloved by Fender's favorite country players. The blackface era also brought the widespread use of reverb, which uses springs to bring a sense of space (or in the case of surf music, a crashing wash of echos) to the sound. The tremolo was changed to a simpler circuit based on an optical coupler and requiring only one tube. The amps still spanned the spectrum from 4 watts to 85, but the difference in volume was even larger due to the improved clean tone of the 85w Twin. One of these, with JBL speakers, can be absolutely deafening, even in a big room.

In 1965 Fender was tired and ill, he sold the Fender musical company to CBS. As a large conglomerate, their management seemed more interested in making money than in making the best amplifiers money could buy, so over the next 18 years the quality of Fender amplifiers gradually went downhill. These are the Silverface Fenders, and can vary from almost identical to the Blackface version (prior to 69) to completely different (in the late 70s). Some of the "innovations" that were tried include pull knobs for increased volume, master volume controls, ultralinear transformers for more clean output, increased power outputs-to 100 watts for the twin and 135 watts for the Bassman 135, the Super Six Reverb and the Quad Reverb, and other circuit changes to reduce distortion. The cosmetics of these amps are similar to the blackface amplifiers, but the forward facing control panel is silver with blue block lettering instead of black with white script lettering.

In the early 80s, under the supervision of Paul Rivera and others, there was a resurgence in R&D at Fender, resulting in a short run of very desirable amps. These range from the two channel Superchamp, putting out 18w, through a channel switching version of the Twin. They are the last amps Fender made in which discrete components were connected by point to point wiring, a method now replaced by use of printed circuit boards.

After this brief period, Fender began building amps similar names to the older versions, but without a lot in common. They are not of much interest to vintage amp lovers, although there are certainly still people playing with 80s model Fenders, particularly the "red knob Twin" of 1987 onwards. In the early 90s Fender reissued some of its most beloved amps-the Twin, the Deluxe Reverb and the Super Reverb-these tended to sound brighter than the originals but have met with some success. More recently, they've come out with Fender Custom Shop handwired amps which more closely match the tweed and blackface amps for their sound and specifications.

Hardcore trance, is a hybrid of Trance music and Happy Hardcore with House elements. The style focuses largely on fast 4/4 beats with uplifting leads, looped vocals and extended builds leading to frantic crescendos, before 'dropping the beat'. BPM range is 165 to 170 or more. Well known DJs and producers include Scott Brown, Hixxy, and Breeze & Styles. Although the style follows rigid musical structures and is beat lead there is sufficient diversity for niche genres, hence the confusing number of names which refer to a musical sound many outside the scene might think to be the same genre. Hardcore, or Happy Hardcore, was the 'original' sound of the genre, with very basic beats, often containing 'zany' sound effects and the common 'chipmunk' pitch-shifted vocal.

As Happy Hardcore evolved it lost its 'Crazy' and frantic characteristics and turned softer and then into Hardcore as we know it today, a little over produced in some places.By over-production, we mean too many sounds and elements to make up the song. Recently a lot of producers like Dougal, Seduction and Gammer have been turning back to the basic oldskool Piano, stabs and Hoovers formula, stripping the sound to a less dense and more 'primitive' audio landscape, attempting to bring back some of the 'hard' sound which has been lost since new audio technology has lead to an over produced sound. Such dj's such as Sy and Unknown on their own Quosh label, are doing very well in producing one single a month, with either a original on the B side or a remix as per usual. Unfortunately this has also led to a very similar sound record, release in, release out. Build ups, break downs and verse structure being almost the same. Raver baby are also a huge act, with more lighter style tracks, possibly more euporic but less bouncy. Scott Brown is also another artist on his Evolution, which caters for the darker side of Hardcore.These are the higher releasing ones.

Finding music

Google is good for so many things, among which is searching for all sorts of files, including MP3's. Here's a quick primer:

Try it now. Just substitute the term "Nirvana" for any band or singer you might be looking for, and your search will lead you to open indexes that contain downloadable music files.

Running music

• U2’s “Vertigo”, “All Because of You”
• Pearl Jam’s “Do the Evolution,” “Push Me Pull Me”, “Not For You”, “Hail Hail”
• AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”, “Moneytalks” and “Are You Ready”
• Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” (Rocky III theme)
• Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.”
• Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”
• Cake’s “The Distance”
• Veruca Salt’s “Volcano Girls”
• The Offspring’s “Nitro (Youth Energy)”
• The Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash”
• Tori Amos’ “Crucify”
• Beastie Boys’ “Sabatage”, “Fight for Your Right”
• Liz Phair’s “Supernova”
• Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now”
• Neil Young’s “Freedom”
• Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”
• Moby’s “Run On”, “Bodyrock”
• Guns n’ Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle,” “It’s So Easy”
• Hole, “Violet”
• Brian Setzer Orchestra, “Jump Jive an’ Wail”
• Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, “Jumpin’ Jack”
• Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”
• Puff Daddy & the Family, “Victory”
• Tribe, “Joyride”
• Stone Temple Pilots, “Vasoline”
• Silverchair, “Lie to Me”
• Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
• Cracker, “Let’s Go For a Ride”
• Kool & The Gang, “Jungle Boogie” (on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack)
• Bush, “Everything Zen”
• Ian Van Dahl - Castles in the Sky
• ATB - Let U Go, Believe in Me (Club Mix), Killer 2000, 9PM (Til I come)
• Aurora - Ordinary World (Above & Beyond remix)
• Moby - James Bond Theme (dance mix)
• Ace of Base - Beautiful Life (ok stop laughing…but its got a good beat)
• Good Charlotte - Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
• Black Sabbath - Paranoid
• Bon Jovi - Run Away
• Bryan Adams - Summer of ‘69
• BT - Dreaming (Tiesto Mix)
• Chicane - Don’t Give Up
• Sanctuary - The Cult
• Space Age Love Song - Flock of Seagulls (no, really)
• Manic Depression - Jimi Hendrix
• Rock the Body - Moby (might have the title wrong here)
• Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen - Baz Lerhman
• Elevation - U2
• Searching - Luther Vandross
• I Feel Love - Donna Summer (the 8-minute remix)
• Bodyrockers - I Like The Way You Move
• Shakedown - Feel Much Better
• The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army (Adam Freeland Remix)
• The Killers - Somebody Told Me (Mylo Club Mix)
• Junior Jack - Stupid Disco
• Boogie Pimps - Somebody to Love (Remix)
• Kings of Tomorrow - Thru (Junior Jack Remix)
• Freestylers - Push Up

Known BPM

Here is some music where the SPM and BPM ratings are known:

