Musician Musicians play instruments for a living and may work in symphony orchestras, bands, rock groups, or Jazz “combos. ” Most musicians study for many years before they become professionals. They usually train in some area of specialization such as popular or classical music. Musicians who specialize In the trumpet, trombone, clarinet. Saxophone, organ, or a rhythm Instrument such as the piano. String bass, drums, or guitar may perform in nightclubs, in restaurants, at parties, and at receptions.
Classical musicians play in operatic and theatrical productions, symphony orchestras, concerts, and recitals. They generally play string, brass, percussion, or woodwind instruments. Pianists usually accompany vocal or instrumental soloists or choral groups. They may perform on the concert stage, for television, or in a small club. Organists play In churches and often direct a choir. Some musicians become distinguished artists. For Instance, a classical musicals may appear as a soloist with a symphony orchestra. Popular musicians may play alone or with a group on a concert tour.
Many well-known musicians are recording artists as well and earn a good income from the sale of their records. Others work as house musicians for television shows. Since thousands of musicians cannot support themselves by performing alone, many have other Jobs to maintain a steady Income. Some give private lessons In their own homes or In students’ homes. Others work as studio musicians, operate music stores, or play the background music for a featured singer or group at recording sessions. Because of the irregular hours and unsteady work, many musicians choose not to perform. Some teach at music schools or conservatories.
Others teach in colleges or secondary or elementary schools. These musician-teachers provide instruction in music appreciation, music theory, and voice or give lessons on Individual Instruments. Musicians who understand the mechanics of their Instruments may do repairs and tuning. Libraries for the performing arts hire musicians as librarians. Music libraries in schools and in radio and television stations also employ musicians. Some musicians give music therapy to emotionally and physically disabled people and to the aged. Almost all professional musicians begin their training at an early age.
They continue to study for many years, either privately with a music teacher or in a music school. Technical skill and manual dexterity are necessary for playing an Instrument well, but mechanical skill is not enough. Musicians should have an “ear,” or ability to hear differences in pitch, as well as a feeling for the style of the music they play. In addition, some kinds of music, such as Jazz, require the ability to improvise. Musicians should also possess strong mental and physical discipline. Only through long years of study do musicians gain a thorough knowledge of music and the ability Jose and stage presence.
They must be strong enough to handle long hours, travel engagements, auditions, and practice sessions. After studying with one teacher for a number of years, a student may wish to study at a conservatory, or special school for musicians. Many schools accept students on the basis of auditions. Only those judged to be the most promising are accepted. As students at the college and university level, musicians follow a course of study either in instrument or in voice: both areas include music history and theory, music interpretation, composition, and conducting as well as performance.
A conservatory degree or a bachelor’s degree in music allows a musician to pursue the state certification needed for elementary and secondary school teaching positions. Either a master’s or a doctoral degree in music is generally required for college and university staff positions; however, some schools make exceptions for well-qualified musicians. Prospective musicians should perform as much as possible, playing with a local band and taking advantage of any opportunity to gain experience with professionals. Some beginning musicians and singers form their own bands. This experience may lead to auditions for other, more reflections groups.
College placement offices and music department staff may help students find a Job teaching music in a school or to individual students. Trade and industry publications such as Variety and Show Business Weekly often carry notices of auditions. They sometimes list agents who help book musical talent as well. Agents help musicians find Jobs and help producers find musical talent in exchange for a percentage of the musician’s earnings. In all cases, getting that “first break” requires time, patience, and a great deal of talent and determination on the part of the musician.
Jobs in the musical industry are expected to grow at an average rate through 2014. Many classical musicians compete for the few positions with one of the major symphony orchestras, metropolitan and regional orchestras, or the hundreds of other smaller orchestras in the country. Stable employment can be found in recording studio work or as a teacher of music in a conservatory, school, or college. Many part-time musicians supplement their incomes by giving private lessons. For this reason, it is expected that there will be more than enough music teachers to meet the demand for private instruction.