• 144 SPM (36 BPM) - Hooters - Private emotion
• 144 SPM (36 BPM) - Snow Patrol - Run
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - A flock of seagulls - I ran (so far away)
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Cold as ice
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - Hooters - And we danced
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - Raven - Screaming down the house
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - Steeler - Hunter or hunted
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - The Donnas - Fall behind me
• 144 SPM (72 BPM) - Wolfsbane - I like it hot
• 146 SPM (146 BPM) - Members of Mayday - The day X
• 146 SPM (146 BPM) - Scatman John - Scatman’s world
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - At Vance - Chained
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Wanted man
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Blink 182 - All the small things
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Green Day - Holiday
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Lordi - The deadite girls gone wild
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Pretty Maids - One way to rock
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Rose Tattoo - It’s gonna work itself out
• 146 SPM (73 BPM) - Wilmer X - Cool tid ihop
• 147 SPM (49 BPM) - Gavin Rossdale - Adrenaline
• 148 SPM (37 BPM) - Sugababes - Stronger
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Cinderella - In from the outside
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Danko Jones - First date
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Eminem - White America
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Motorhead - Down the line
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Motorhead - In the name of tragedy
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Seether - I’m the one
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - Static X - Push it
• 148 SPM (74 BPM) - The Nails - 88 lines about 44 women
• 150 SPM (150 BPM) - Razed in Black & Taime Down - Too fast for love
• 150 SPM (50 BPM) - Alice In Chains - What the Hell have I
• 150 SPM (50 BPM) - Evanescence - Tourniquet
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Danko Jones - We sweat blood
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Judas Priest - Turbo lover
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Magnus Uggla - Mitt liv
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Motorhead - Devil I know
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Rose Tattoo - Union man
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - The Donnas - It’s on the rocks
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Wolfsbane - Fell out of heaven
• 150 SPM (75 BPM) - Y & T - Forever
• 151 SPM (151 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Streets of fire
• 152 SPM (38 BPM) - Fjeld - Mother of devotion
• 152 SPM (76 BPM) - Bon Jovi - Runaway
• 152 SPM (76 BPM) - Dio - We rock
• 152 SPM (76 BPM) - Motorhead - Be my baby
• 152 SPM (76 BPM) - Sparks - Progress
• 152 SPM (76 BPM) - Tank - Stormtrooper
• 154 SPM (77 BPM - Bloodhound Gang - Along comes Mary
• 154 SPM (154 BPM) - Scooter - Let me be your valentine
• 154 SPM (154 BPM) - The Free - Children of the night
• 154 SPM (77 BPM) - ABBA - King Kong Song
• 154 SPM (77 BPM) - Motorhead - All gone to Hell
• 154 SPM (77 BPM) - Myofist - Double or nothing
• 154 SPM (77 BPM) - Rainbow - Can’t happen here
• 155 SPM (155 BPM) - Depeche Mode - Barrel of a gun
• 156 SPM (39 BPM) - Coolio - Gangstas paradise
• 156 SPM (39 BPM) - Megadeth - 1000 times goodbye
• 156 SPM (39 BPM) - Moby - Spiders
• 156 SPM (39 BPM) - Nas - If Heaven was a mile away
• 156 SPM (39 BPM) - Scorpions - China white
• 156 SPM (39 BPM) - Shawn Mullins - Lullaby
• 156 SPM (52 BPM) - Consolidated & Yeasty Girls - You suck
• 156 SPM (52 BPM) - Gina Jacobi - Upp igen
• 156 SPM (52 BPM) - Van Halen - Don’t tell me (what love can do)
• 156 SPM (78 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Call of the wild dogs
• 156 SPM (78 BPM) - Motorhead - One night stand
• 156 SPM (78 BPM) - Petter - Fredrik Snortare och Cecilia Synd
• 156 SPM (78 BPM) - The Beatles - Paperback writer
• 156 SPM (78 BPM) - The Donnas - I don’t care (so there)
• 158 SPM (79 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Firewall
• 158 SPM (79 BPM) - Cheap Trick - Mighty wings
• 158 SPM (79 BPM) - Raven - Hard Ride
• 158 SPM (79 BPM) - The Donnas - Take it off
• 158 SPM (79 BPM) - Wilmer X - Lyckliga hundar
• 158 SPM (79 BPM) - Wolfsbane - Kathy Wilson
• 159 SPM (53 BPM) - Di Leva - Ber om ljus
• 160 SPM (160 BPM) - Scooter - Move your ass
• 160 SPM (40 BPM) - Ice Cube - It was a good day
• 160 SPM (40 BPM) - Puff Daddy & Jimmy Page - Come with me
• 160 SPM (40 BPM) - Queensryche - Empire
• 160 SPM (40 BPM) - Sugababes - Follow me home
• 160 SPM (40 BPM) - Yellowcard - Only one
• 160 SPM (80 BPM) - AC/DC - Heatseeker
• 160 SPM (80 BPM) - Black Sabbath - Time machine
• 160 SPM (80 BPM) - Ministry - New world order
• 160 SPM (80 BPM) - The Donnas - Too bad about your girl
• 162 SPM (162 BPM) - Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
• 162 SPM (81 BPM) - Kingdom Come - Do you like it
• 162 SPM (81 BPM) - Rose Tattoo - Motorbike song
• 162 SPM (81 BPM) - The Ramones - I wanna be sedated
• 162 SPM (81 BPM) - Wilmer X - För dum för pop
• 162 SPM (81 BPM) - Y & T - Don’t stop running
• 164 SPM (41 BPM) - Britney Spears - Born to make you happy
• 164 SPM (41 BPM) - Enigma - Out from the deep
• 164 SPM (41 BPM) - Eva Dahlgren - Jag är Gud
• 164 SPM (41 BPM) - Marc Anthony - You sang to me
• 164 SPM (41 BPM) - Moby - Beautiful
• 164 SPM (41 BPM) - Saxon - You don’t know what you’ve got
• 164 SPM (82 BMP) - The Donnas - Who invited you
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Living on the wildside
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - Wilmer X - Blind mans bluff
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - Celtic Frost - They were eagles
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - Rammstein - Mann gegen mann
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - Sam - Club amnesia
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - Scorpions - He’s a woman, she’sa man
• 164 SPM (82 BPM) - WASP - Mean man
• 166 SPM (83 BPM) - Flash and the Pan - Early morning wake up call
• 166 SPM (83 BPM) - Rose Tattoo - The radio said rock ‘n’ roll is dead
• 166 SPM (83 BPM) - WASP - Rebel in the F.D.G
• 168 SPM (42 BPM) - Björk - Army of me
• 168 SPM (42 BPM) - Black Ingvars - Genie in a bottle
• 168 SPM (42 BPM) - Eminem - Loose yourself
• 168 SPM (42 BPM) - Sheryl Crow - Steve McQueen
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - At Vance - Broken vow
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - At Vance - Only human
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Tear down the walls
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - Dr Feelgood - Milk and alcohol
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - Sisters of Mercy - Doctor Jeep
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - The Donnas - Not the one
• 168 SPM (84 BPM) - Tom Petty - Running down a dream
• 170 SPM (85 BPM) - Rammstein - Asche zu asche
• 170 SPM (85 BPM) - Savage Garden - Affirmation
• 172 SPM (43 BPM) - Seether - Gasoline
• 172 SPM (43 BPM) - Weezer - Beverly Hills
• 172 SPM (43 BPM) - Weird Al Yankovic - Couch potato
• 172 SPM (86 BPM) - Accept - Burning
• 172 SPM (86 BPM) - Foo Fighters - Monkey wrench
• 172 SPM (86 BPM) - Markoolio - Rocka på
• 172 SPM (86 BPM) - Pearl Jam - Brain of JFK
• 174 SPM (87 BPM - Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue
• 174 SPM (29 BPM) - Boney M - He was a steppenwolf
• 174 SPM (58 BPM) - New Order - Blue faith
• 174 SPM (58 BPM) - Style - Empty bed
• 174 SPM (87 BPM) - Bon Jovi - Last man standing
• 174 SPM (87 BPM) - Di Leva - Naked number one
• 174 SPM (87 BPM) - Raven - Seek and destroy
• 174 SPM (87 BPM) - Skid row - Riot act
• 174 SPM (87 BPM) - Status Quo - What you’re proposing
• 174 SPM (87 BPM) - Okänd Artist - Fotbollsplan
• 176 SPM (44 BPM) - 50 Cent - In da club
• 176 SPM (44 BPM) - 50 Pence - In da pub
• 176 SPM (44 BPM) - Disturbed - Down with the sickness (clean fix)
• 176 SPM (44 BPM) - Sam - She’s not
• 176 SPM (44 BPM) - Sam - Spectator game
• 176 SPM (44 BPM) - Silverchair - Anthem for the year 2000
• 176 SPM (88 BPM) - Billy Idol - Speed
• 177 SPM (59 BPM) - Bowling for soup - 1985
• 177 SPM (59 BPM) - Drain S.T.H - Alive
• 177 SPM (59 BPM) - Green Day - Whatshername
• 178 SPM (89 BPM) - Axel Rudi Pell - Land of the Giants
• 180 SPM (45 BPM - Rob Halford & Bruce Dickinson - The one you love to hate
• 180 SPM (90 BPM - Yellowcard - Miles apart
• 180 SPM (90 BPM - Yellowcard - Way away
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - Baz Luhrmann - Everybody’s free
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - De La Soul featuring Redman - Oooh
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - Di Leva - Vem ska jag tro på
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - Disturbed - Fear
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - George Michael - Freedom
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - Marie Fredriksson - Mellan sommar och höst
• 180 SPM (45 BPM) - Rose Tattoo - Who’s got the cash
• 180 SPM (60 BPM) - The Shamen - Move any mountain
• 180 SPM (90 BPM) - Gary Moore & Phil Lynott - Out in the fields
• 180 SPM (90 BPM) - Oz - Fire in the brain
• 180 SPM (90 BPM) - Y & T - Don’t tell me what to wear
• 182 SPM (91 BPM) - Cinderella - Hell on wheels
• 182 SPM (91 BPM) - Flash and the Pan - Captain beware
• 182 SPM (91 BPM) - Girlschool - Action
• 182 SPM (91 BPM) - Oz - Stop believing
• 182 SPM (91 BPM) - Saxon - Taking your chances
• 183 SPM (61 BPM) - Bon Jovi - Undivided
• 183 SPM (61 BPM) - Flash and the Pan - Opera singers
• 183 SPM (61 BPM) - Rammstein - Living in America
• 184 SPM (46 BPM) - Drain S.T.H - Simon says
• 184 SPM (46 BPM) - Girlschool - Back to start
• 184 SPM (46 BPM) - Kenneth and the Knutters - Man av dynamit
• 184 SPM (46 BPM) - Notorious B.I.G - Hypnotize
• 184 SPM (92 BPM) - Accept - Aiming high
• 186 SPM (62 BPM) - Future Sound Of London - Landmass
• 186 SPM (93 BPM) - HIM - Buried alive by love
• 186 SPM (93 BPM) - Ramones - Rockaway beach
• 188 SPM (94 BPM) - Markoolio - Nostalgi
• 188 SPM (94 BPM) - Rammstein - Feuer frei
• 190 SPM (95 BPM) - NG3 - The anthem
• 192 SPM (192 BPM) - Ministry - No W
• 192 SPM (96 BPM) - 220 Volt - Electric messengers
• 194 SPM (97 BPM) - Motorhead - Sword of glory
• 194 SPM (97 BPM) - Saxon - Freeway mad
• 195 SPM (65 BPM) - Marily Manson - Mobscene
• 195 SPM (65 BPM) - New Order - Blue Monday
• 196 SPM (98 BPM) - Die Krupps - To the hilt
• 198 SPM (66 BPM) - Man with no name - Floor essence
• 198 SPM (99 BPM) - At Vance - Now or never
• 202 SPM (101 BPM) - Motorhead - Trigger
• 204 SPM (102 BPM) - Sugababes - I bet you look good on the dancefloor
• 204 SPM (68 BPM) - Astral Projection - Zero
• 204 SPM (68 BPM) - Man with no name - Vavoom
• 204 SPM (68 BPM) - Scooter - We are the greatest
• 206 SPM (103 BPM) - Rob Halford - Made in Hell
• 207 SPM (69 BPM) - Astral Projection - Enlightened evolution
• 207 SPM (69 BPM) - E-Type - Olympia

Music can have many effects on the human body. It can be used for things like drowning out unpleasant sounds and feelings to encouraging the release of tension. Some of the many effects that music can have on the human body are:

• Masks unpleasant feelings and sounds

• Affects the blood pressure and pulse rate

• Affects respiration

• Regulates stress

• Reduces muscle tension and improving body movement and coordination

• Strengthens our memory and learning

• Boosts the body's immune system

• Enhances romance and sexuality

• Boosts productivity

• Generates a sense of well-being and safety

• Fosters endurance

This long list makes you start to see why music can make a large influence on many people.

Masks unpleasant feelings and sounds

Music can drown out or help mask unpleasant sounds and feelings in many ways. An example of this is the dentist. The dentist plays music in the background while he is using the drill. Although this does not drown out the sound of the drill, it gives the patient something else to focus on.

Affects respiration

The rate at which you breath can be affected by the music you are listening to. Slow music is known to calm you down. This calmness promotes a slower breathing rate.

On the other end of the scale is the fast music. This music will make you more awake and aware of your surroundings. This means fast music can increase your respiration rate.

Affects the blood pressure and pulse rate

This is similar to the affect music has on the respiration. As your breathing slows down when you are listening to calming music, your blood pressure and pulse rate also fall. This is simply due to you relaxing and taking things easy.

Fast music makes you want to get up an move. It is this extra movement that fast music promotes that causes your blood pressure and pulse rate to rise when you listen to faster music.

Reduces muscle tension and improving body movement and coordination

Slower music can reduce muscle tension and improve body movement and coordination. A study done at Colorado State University in 1991 showed that music has a direct affect on coordination. 24 undergraduate women had to complete a range of physical exercises including the striking of objects. When music was played, the women coordinated their movements and swings with the beat, instead of going at their own rate. The rhythm and timing of the music helped the women to know when to start their swings and gauge how fast to move.

Regulates stress

The calming effect of music can also help relieve stress. The simple act of listening to a relaxing piece of music helps you relax. This relaxation is the best method to relieve stress.

If you think music doesn’t affect you, you’ll be changing your tune after reading this. This is a true story of a recent study from Leicester University in England.

You’re off to the supermarket and decide to stop by some shelves offering French and German wine. You make up your mind to buy a bottle of the French wine.

While checking out, you’re asked why you picked the wine. You respond “The label looked great”, or “I liked the price”. Then you’re asked if you noticed the French accordion music that was playing when you took that bottle off the shelf. You say that you did. Did it affect your choice of wine today? No, of course not, you answer.

That’s funny because on the days that French music is played nearly 80% of shoppers chose the French wine. On the days that German music the Opposite happens.

In other words, this study found that if you bought some wine from their shelves you were 3 or 4 times more likely to choose a wine that matched the music than the wine that didn't match the music.

Guess what these wine-buyers responded when asked at the checkout if the music influenced their choice. Only 1 out of 44 customers said that the music was the reason they bought the wine. That’s 2%!

The influence of the music was Huge but the customers Didn’t Notice or Believe that it was affecting them. It only took a matter of minutes or seconds for music to get into these people’s brains in a powerful way.

Similar experiments have shown that classical music can make people buy more expensive wine.

Here’s another study to chew on. Most of us go out to eat at least once a week. Do you know which music makes you spend more when you’re at a restaurant?

In this study, a British restaurant played pop music, classical music and no music over the course of 18 evenings. Average spending prices per person were calculated for the following categories:

Appetizers, Main Courses, Desserts, Coffee, Drinks from the Bar, Wine, Overall Beverage Bill, Overall Food Bill, and Total Amount Spent

They also measured the total time people spent in the restaurant. Here’s what they found.

There was a Significant difference between evenings when classical music was played and no music or pop music were played. Classical music resulted in higher spending. Across the board in all categories. Other restaurants here and abroad have had similar results.

What does this mean? It’s pretty simple. Classical music relaxes and makes you feel good. And feeling good makes you want the best.

That’s why so many successful people listen to high frequency classical music. They know it helps them work better, think better, and get higher levels of energy. They know it won’t deplete them, get them distracted and raise their heart rates, like hard-hitting low frequency music does.

The amazing effect that music has on your mind and body is being proven in study after study. It’s information that should not be ignored. Especially these days, when we’re exposed to music anytime we enter a building.

Music affects our moods, it is the great mood enhancer. We may not understand the words, but instead recognize the expression of its musical beauty and power to de-stress. Music has been called 'The International Language' - a very simple thought with much meaning behind it. Even if you can't speak the language of a country, you can move, sway, dance and most of all, enjoy the music of the country. We may not understand the words of a musical selection but we do understand the beauty.

Have you ever heard the saying, 'Music soothes the savage beast?' It's true. Music can calm and revitalize us in ways even a lengthy nap can't. Music holds the power to elevate our moods above our worries and relieve debilitating depression. It can also perk us up if we use it with exercise or dance.

Try listening to classical music for a sense of power. Soft lullaby-like music to unwind. Medium-fast to fast selections for exercise and housecleaning.

Putting more music in your life is a powerfully enriching tool. But other than turning on the car radio in our busy lives, what other ways can we do this? One way to do this is to take advantage of your public library's collection of music. It's fine to have a personal favorite type of music such as rock, or jazz, but discover other music you may have not thought of. Try country music. And if you decide you don't like that, try opera or alternative music. You won't believe how many tyopes of music you're going to find once you start looking. You don't have to like it. Just learn to appreciate it on its own.

Give it a chance.

When listening to music, listen to the words and rhythms as well as the melody. You may find something to like about a type of music that previously you didn't like at all.

Learn about music. Find out who wrote the pieces you like to listen to and when. What was going on in the rest of the world at the time the melody was written? Does it reflect what was happening at the time or could it have been used as an 'escape' - a more pleasant alternative than what current events dictated?

What musical instruments are played? What do you know about those instruments? Experience new musical artists. Many worthwhile musicians and vocalists go unnoticed to the general public because of a 'stuck in a musical rut' listening technique of those that only listen to a certain genre of music.

Free musical events are listed in the local newspaper. Some may turn up with names such as 'brown bag' concerts or recitals. 'Brown bag' refers to the fact they will be held during the noon hour and usually in a public place such as a park where you can bring your lunch. Recitals are usually given by music teachers to showcase their student's budding talents and also an advertisement for the teacher's own abilities. Colleges sponsor several free musical events every semester and they are worth looking into.

Other ways to incorporate music into our lives are waking up to a musical alarm, bathing to soothing, relaxing music and even dining with soft music playing in the background. Listening to music is such a basic pure pleasure that many of us forget the tremendous value of it. And dance whenever you get the chance.

Organize a music appreciation group and post notices at the public library and other spots around town. These groups get together to discuss music and musicians, listen to music and go, as a group, to musical events together.

Volunteer to share your acquired musical knowledge with others. Do this by visiting hospitals and nursing homes, senior citizen's centers and organizing talks for elementary, middle and high schools. Special interest groups are always appreciative of speakers with interesting topics.

If you play an instrument, you'll find you've stumbled onto the best audience in the world. Go back often to visit and play. In this way, you've not only made the lives of other people brighter through your music, but you're going to find yourself in much better spirits.  

Learning music by ear is done by repeatedly listening to other musicians and then attempting to recreate what one hears. This is how people learn music in any musical tradition in which there is no complete musical notation. Many people in cultures which do have notation still learn by ear, and ear training, often through a musicianship course at a music conservatory or college, is common practice among those who use notation extensively.

In the West learning by ear is associated with traditional and folk music, but many classical music forms throughout the world lack notation, and have therefore been passed from generation to generation by ear.

The Suzuki method of teaching music focuses on playing by ear from a very young age. In his book "Teaching from the Balance Point," Edward Kreitman, a US based Suzuki Teacher, clearly distinguishes "learning by ear" as a separate, completely different process from "learning by rote".

It is important to note that learning music by ear is quite different from playing music by ear: playing music by ear is a rare talent which few people possess, to listen to a musical work once and play it in its entirety, correctly.

Playing by ear is the ability to play a piece of music (or, eventually, learn an instrument) by simply listening to it repeatedly. The majority of self-taught musicians began their education this way; they picked up their instrument and began playing an easy melody from a well-known song, slowly picking out the notes as they went along. And even after these musicians master their instruments or a particular song, playing by ear still plays a large role. Many pop and rock bands don't play or write their songs based on sheet music, they figure the songs out by playing by ear. It's even common among non-musicians. Ever sit down a piano and mindlessly pick out the tune to "Mary Had a Little Lamb"? What about grabbing a guitar and suddenly finding yourself playing the opening licks to "Smoke on the Water"? That's playing by ear. You're able to play part of the song just because you've heard it so often.

Since music is basically composed of 3 elements – melody, rhythm, and harmony, it is logical that there are also 3 basic steps to learning to play music by ear:

Charting the contour of the melody

Tunes move higher and lower – up and down – as the song progresses. Being aware of that movement is the first step. Once you mentally define the parameters of the melody, you can then begin to hone in on picking it out on your instrument. As an example, think of “Joy To The World”. We’ve all sung it a zillion times, but have you ever noticed that the melody moves down exactly 8 steps (an octave), then gradually moves back up in increments, then repeats the down movement, etc. The entire melody is contained within those 8 notes, so you now know the parameters of the song and can begin to pick out the melody intelligently.

Harmonizing the melody with matching chords

The second element of music is harmony, and you can harmonize any melody just by matching the supporting chords to that melody. For example, if the melody is a “G”, you can harmonize that melody by using a chord with G in it, such as the G chord (G, B, D), the C chord (C, E, G), or the Em chord (E, G, B), or the Eb chord (Eb, G, Bb) and so forth. By using your ear to guide you, you can learn to harmonize the melody of most any song using matching chords.

Using an appropriate rhythm that matches the feel of the song

This is usually the easiest part, since most people “feel” the beat and don’t have to do any mental gymnastics to come up with an appropriate rhythm for a song. But for those of us that might be “rhythmically challenged”, just by knowing that there are basically two meters available – duple meter and triple meter -- that can be combined in infinite combinations, we can give the song either a “3” feeling (likea waltz or a jazz waltz) or a “4” feeling (like swing or a march or a ballad).