There will be openings as musicians leave the field, but because of intense competition only the most talented are likely to find regular employment. Musicians’ salaries vary widely. According to the Occupational Employment Statistics survey of 2004, the median salary for musicians is $17. 85 per hour. The median hourly wage in performing arts companies is $20. 70 and $12. 17 in religious organizations. Many performing musicians belong to the American Federation of Musicians. As of 2004 minimum salaries for musicians playing in major symphony orchestras ranged from $700 to $2,080 per week.
These musicians are also remunerated at least a season’s work, which may last up to fifty-two weeks. Metropolitan and regional orchestras generally have a shorter season. Many musicians face intermittent periods of unemployment, reducing their yearly income considerably. As a rule, musicians work for more than one employer and supplement their incomes with other types of Jobs. Musicians have long and irregular work schedules. Besides daily practice and rehearsals for new pieces, they may work days, nights, and weekends.
Musicians must be willing to travel to give performances comprised mainly of emceeing and decaying. The other two components that complete the four elements of hip-hop are graffiti and breakfasting. As hip-hop evolves into big business, the four elements (emceeing, decaying, graffiti, and breakfasting) are constantly being merged with others like clothing trends, slang, and general mindset. Rap is a form of music that stemmed from hip-hop culture. Hip hop is a lifestyle with its own lingo, dress code, etc. In the words of KIRKS-One, “hip-hop is something you live, rap is something you do. A product of cross-cultural integration, rap is deeply rooted within ancient African culture and oral tradition. Hip-hop is believed to have originated in the Bronx by a Jamaican DC named Cool Here. Here’s style of decaying involved reciting rhymes over instrumentals. At house parties, Here would rap with the microphone, using a myriad of in-house references. Duplicates of Here’s house parties soon drifted through Brooklyn, Manhattan. Here and other block party Ads helped spread the message of hip-hop around town and spawned tons of followers. Hip-hop as a musical melting pot is still evolving.
It has become more eclectic, borrowing from soul, Jazz and live instrumentation with the ekes of De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and most recently Kenya West championing the ‘soulful rap’ movement. Additionally, rap’s potential for political advocacy stems from the function of its predecessors, African-American rhyming games, as forms of resistance to systems of subjugation and slavery. Rhyming games encoded race relations between African-American slaves and their white masters in a way that allowed them to pass the scrutiny of suspicious overseers.
Additionally, rhyming games allowed slaves to use their creative intellect to provide inspiration and entertainment. For example, by characterizing the slave as a rabbit and the master as a fox, “Beer Rabbit tales” disguised stories of slaves outwitting their masters and escaping plantations behind the facade of a comical adventure. Hip-hop Journalist Dave D connects the African oral tradition to modern rap: “You see, the slaves were smart and they talked in metaphors. They would be killed if the slave masters heard them speaking in unfamiliar tongues. So they did what modern-day rappers do–they flexed their lyrical skills. 7 Rap has developed as a form of resistance to the subjugation of working-class African-Americans in urban centers. Though it may be seen primarily as a form of entertainment, rap has the powerful potential to address social, economic, and political issues and act as a unifying voice for its audience. Cool Here and DC Hollywood are given credit for introducing the Jamaican style of cutting and mixing into the musical culture of the South Bronx. Here was the first DC to buy two copies of the same record for Just a 1 5-second break (instrumental segment) in the middle.
By mixing back and forth between the two copies he was able to double, triple, or endlessly extend the break. By doing this, Here made the turntable a causal instrument. While he was mixing with two turntables, Here would also perform with the microphone in Jamaican style-?joking, boasting, and using all around group references. Here’s parties soon gained notice and were recorded on cassette tapes. Copies of the tapes quickly made their way through the Bronx, Brooklyn, and uptown Manhattan, creating a number of similar DC acts. Among the new Ads was Africa battles with Here.