Playing by ear is a valuable technique for many musicians; learning songs based solely on hearing them is a great way to understand song and chord structure. In fact, a great number of rock and pop musicians learned to play their instruments this way. Instead of picking up a book or taking lessons, they concentrated on figuring out the notes and rhythms to a song until it was mastered. Then they moved on to another song. And another.

Gradually, they learned their instrument just by playing by ear -- and in the process learned how to effectively structure a song in that particular genre. Playing by ear is also beneficial in helping a musician develop his or her own style; sure, they'll at first mimic the style of the song they're imitating, but the amalgamation of the music that they're playing by ear will help them create something distinctive, something indicative of them only.

Music helps us to make sense of the world. Through sound we can give an expressive shape to our experience. It is a pleasure and a joy for its own sake. The National Curriculum for music says, "As an integral part of culture, past and present, it helps pupils understand themselves and relate to others, forging important links between the home, school and the wider world."

Recent research emphasises the benefits of learning music:

• Music aids the development of speech. Singing simple songs teaches your child how language is constructed. According to Jessica Pitt from the Pre-School Music Association: "Babies seem to learn best when songs are experienced through their bodies. Movement and music greatly enhance acquisition of language."
  
• Music helps children to learn maths. "When children learn rhythm, they are learning ratios, fractions and proportions," says Professor Gordon Shaw, University of California, Irvine, after his study of seven year-olds in Los Angeles.
  
• Music enhances social skills. "Children who take part in music develop higher levels of social cohesion and understanding of themselves and others, and the emotional aspect of musical activities seems to be beneficial for developing social skills like empathy," says Dr. Alexandra Lamont, Lecturer in the Psychology of Music at the University of Keele
  
• Music enhances your child's intellectual development. Dr. Frances Rauscher, from the University of Wisconsin, says that music "helps improve children's ability to reason abstractly, by strengthening neural firing patterns of the brain that are relevant to both musical and spatial cognition."
  
• Most music teachers will tell you that music encourages self-expression and self confidence. As a non-verbal language, music can convey a complexity of emotions, and offers a means of expression to a shy or diffident child who finds it hard to communicate through speech

Although it is a simple matter to walk into the first music shop you see and pick out a guitar amplifier ("amp") at random, you will probably be unsatisfied with the results of this method. If you take a couple of mintues to figure out what you are shopping for, you will be able to make a purchase that you will enjoy for years to come.

Steps

Step 1: Picking the Right Size and Wattage

Determine the size of the amp you will need. Amps are rated by wattage rather than physical size (although high-wattage amps do tend to be physically larger). By wattage, there are essentially three main categories of guitar amplifiers (combos, heads, and rack-mounted amplifiers), with several subcategories:

Combo Amps

Combo (combination) amps combine the amplifier electronics with one or more speakers in a one-piece package. They are the alternative to "heads," which contain only the electronics, and are attached to separate speaker packages (known as "cabinets" or "cabs"). Because it is a one-piece unit, the combo design is generally preferred for smaller, lower-wattage amps. The following are the most common varieties of combo amp:

• Micro amps: 1-10 watts. These are tiny, ultra-portable amps which are useful for practice on the go (or when others are trying to sleep). They don't pack enough volume to be used in most "jam" situations (where you must be heard above other musicians). As a rule, their sound quality tends to be poor (when compared to larger amps). The Marshall MS-2 is an example of a super-portable (1 watt) micro amp which has received good reviews.

• Practice amps: 10-30 watts. Practice amps are also suited for the bedroom/living room environment, although the loudest of them may be used for small gigs (performances), especially if a microphone is used to run them through the venue's PA system. As with micro amps, practice amps tend to compare unfavorably to larger units in terms of sound quality, although as they approach the 30 watt level,a few models offer increasingly competitive sound. The Roland Cube 30 is an example of a practice amp which is generally well-regarded. As a general rule, the best practice amps have at least a 10 inch speaker. This is the smallest speaker size which is generally considered a "real speaker." If you don't have a 10 inch (or larger) speaker, don't try to use the amp outside the bedroom. The embarrassment you save will be your own.

• Full-size 1x12 combos: With 50 or more watts of power and one 12 inch speaker, the 1x12 amp offers the smallest package which is considered suitable as a stand-alone amplifier for small gigs. In better models, sound quality begins to approach levels acceptable to professional musicians. Quality is always important, but perhaps even more so in the case of the 1x12 combo - with a good one, you'll prove the doubters wrong, but with one of the many duds, you won't be taken seriously. The 1x12 is not a big amp, and if you want to bring it to a serious audition or gig without enduring a storm of eye-rolling and chuckling, it had better stand out from the crowd.

• 2x12 combos are similiar to 1x12 combos, but they add a second 12 inch speaker. The 2x12 design is considerably heavier and bulkier than the 1x12, but it is still a favorite choice of working musicians for performances at small to medium-sized venues. The addition of a second speaker allows for certain stereo effects, and two speakers simply move more air than one (allowing more "presence" in your sound). The 2x12 amp is small enough to be used in the living room, light enough to be lugged around by someone without major back problems, and yet formidable enough to be taken seriously at rehearsals, auditions, and even on stage. If you have to buy a single amp for practice, rehearsals, and club gigs, a 2x12 is a good choice. You'll occassionally slip and set the volume knob a bit too high (annihilating your unfortunate neighbors), and you'll be tempted to gripe about lugging 50-80 pounds worth of amp all over the place, but it will all be worthwhile when you avoid being "The Guy Who Showed Up to the Audition or Gig With a Practice Amp." That guy usually becomes an "inside story" for the band to tell other musicians when everybody needs a laugh.

There are other types of combos, but these are the mainstays. Having discussed them, we are ready to move on to heads and stacks.

Heads, Cabinets, and Stacks

A head is an amplifier without speakers. A cabinet ("cab") is a stand-alone speaker enclosure, which can be connected to a head. A stack is a head and a set of cabinets connected together, ready for use. Stacks are generally preferred for gigs rather than practice, although there's no rule against having a enormous stack in your living room - if your family allows it. Fair warning: in most cases, they won't. Stacks are physically bulky, very heavy, and devastatingly LOUD. These are the tools of musicians who either play arenas and stadiums on a regular basis - or at least dream of doing so.

• Heads are all roughly the same size physically, but they come in a variety of wattages. "Small" heads pack 50-100 watts. Full-power heads are generally 100 watts or more. There are also super heads, boasting a tinnitus-inducing 200-400 watts of power. For performances at small to medium-size venues, a small head is more than enough. The smaller heads are often connected to a single 4x12 cabinet (which contains four 12 inch speakers, as the name suggests). This type of setup is known as a "half stack," and it is a favorite of working musicians. The half stack offers plenty of volume, the presence of four speakers, and the "credibility" associated with stacks.

• The full stack is the dream of many a guitarist. This is usually a 100 watt head connected to two 4x12 cabinets, although other wattages are sometimes employed. The cabinets are stacked vertically (one on top of the other), giving the setup its distinctive name. A full stack is as tall as a grown man, making for quite an impressive sight. The sound is equally impressive. If you set one of these up in your living room and play it to its full capabilities, you will be evicted from the neighborhood (unless you are an isolated hermit). A full stack can handle all but the very largest of venues. Guitarists who are truly sadistic (in a sonic sense), such as some heavy metal players, may run one of the 200-400 watt super heads through a full stack. With any full stack (and especially the "hot rod" setups), you will require ear protection to play at higher volumes without sustaining potentially serious ear damage.

Stacks are great for playing big venues (and for impressing your friends), but if you aren't a working or touring musician, they can be "overkill" for most situations. Lugging around full-size 4x12 speaker cabinets is hard work, fit only for "roadies" who are getting paid to do it. Showing up to an audition with a full stack and a hand truck to set it up can be almost as bad as showing up with a practice amp. If you lug in a stack, you'd better have the skills to justify it, or (once again), you'll become another "inside story" for the band to chuckle about after rehearsal - "The Newbie Guy Who Brought a Full Stack to the Audition."

Rack-Mounted Products

Many musicians use "racks," usually a reinforced metal box with removable panels on the front and back. The front side of the rack, when open, has two verticale rows of threaded screw holes on the sides. Rack sizes have been standardized for years -- they are made to fit ALL rack-moutable units, including recording gear, PA amplifiers, vocal processors, chromatic tuners, DJ gear, etc. in addition to guitar amps. Rack-mounted products have a sturdy metal face plate strong enough to support the entire product; they are a standard width, a standard maximum depth, and are usually much shorter than they are tall or deep. The face plate is wider than the rest of the unit and has screw holes on each corner, spaced to line up with the screw holes on the front of any rack. To attach gear to the rack, lay your rack on its backside, place the unit in the rack so that the unit dangles down into the rack, its entire weight supported by the face plate, line it up with the screw holes, and fasten it at each corner with properly-sized screws. The smallest rack products are the shortest, covering only two screw holes -- these are said to take up "one rack space." A larger product that covers up four screw holes on your rack takes up "two rack spaces," and so on. To figure out how many spaces a rack has, count the screw holes on one side and divide it by two.

A rack-mounted guitar amplifier rig is similar to heads in that they have separate amplifier components that are plugged into external speaker cabinets. But nearly all rack-mounted amplifiers are broken down into two further categories -- the pre-amp and the power amp. Both heads and combos have these separate components as well -- racks merely separate them out into two units. Most major amplifier manufacturers, including Marshall, Carvin, Mesa-Boogie, and Peavey make rack-mountable amp rigs.

• The Pre-Amp shapes the signal entering your amplifier into a tone. In its basic form, a pre-amp defines the levels of treble, bass, and middle in your tone. However, functions such as gain, presence, and contour have become standard features of modern guitar amplifiers, and rack-mountable pre-amps usually have many more functions indeed -- they are essentially effects processors. Footpedal multi-effects processors are also pre-amps. Plug your guitar into the pre-amp. Most rack pre-amps only take up one rack space.