The sound system competitions were held in city parks, where hot- wired street lamps supplied electricity, or at local clubs. Bumboat would moieties mix sounds from rock-music and television shows into the standard funk and disco advance that Here and most of his followers relied on. By the sass any sound source was considered useable and rap artists borrowed sounds from such disparate sources as Israeli folk music, bebop Jazz records, and television news broadcasts. In 1976 Grandmaster Flash introduced the technique of quick mixing, in which sound bites as short as one or two seconds are combined for a unique effect.
Shortly after Flash introduced quick mixing, his partner Grandmaster Melee Mel composed the first extended stories in rap. Up to this point, most of the words heard over the work of disc Jockeys had been improvised phrases and expressions. In 1978 DC Grand Wizard Theodore introduced scratching of records to produce rhythmic patterns. In 1979 the first two rap records appeared: “King Tim Ill” by the Fatback Band, and “Rapper’s Delight,” by Sugarbird Gang. A series of verses by the three members of Sugarbird Gang, “Rapper’s Delight” became a national hit, reaching number 36 on the Billboard magazine popular music charts.
The spoken content, mostly bragging spiced with fantasy, came largely from material used by the earlier rappers. The background for “Rapper’s Delight” was supplied by studio musicians, who copied the basic groove of the hit song “Good Times” (1979) by a disco group Chic. Sampling brought into question the ownership of the new sound. Some artists claimed that by sampling recordings of black artist they were challenging white corporate America and the recording industry right to own black cultural expression. Rap artists were also challenging other musicians’ right to own, control, and be given credit for the use of their creations.
By the early most artists requested remission for the use of samples. Some commonly sampled released CDC containing dozens of sound bites specifically for sampling. One effect of sampling was the sense of musical history among black youth. Earlier artists were celebrated as cultural heroes and their older recordings were reissued and repopulated. During the mid-sass, rap moved from the verges of hip-hop culture to the mainstream of the American music industry as white musicians began to accept the new style.
In 1986 a rap record reached the top ten on the Billboard pop charts with “(You Goat) Fight for Your Right (To Party! ” by the Beastie Boys and “Walk This Way’ by Run-DMS and Aerostatic. Known for combine rock music into its raps, Run-DMS became one of the first rap groups to be featured regularly on MAT. Also during the mid-sass, the first female rap group, Salt-N-Peep, released the singles “The Show Stoops” (1985) and “Push It” (1987). “Push It” reached the top 20 on Billboard’s pop charts. In the late sass rap became highly politicized, resulting in the most mediated social agenda in popular music.
The groups Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions condensed this political style of rap. Public Enemy became noticed the theme song “Fight the Power” from the motion picture “Do the Right Thing” (1989), by filmmaker Spike Lee. Stating the importance of rap in black culture, Chuck D. , of Public Enemy, referred to it as the African American CNN. Next to the rise of political rap came gangs rap, which attempts to state an outlaw lifestyle of sex, drugs, and violence in the city. In 1988 the first major album of gangs rap was released, “Straight Auto Compton” by the rap group NNW (Inning With Attitude).
Songs from the album created an extraordinary amount of bickering or their violent attitudes and hatred towards a number of organizations, including the FBI. However, attempts to censor gangs rap only served to publicize the music and make it more attractive to both black and white youths. Since the mid-sass rap music has influenced both black and white culture in America. Much of the slang of hip-hop, like ids, fly, defy, chill, and wacko, have become standard parts of vocabulary for a number of young people of various backgrounds.
Many rap enthusiasts claim that rap is used as a voice for a people without access to he mainstream media. According to supporters, rap serves to provoke self-pride, self-help, and self-improvement, passing on a positive and fulfilling sense of black history that is missing from other American institutions. Gangs rap has been severely criticized for lyrics that many people interpret as praising the most violent and misogynistic (woman-hating) views in the history of popular music. Defenders of gangs rap argue that no matter who is listening to the music, the raps are good because they precisely show life in inner-city America.