• The Power Amp is connected to the pre-amp by a speaker cable. It takes the signal the pre-amp shaped and gives it volume. Like heads, power amps are available in different sizes, from a minimum of 50 watts to monster 200-400W power amps. 100W or larger power amps will take up two rack spaces. The power amp plugs into the speaker cab like on a head. However, as many power amps as you want can be connected in a daisy chain or to different pre-amp outputs to boost the power of the signal, as well as possibly blend the tonal influences of two different power amps.

Disadvantages of Rack Rigs. As you can probably tell, racks are frequently very complicated rigs. A novice guitarrist may find them perplexing. They are also heavier and bulkier than heads -- and add onto that the bulk and heft of the rack itself. Since you need to buy multiple products and accessories, the price for a new rack rig can be (but isn't always) higher than that of a head.

Advantages of Rack Rigs. On the other hand, using a rack allows you to mix and match products by different manufacturers and find a tone that is distinctly "yours," not the boutique design concept of some engineer at Marshall or Fender. And if you have a reasonably good mind for engineering or basic spatial sequencing (i.e. lining things up in order), even complicated digital pre-amps can be surprisingly user-friendly, providing a more easy-to-understand interface than a row of inscrutable knobs on the front of a head or combo. If you are already a DJ, vocalist, or recording artist, or want to become any one of these, many valuable products are availble that can be mounted right on the same rack with your amplifier.

Also, big racks frequently have caster wheels, making them very easy to roll around, and having a rack can also simplify pre-gig or -practise setup. Instead of having to plug in all your components from scratch, your components can already be plugged in and ready to go as soon as you wheel your rack onto the stage or into the studio and remove the front and back panels. A rack-mountable power conditioner (essentially a rack-mounted power strip with surge protection) can be invaluable to this end as most rack units are independently powered -- simply plug all your products into the conditioner, then whenever you arrive at a gig or practice, plug in the one master power cable from the conditioner, plug in your speaker cab and guitar, switch everything on, and you're ready to rock. If you have pedals, microphones, etc, you can usually fit them into the rack as well, making it your all-purpose, highly-portable gig box (provided that it's on wheels).

Finally, racks are uncommon, and will attract attention. People will be impressed if you wheel a rack rig into rehearsal or performance, but beware -- they will expect you to be a seasoned guitarrist, or at least be able to effectively USE your rack. Don't bring your rack anywhere unless you know how to get those pre-amps and processors to do exactly what you want them to do. Such professionals asU2's The Edge and Nirvana's Kurt Cobain have favored rack rigs.

MIDI. Many rack-mounted pre-amps are digital and use MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) technology. This allows pre-amp settings to be saved in the pre-amp's digital memory to be recalled again later at the push of a button. These buttons can be on the faceplate of the unit, but MIDI pedalboards can be utilized to access those pre-set channels by stepping on footpedal buttons, to prevent a guitarrist from having to go to his rack and search out the right setting in the dark between each song.

Step 2: Selecting the Right Sound

In order to get the most from a guitar amplifier, you need to understand how different types of amps suit different styles of music. For the most part, amps are not "one size fits all." Although there are all sorts of amps, they can be classified in two broad categories - "vintage" and "high gain."

Tone Wars

Vintage amps produce (or reproduce) the classic sounds of early amplifiers. For the jazz, blues, or blues-rock guitarist, the vintage sound is still widely considered the best tone available. Vintage amps can be actual antiques, or they can be modern amps that replicate the sound of antique amps. The sound of Fender, Vox, Marshall, and similar amplifiers from the 50's, 60's and early 70's is the foundation of the vintage tone. When you think "vintage," you think Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Deep Purple, etc. These are the sounds that started it all.

High-gain amps produce a sound with greater distortion than that of vintage amps. Although there is some debate about the evolution of high-gain amps, many believe that a large part of their history is owed to Eddie Van Halen, who took apart his vintage-style Marshall head and played around with the electronics, allowing him to get far more gain (the source of the classic rock/metal distortion sound). With his landmark "Eruption" solo in 1977, Van Halen introduced the roaring, face-melting sound of super high gain to the guitar community. At around the same time, the emergence of heavy metal bands added another dimension to the high-gain phenomena. For hard rock and heavy metal music from the early 80's and beyond, vintage amps are overshadowed by their modern high-gain counterparts.

If you want to play jazz, blues, blues-rock (in the style of Led Zeppelin) or very early heavy metal (in the style of Black Sabbath), a vintage amp may be your best choice. If you want to play hard rock, 80's metal, and "shred" guitar (in the style of the countless 80's "guitar heroes"), you will probably want to go with a high-gain model. Note that many newer amps can provide both high-gain and vintage sounds, although some purists feel that the only vintage amps worth playing are the actual antique amplifiers themselves. "Amp modeling" technnology (which allows one amp to simulate the sound of many different amps) is a relatively recent development which has both fans and critics. If you don't plan to specialize exclusively in vintage-style music, a modeling amp can be very useful, although if you're a purist, nothing beats walking in with a real Fender Twin Reverb, an ancient Marshall "Plexi" head, or something similar.

Tube vs Solid State

In the vintage days, all amplifiers used vacuum tubes to accomplish the actual amplification. Nowdays, many amps use transistors instead, sparking a long-standing debate about which is better. The concensus is that for almost all types of music, the sound of tubes is noticeably superior. However, tubes have several drawbacks:

• Tubes can be expensive, depending the tubes used. Expect to replace them after 4 or more years of use, depending on their quality and how loud/often they are used.

• Tubes are somewhat unreliable. They can and do go out at random times, crippling the amp. This can be aleviated by using good quality tubes.

• Tubes (and the associated design factors) add considerable weight to the amplifier. Back problems caused by skinny guitar players lugging around big 2x12 tube combos are an insurance company's nightmare.

• Tube amps are, generally speaking, more pricey than solid-state amps. You will almost certainly pay more for this ancient technology than you will pay for modern solid-state (transistor) electronics. There are tube amps, however, like the Fender Blues Jr., that go for roughly $300; the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe (which is an extremely loud, 40 Watt, 1x12 amp), goes for about $550-$600. A Vox AC-30 2x12" reissue, on the other hand, will set you back no less than $1200; and a Marshall head + half stack can be well over $2000.

If you can afford a tube amp, you should strongly consider buying one. In almost all cases, the sound is noticeably better. One possible exception to this is for heavy metal players. Many metal guitarists find that the harsher sound of transistors suits their style of music. Given the reliability, weight, and price advantages of solid-state amps, even the professional-level heavy metal guitarist may not require a tube amp. Pantera's Darrell Abbott used solid-state amps, as do many other notable heavy metal musicians.

Your amp will have two different kinds of tubes -- pre-amp tubes and power-amp tubes (a few combos and heads mix and match between tube and solid-state pre-amps and power amps). Many modern guitarrists have forgotten that the original rock 'n' roll "crunch" or distortion was created when guitarrists like Pete Townsend turned their amps' volume up to 7 or 8, causing the power tubes to overdrive. A pre-amp perameter called "Gain" has been added to most amps to simulate that overdriven distortion. But unless you're into the tinny thrash-metal sound, no artificial gain setting can compare to the sweet, distorted tone of overdriven power tubes turned up to 7. The problem is, most guitarrists, especially new ones, go whole hog for a 100W amp, which cannot be turned up to 7 or 8 in a small club without blowing the doors off. They turn their amps down to four or five, turn the gain up to ten, and never know what they are missing that they could get froma 50W amp turned to 7 with the gain down to 5. Angus Young of AC/DC plays live with both a 100W tube head turned up to 6 for his rhythm parts, and a 50W tube head cranked up to 10 for comparable volume but extra overdrive that he switched to for his solos.

Tips

• When shopping for an amp, price should not be your only consideration. Some lower-priced amps offer admirable sound, while you may find some costly amps unsuitable for your needs. To judge quality, read user reviews on various guitar websites. However, be aware that many equipment vendors publish only good reviews (to ensure product sales). Do your research and make an informed decision.

• If you purchase a tube amp, try not to abuse it physically. In general, transistor (solid-state) units are designed to take loads of punishment, but tube amps are much more delicate. If your brand new (very expensive) Soldano tube head falls down a flight of stairs, you are probably in deep trouble - while the same thing happening to a solid-state combo will probably result in nothing more than a momentary panic and some laughs (after the fact). In short, do not kick, hurl, slam, pummel, or viciously bludgeon a tube amp - and try to discourage others from doing so. If you're wondering why such a warning is necessary, you probably haven't spent much time with rock musicians.

• If you need one amp that can do "everything," consider purchasing one of the new modeling amps with onboard effects. The best of these amps can reproduce the sound of many other units with passable accuracy, and you have instant access to those cool effects that make even crappy guitarists (like me) sound good - delay, chorus, flanger, reverb, etc. With enough effects, your little old grandmother can sound like a rock star. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but if guys like me can sound good, you can too. Crate and Roland (among other companies) make some good effects combos.

• Unless you are playing heavy metal, it is generally better to buy a smaller amp with good tone than it is to buy a big loud amp that sounds cheesy. You will never regret having a nice tone, but you will always regret bad tone. If you play with a band, you will likely find that you never need that much volume anyway unless you are playing an arena, and if you are reading this I don't see any arenas in your near future. Buy a small tube amp with a nice sound. Some music stores will try to sell loud amps with loads of effects to beginners. Don't fall for that. Don't fall for all of the "cool" effects; effects get old after a while. Use your ears and pick an amp whose tone you absolutely love, and don't part with your money until you find that amp.

• For most beginners, a 15 watt amp will be more than enough for your bedroom and small gigs.

Warnings

• Buying a large combo or (especially) a stack for the purpose of wailing in your living room at all hours can lead to divorce. So can spending $2000 on an amplifier without telling the wife (because you know she's going to say no). As a general rule, guitar equipment is to be treated as if family members had a restraining order against it. It doesn't matter if people pay good money to have you assault their eardrums with your frenzied solos every weekend, nobody at home is going to want to hear it. Whatever type of amp you buy, headphones are a must for home practice. Similarly, if you plan to install an enormous Marshall stack in your garage for rehearsals, make sure it's a detached garage. The Mrs. doesn't want to have Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" rattling windows and knocking pictures off the walls while she is entertaining her Saturday bridge club.

Researchers have found the first evidence that young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year compared to children who do not receive musical training.

The findings, published today (20 September 2006) in the online edition of the journal Brain [1], show that not only do the brains of musically-trained children respond to music in a different way to those of the untrained children, but also that the training improves their memory as well. After one year the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ.

The Canadian-based researchers reached these conclusions after measuring changes in brain responses to sounds in children aged between four and six. Over the period of a year they took four measurements in two groups of children -- those taking Suzuki music lessons and those taking no musical training outside school -- and found developmental changes over periods as short as four months. While previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons had greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons, this is the first study to identify these effects in brain-based measurements in young children.

Dr Laurel Trainor, Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University and Director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, said: "This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year. These changes are likely to be related to the cognitive benefit that is seen with musical training." Prof Trainor led the study with Dr Takako Fujioka, a scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute.

The research team designed their study to investigate (1) how auditory responses in children matured over the period of a year, (2) whether responses to meaningful sounds, such as musical tones, matured differently than responses to noises, and (3) how musical training affected normal brain development in young children.

At the beginning of the study, six of the children (five boys, one girl) had just started to attend a Suzuki music school; the other six children (four boys, two girls) had no music lessons outside school.

The researchers chose children being trained by the Suzuki method for several reasons: it ensured the children were all trained in the same way, were not selected for training according to their initial musical talent and had similar support from their families. In addition, because there was no early training in reading music, the Suzuki method provided the researchers with a good model of how training in auditory, sensory and motor activities induces changes in the cortex of the brain. Brain activity was measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG) while the children listened to two types of sounds: a violin tone and a white noise burst. MEG is a non-invasive brain scanning technology that measures the magnetic fields outside the head that are associated with the electrical fields generated when groups of neurons (nerve cells) fire in synchrony. When a sound is heard, the brain processes the information from the ears in a series of stages. MEG provides millisecond-by-millisecond information that tracks these stages of processing; the stages show up as positive or negative deflections (or peaks), called components, in the MEG waveform. Earlier peaks tend to reflect sensory processing and later peaks, perceptual or cognitive processing.

The researchers recorded the measurements four times during the year, and during the first and fourth session the children also completed a music test (in which they were asked to discriminate between same and different harmonies, rhythms and melodies) and a digit span memory test (in which they had to listen to a series of numbers, remember them and repeat them back to the experimenter).

Analysis of the MEG responses showed that across all children, larger responses were seen to the violin tones than to the white noise, indicating that more cortical resources were put to processing meaningful sounds. In addition, the time that it took for the brain to respond to the sounds (the latency of certain MEG components) decreased over the year. This means that as children matured, the electrical conduction between neurons in their brains worked faster.

Of most interest, the Suzuki children showed a greater change over the year in response to violin tones in an MEG component (N250m) related to attention and sound discrimination than did the children not taking music lessons.

Analysis of the music tasks showed greater improvement over the year in melody, harmony and rhythm processing in the children studying music compared to those not studying music. General memory capacity also improved more in the children studying music than in those not studying music.

Prof Trainor said: "That the children studying music for a year improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music is perhaps not very surprising. On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with non-musical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ than did the children not taking lessons. The finding of very rapid maturation of the N250m component to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test. It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention."

Dr Fujioka added: "Previous work has shown assignment to musical training is associated with improvements in IQ in school-aged children. Our work explores how musical training affects the way in which the brain develops. It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum."

The next phase of the study will look at the benefits of musical training in older adults.

It's said to soothe the savage beast. It can make your newborn child smarter. Plus, if you play it, you can get cool haircuts and laid often.

Humans have been making music for thousands of years. But only recently has its effects on the human mind been studied in a scientific manner. Music makes us swoon, yearn, weep, laugh, gets us all lovey-dovey or can work us up into an aggressive, martial frenzy. But how?

That's what a group of scientists at McGill and the Université de Montréal are trying to find out, with a new joint institute called (drum roll please) the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS). The head researchers are Dr. Robert Zatorre of McGill's Montreal Neurological Institute and Dr. Isabelle Peretz of UdeM's Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science. UdeM donated a fair amount of space to BRAMS, although it is not a new department affiliated with any one university.

Technical virtuoso

In a phone interview, Zatorre speaks with the calm, level voice of a professional scientist. But kind of a hip one, name-dropping bands and subcultures with ease. Trained as a classical organist in his undergrad years, he says he "realized he would be a better scientist than a musician" but would incorporate music into his research - which he's been doing for over 20 years.

What makes studying the effects of music on the brain so interesting for researchers are the multitude of different avenues of research possible. "Advanced music touches on a lot of different things," Zatorre says. "What are the mechanisms in the brain that are affected by music? How does a performer sit down and play a piece of music for half an hour from memory? That's an amazing piece of cognition."

The BRAMS team relies on advanced technology to get an inside look at the mind of a musician or music listener. "We use MRI to look at the anatomy of the brain, which is the usual way to use an MRI, and to measure anatomical changes in the brain - MRIs are also used to find brain tumours," he says. "But in a more global way, if we do an MRI on someone who is trained musically, they'll have changes in the parts of the brain that control fingers, and it's possible to show enhancement in certain auditory parts. But in the majority of cases, we look for brain activity. The brain uses oxygen when it's active, so with our scanning protocols it can pick up changes in oxygen use. This way, we can see what parts of the brain are responsible for controlling different functions."

Because music affects not just the brain but also the rest of the body, the BRAMS scientists have also examined singing, toe-tapping, the "chills down the spine" effect, mood manipulation and the effect music has on physical pain. Dentists, for example, often pipe in music when fiddling around in a patient's mouth. "Is it merely for relaxation and distraction [for the patient], or does it actually reduce the pain threshold?" Zatorre asks. "It seems that it's related to endorphins and opiates that might be released in the brain, but that theory's still up for grabs."

Exposed early and often

They are also studying the innate musical knowledge of casual music fans. Zatorre says laypeople can identify discordant notes in a melody, for instance, because of prolonged exposure to music at an early age. But the music they are exposed to is generally Western - classical, jazz or rock/pop. Research has yet to branch out to study, say, classical Chinese music.

"We're stuck with Western music for now solely because the people involved in the study have knowledge of Western music," Zatorre says. "It's hard to find someone anywhere in the world who has not been exposed to Western music." It's so widely disseminated, he says, that even in the more remote parts of the world, people have probably heard some Western songs, which affects their overall musical knowledge. "What, then, is the influence of early exposure?" he asks.

Still, there is much, much more to learn about the human brain. "We try to cover the whole musical spectrum," he says. "Different styles of music have different components that are of interest. Why can a classical pianist play a 30-minute sonata from memory? That's not typical in pop, where musicians tend to learn chords. And if you want to study improvisation, you look at jazz. A classically-trained musician has no clue how to improvise."

And as for that theory about playing Mozart to babies? "Well, I think it's a good way to sell CDs," he says. "But I think that theory's way overblown."

COLUMBUS, Ohio It's no secret that exercise improves mood, but new research suggests that working out to music may give exercisers a cognitive boost. Listening to music while exercising helped to increase scores on a verbal fluency test among cardiac rehabilitation patients.

"This is the first study to look at the combined effects of music and short-term exercise on mental performance," said Charles Emery, the study's lead author and a professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

"Evidence suggests that exercise improves the cognitive performance of people with coronary artery disease," Emery said. "And listening to music is thought to enhance brain power. We wanted to put the two results together."

Those results appear in a recent issue of the journal Heart & Lung.

The study included 33 men and women in the final weeks of a cardiac rehabilitation program. Most participants had undergone bypass surgery, angioplasty or cardiac catheterization.

Coronary artery disease may compromise cognitive ability, Emery said; that's why he and his colleagues chose cardiac rehabilitation patients for this study.

The researchers asked participants to complete a verbal fluency test before and after two separate sessions of exercising on a treadmill. The workouts were scheduled a week apart and lasted about 30 minutes. Participants listened to classical music Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" during one of the sessions.

"We used 'The Four Seasons' because of its moderate tempo and positive effects on medical patients in previous research," Emery said. "But given the range of music preferences among patients, it's especially important to evaluate the influence of other types of music on cognitive outcomes."

As a way to measure anxiety and depression, participants completed a 30-item checklist before and after exercise. The list included adjectives to describe the patient's current mood. The researchers also tested each person's verbal fluency before and after each exercise session by asking participants to generate lists of words in specific categories.

"This kind of task challenges the part of the brain that handles planning and abstract thought as well as a person's capacity for organized verbal processing," Emery said.

Participants reported feeling better emotionally and mentally after working out regardless of whether or not they listened to music. But the improvement in verbal fluency test performance after listening to music was more than double that of the non-music condition.

"Exercise seems to cause positive changes in the nervous system, and these changes may have a direct effect on cognitive ability," Emery said. "Listening to music may influence cognitive function through different pathways in the brain. The combination of music and exercise may stimulate and increase cognitive arousal while helping to organize cognitive output."

Emery conducted the study with Evana Hsiao and Scott Hill, both with Ohio State, and David Frid of Pfizer, Inc.

A grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute helped fund this research.

Classic English and French composers influenced by their language.

Would Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance or Debussy's Clair de Lune have sounded the same if the composers had been born in different countries? Probably not, according to researchers who have found that the melodies composers write are influenced by the language they speak.

The team's analysis shows that fluctuations in pitch in music written by classic French composers vary much less than in British music. The difference mirrors the patterns of pitch found in the corresponding languages.

Musicologists and linguists have tried to connect cultures' speech with their music in the past but have only had luck with tonal languages, such as Chinese, which assign meaning to words based on their pitch.

The new work is the first to connect melody with non-tonal speech. Aniruddh Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues used advanced computer software to analyse recordings of people saying different sentences in British English and in French. The software measures the pitch of each vowel, then works out the size of the jump in pitch between one syllable and the next.

For example, in the word "finding", the second vowel typically registers about 4 semitones higher than the first.

The researchers carried out the same analysis on musical notes from pieces by English and French composers such as Edward Elgar and Claude Debussy. The researchers avoided modern composers, because they would probably have been exposed to a range of cultures and languages.

Whereas previous work has compared the range of different pitches in languages and their associated music, Patel and his colleagues looked at the size of the jumps from note to note.

"We looked at how variable the intervals between pitches were, not just how variable the pitches were," says Patel.

The intervals in French speech and music turned out to be considerably less variable than their English counterparts. In other words, classical concerts and café chatter may sound rather smoother in Paris than in London.

In lovers' songs, military marches, weddings and funerals — every occasion where a degree of emotion needs to be evoked — music is an indispensable ingredient.

Yet the ability to enjoy music has long puzzled biologists because it does nothing evident to help survival. Why, therefore, should evolution have built into the human brain this soul-stirring source of pleasure? Man's faculties for enjoying and producing music, Darwin wrote, "must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

Music is still a mystery, a tangle of culture and built-in skills that researchers are trying to tease apart. No one really knows why music is found in all cultures, why most known systems of music are based on the octave, why some people have absolute pitch and whether the brain handles music with special neural circuits or with ones developed for other purposes. Recent research, however, has produced a number of theories about the brain and music.

It could be that the brain perceives music with the same circuits it uses to hear and analyze human speech, and that it thrills to its cadences with centers designed to mediate other kinds of pleasure. Dr. Anne Blood and Dr. Robert J. Zatorre, of the Montreal Neurological Institute, recently took PET scans of musicians' brains while they listened to self-selected pieces of music that gave them "chills" of euphoria. The works included Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Barber's Adagio for Strings. The music, the researchers reported, activated similar neural systems of reward and emotion as those stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs.

If music depends on neural circuits developed for other reasons, then it is just a happy accident, regardless of evolution, that people enjoy it. This is the position taken by Dr. Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University. Music, he writes in his 1997 book "How the Mind Works," is "auditory cheesecake" — it just happens to tickle several important parts of the brain in a highly pleasurable way, as cheesecake tickles the palate. These include the language ability (with which music overlaps in several ways); the auditory cortex; the system that responds to the emotional signals in a human voice crying or cooing; and the motor control system that injects rhythm into the muscles when walking or dancing.

That music can activate all these powerful systems at once is the reason it packs such a mental oomph, in Dr. Pinker's analysis. But since each of these systems evolved for independent reasons, music itself is no more an evolutionary adaptation than is the ability to like dessert, which arises from intense stimulation of the taste buds responsive to sweet and fatty substances.

But other evolutionary psychologists believe the faculty of enjoying music is no accident. Darwin suggested that human ancestors, before acquiring the power of speech, "endeavored to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm." It is because of music's origin in courtship, Darwin believed, that it is "firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable of feeling."

In his theory of sexual selection, Darwin proposed that traits found attractive in courtship would enable their owners to get more genes into the next generation. The upshot would be the emergence of adornments that had no immediately obvious survival value in themselves, like the peacock's tail or the troubadour's ballads.

Darwin's ideas about music have been extended by Dr. Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Miller notes their potency in pointing to the opportunities open to popular musicians for transmitting their genes to the next generation. The rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, for instance, had "sexual liaisons with hundreds of groupies, maintained parallel long-term relationships with at least two women, and fathered at least three children in the United States, Germany, and Sweden. Under ancestral conditions before birth control, he would have fathered many more," Dr. Miller writes.

Why on earth would nubile young women choose a rock star as a possible father of their children instead of more literary and reflective professionals such as, say, journalists? Dr. Miller sees music as an excellent indicator of fitness in the Darwinian struggle for survival. Since music draws on so many of the brain's faculties, it vouches for the health of the organ as a whole. And since music in ancient cultures seems often to have been linked with dancing, a good fitness indicator for the rest of the body, anyone who could sing and dance well was advertising the general excellence of their mental and physical genes to a potential mate.

"Music evolved and continues to function as a courtship display, mostly broadcast by young males to attract females," Dr. Miller writes in "The Origins of Music," a collection of essays by him and others.

But other psychologists argue that Dr. Miller's courtship theory does not do full justice to another important dimension of music, its role in cementing social relationships and coordinating the activities of large groups of people. Dr. Robin Dunbar, of Liverpool University, has shown that monkeys spend a large amount of time grooming other members of their social group, so much so that they would scarcely have time to look for food if their 50-strong groups were to grow any larger.

Dr. Dunbar believes that the much larger human groups, of 150 members or so, overcame the grooming barrier by developing a new kind of social glue, namely language. Group singing, or chorusing, may have been an intermediate step in this process, he suggests. He has preliminary evidence that singing in church produces endorphins, a class of brain hormone thought to be important in social bonding, he said in an e-mail message.

Others, like Dr. Edward Hagen of Humboldt University in Berlin and Dr. Gregory A. Bryant of the University of California at Santa Cruz, believe the role of music in human evolutionary history was not to create social cohesion but to signal it to rival groups. By putting ona better song-and-dance display, a group could show it had the coordination to prevail in a scrap, and could thus avoid a fight altogether, they write in an article available on the Web.

Male chimpanzees sometimes chorus in a call known as a pant-hoot, though usually to attract females to a new source of fruit they have found. For human ancestors, musical displays of this kind "may have formed the evolutionary basis for the musical abilities of modern humans," Dr. Hagen and Dr. Bryant write. The Pentagon's vigorous support of military bands — $163 million in 1997 — lends a certain resonance to this view.

The courting and social cohesion theories of music's origins assume that there are structures in the human brain that have evolved specifically to handle music. If no such structures exist, then Dr. Pinker's theory or something like it is correct.

A leading clue that points to music-specific structures, yet is so far not conclusive, is that many features of music are universal as well as apparently innate, meaning present at birth. All societies have music, all sing lullaby-like songs to their infants, and most produce tonal music, or music composed in subsets of the 12-tone chromatic scale, such as the diatonic or pentatonic scales. Some of the earliest known musical instruments, crane bone flutes from the Jiahu site in China, occupied from 7000 to 5700 B.C., produce a tonal scale.

Dr. Sandra Trehub, of the University of Toronto, has developed methods of testing the musical preferences of infants as young as 2 to 6 months. She finds they prefer consonant sounds, like perfect fifths or perfect fourths, over dissonant ones. A reasonable conclusion is that "the rudiments of music listening are gifts of nature rather than products of culture," she wrote in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience.

But although certain basic features of music, such as the octave, intervals with simple ratios like the perfect fifth, and tonality, seem to be innate, they are probably not genetic adaptations for music, "but rather appear to be side effects of general properties of the auditory system," conclude two Cambridge scientists, Josh McDermott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. Marc Hauser of Harvard, in an unpublished article.

The human auditory system is probably tuned to perceive the most important sounds in a person's surroundings, which are those of the human voice. Three neuroscientists at Duke University, Dr. David A. Schwartz, Dr. Catherine Q. Howe and Dr. Dale Purves, say that on the basis of this cue they may have solved the longstanding mysteries of the structure of the chromatic scale and the reason why some harmonies are more pleasing than others.

Though every human voice, and maybe each utterance, is different, a certain commonality emerges when many different voices are analyzed. The human vocal tract shapes the vibrations of the vocal cords into a set of harmonics that are more intense at some frequencies than others relative to the fundamental note. The principal peaks of intensity occur at the fifth and the octave, with lesser peaks at other intervals that correspond to most of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, the Duke researchers say in an article published last month in the Journal of Neuroscience. Almost identical spectra were produced by speakers of English, Mandarin, Persian and Tamil.

The Duke researchers believe the auditory system judges sounds to be pleasant the closer they approximate to this generalized power spectrum of the human voice. "A musical tone combination whose power is concentrated at the same places as a human speech sound will sound more familiar and more natural," Dr. Schwartz said.

Some people are unable to appreciate music, raising the question of whether some music-specific faculty has been damaged. People who are tone deaf also fail to hear pitch changes in the human voice, so this deficit does not seem specific to music. Some patients have music agnosia, an inability to recognize familiar melodies, even ones to which they know the lyrics. But the brain has to store memories about music somewhere, and the music agnosia patients could have incurred memory damage that just happened to hit the music archive, Mr. McDermott, of M.I.T., said.

"Any innate biases on music must derive from something in the brain, but at present there is little evidence for neural circuitry dedicated to music," Mr. McDermott and Dr. Hauser conclude.

Dr. Zatorre, of the Montreal institute, takes a similar view. The brain has evolved faculties for perceiving sounds, organizing events in time and maintaining memory stores, he said. "Once you've got all that hardware in place, it can be used for a lot of different purposes. But I don't think it follows that music was selected for."

Whether music is cheesecake, courtship or cohesion, its mystery remains unbreached.

Scientists are trying to understand why music - a pleasurable but seemingly unnecessary part of life - is universal in all human societies, ancient and modern.

Archaeologists have found evidence of musical activity dating back at least 50,000 years. Even babies as well as some animals, such as birds, whales and monkeys, have a built-in sense of tone and rhythm, according to a set of six papers on the origin and function of music in the July edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

"Every culture we've ever looked at has music of some sort," Marc Hauser, a neuroscientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and author of the leading paper, said in a telephone interview. "But why that is so is a puzzle."

Researchers expect their music studies - aided by the latest techniques of genetics and brain imaging - to shed new light on the way brains work and help people suffering from brain damage or disease.

Music also offers scientists another way to explore the unsolved mysteries of human consciousness. It can help explain how the brain processes external signals - in this case sound waves - that lead people to perform actions such as toe tapping, dancing and singing.

"Music provides a panoramic window through which we can examine the neural organization of complex behaviors that are at the core of human nature," wrote Petr Janata, a brain scientist at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H.

Isabelle Peretz, a psychology professor at the University of Montreal, reported that the human brain has a special "module," or network of cells, for music, separate from but overlapping with the areas that handle language. The module has distinct subsystems for melody and for rhythm.

The music module is not a little organ like a gland, Peretz said, but "a mental information processing system" composed of circuits of cells scattered through the brain that are specialized for processing music.

A major riddle is why humans developed the capacity to enjoy and perform music - from humming to composing a symphony - since these activities seem to have little or no practical value.

Scientists think most human skills, such as language and walking on two legs, evolved because they gave their possessors an advantage over rival creatures.

"Because of its lack of obvious utility, music is typically viewed by scientists as an interesting but evolutionarily irrelevant artifact," said Sandra Trehub, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto.

Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, wrote in 1871: "As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

Experts have proposed various explanations for the universality of music.

Darwin suggested it evolved in our animal ancestors as a sexual system, designed to attract mates. "In this view, animal song became part of courtship, and then part of human nature," Hauser said.

Others observe that music creates social cohesion, strengthening group bonds against outsiders. School pep songs or military marches are obvious applications.

Many assert that the most important function of music is to regulate or influence emotions. "Some sequences of notes are happy, some are sad," said Hauser. "Music affects our emotional response."

It isn't clear which of these theories about the origin of music is correct. "We really can't distinguish between these hypotheses," Hauser acknowledged. "Everything is open to debate."

Researchers are particularly interested in studies comparing the musical abilities of adults with those of human babies and animals. For example, experiments with very young infants showed that they react differently to harmonious and discordant chords, demonstrating that a sense for music is inherited.

According to Trehub, 4-month-old infants are content to listen to unfamiliar folk melodies, but show signs of distress - fussing, squirming, turning away - when dissonant notes are introduced into the melody.

"Toddlers commonly invent songs before they can reproduce conventional songs," she noted. "Similarly, school-age children create songs and chants, such as `eenie-meenie-miney-mo,' that share a number of features across cultures, including repetition, rhythmic patterning, rhyme and alliteration."

Even monkeys apparently sense the concept of a musical octave - notes separated by five or seven grades of pitch.

According to Anthony Wright, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, rhesus monkeys, like humans, tended to judge a tape-recorded song, such as "Old McDonald Had a Farm," to be the same when it was shifted up or down by one or two octaves.

But when the melody was transposed by a half-octave, thereby changing its key, the monkeys no longer recognized the tune, a fact they showed by failing to turn their heads toward the speaker.

Comparisons between music and language offer fresh insights into brain function.

Hauser pointed out that music resembles language in that most people in all cultures instinctively know whether a sentence in their language is grammatical or not. Similarly, almost everyone can tell whether certain patterns of sound are music or mere noise, even if these sounds have never been heard before.

"There are other stimuli that nearly everyone recognizes as unmusical, such as a `sour' note in a melody," he said.

"For too long, the neuroscience of language has been studied in isolation," wrote Aniruddh Patel, a scholar at The Neuroscience Institute in San Diego. "Music is now stepping into this breach, and via comparative analysis with language, providing a more complete and coherent picture of the mind than can be achieved by studying either domain alone."

New research suggests that we like music that sounds just like us.

Music is one of the human species's relatively few universal abilities. Without formal training, any individual, from Stone Age tribesman to suburban teenager, has the ability to recognize music and, in some fashion, to make it.

Why this should be so is a mystery. After all, music isn't necessary for getting through the day, and if it aids in reproduction, it does so only in highly indirect ways. Language, by contrast, is also everywhere -- but for reasons that are more obvious. With language, you and the members of your tribe can organize a migration across Africa, build reed boats and cross the seas, and communicate at night even when you can't see each other. Modern culture, in all its technological extravagance, springs directly from the human talent for manipulating symbols and syntax.

Scientists have always been intrigued by the connection between music and language. Yet over the years, words and melody have acquireda vastly different status in the lab and the seminar room. While language has long been considered essential to unlocking the mechanisms of human intelligence, music is generally treated as an evolutionary frippery -- mere "auditory cheesecake," as the Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker puts it.

But thanks to a decade-long wave of neuroscience research, that tune is changing. A flurry of recent publications suggests that language and music may equally be able to tell us who we are and where we're from -- not just emotionally, but biologically. In July, the journal Nature Neuroscience devoted a special issue to the topic. And in an article in the August 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, David Schwartz, Catherine Howe, and Dale Purves of Duke University argued that the sounds of music and the sounds of language are intricately connected.

To grasp the originality of this idea, it's necessary to realize two things about how music has traditionally been understood. First, musicologists have long emphasized that while each culture stamps a special identity onto its music, music itself has some universal qualities. For example, in virtually all cultures sound is divided into some or all of the 12 intervals that make up the chromatic scale -- that is, the scale represented by the keys on a piano. For centuries, observers have attributed this preference for certain combinations of tones to the mathematical properties of sound itself.

Some 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras was the first to note a direct relationship between the harmoniousness of a tone combination and the physical dimensions of the object that produced it. For example, a plucked string will always play an octave lower than a similar string half its size, and a fifth lower than a similar string two-thirds its length. This link between simple ratios and harmony has influenced music theory ever since.

This music-is-math idea is often accompanied by the notion that music, formally speaking at least, exists apart from the world in which it was created. Writing recently in The New York Review of Books, pianist and critic Charles Rosen discussed the long-standing notion that while painting and sculpture reproduce at least some aspects of the natural world, and writing describes thoughts and feelings we are all familiar with, music is entirely abstracted from the world in which we live.

Neither idea is right, according to David Schwartz and colleagues. Human musical preferences are fundamentally shaped not by elegant algorithms or ratios but by the messy sounds of real life, and of speech in particular -- which in turn is shaped by our evolutionary heritage. Says Schwartz, "The explanation of music, like the explanation of any product of the mind, must be rooted in biology, not in numbers per se."

Schwartz, Howe, and Purves analyzed a vast selection of speech sounds from a variety of languages to reveal the underlying patterns common to all utterances. In order to focus only on the raw sound, they discarded all theories about speech and meaning and sliced sentences into random bites. Using a database of over 100,000 brief segments of speech, they noted which frequency had the greatest emphasis in each sound. The resulting set of frequencies, they discovered, corresponded closely to the chromatic scale. In short, the building blocks of music are to be found in speech.

Far from being abstract, music presents a strange analog to the patterns created by the sounds of speech. "Music, like the visual arts, is rooted in our experience of the natural world," says Schwartz. "It emulates our sound environment in the way that visual arts emulate the visual environment." In music we hear the echo of our basic sound-making instrument -- the vocal tract. The explanation for human music is simpler still than Pythagoras's mathematical equations: We like the sounds that are familiar to us -- specifically, we like sounds that remind us of us.

This brings up some chicken-or-egg evolutionary questions. It may be that music imitates speech directly, the researchers say, in which case it would seem that language evolved first. It's also conceivable that music came first and language is in effect an imitation of song -- that in everyday speech we hit the musical notes we especially like. Alternately, it may be that music imitates the general products of the human sound-making system, which just happens to be mostly speech. "We can't know this," says Schwartz. "What we do know is that they both come from the same system, and it is this that shapes our preferences."

Schwartz's study also casts light on the long-running question of whether animals understand or appreciate music. Despite the apparent abundance of "music" in the natural world -- birdsong, whalesong, wolf howls, synchronized chimpanzee hooting -- previous studies have found that many laboratory animals don't show a great affinity for the human variety of music making.

Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don't create or perceive music the way we do. The fact that laboratory monkeys can show recognition of human tunes is evidence, they say, of shared general features of the auditory system, not any specific chimpanzee musical ability. As for birds, those most musical beasts, they generally recognize their own tunes -- a narrow repertoire -- but don't generate novel melodies like we do. There are no avian Mozarts.

But what's been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve preferences for sound as we do -- based upon the soundscape in which they live -- then their "music" would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way our scales derive from human utterances, a cat's idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and meows. To demonstrate that animals don't appreciate sounds the way we do, we'd need evidence that they don't respond to "music" constructed from their own sound environment.

No matter how the connection between language and music is parsed, what is apparent is that our sense of music, even our love for it, is as deeply rooted in our biology and in our brains as language is. This is most obvious with babies, says Sandra Trehub at the University of Toronto, who also published a paper in the Nature Neuroscience special issue.

For babies, music and speech are on a continuum. Mothers use musical speech to "regulate infants' emotional states," Trehub says. Regardless of what language they speak, the voice all mothers use with babies is the same: "something between speech and song." This kind of communication "puts the baby in a trance-like state, which may proceed to sleep or extended periods of rapture."So if the babies of the world could understand the latest research on language and music, they probably wouldn't be very surprised. The upshot, says Trehub, is that music may be even more of a necessity than we realize.