Small Ensembles - Popular Music

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Research and Composition Small Ensembles -Popular History Popular music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs. The 19th century singer Jenny Lind said; "The most significant feature of the emergent popular music industry of the late 18th and early 19th centuries was the extent of its focus on the commodity form of sheet music". The availability of inexpensive, widely-available sheet music versions of popular songs and instrumental music pieces made it possible for music to be spread to a wide audience of amateur music-makers, who could play and sing popular music at home. Another factor was the increasing availability during the late 18th and early 19th century of public popular music performances in "pleasure gardens and dance halls, popular theatres and concert rooms". During the 19th century, more regular people began getting involved in music by participating in amateur choirs or joining brass bands. By the early 1900s, the big trends in popular music were the increasing popularity of vaudeville theatres and dance halls and the new invention—the gramophone player. By 1920 there were almost 80 record companies in Britain, and almost 200 in the USA. Radio broadcasting of music, which began in the early 1920s, helped to spread popular songs to a huge audience. In the 1950s and 1960s, television began to play an increasingly important role in distributing new popular music. Variety shows regularly showcased popular singers and bands. In the 1960s, the development of new technologies in recording such as multitrack recorders gave sound engineers an increasingly important role in popular music. By using recording techniques, sound engineers could create new sounds and sound effects that were not possible using traditional "live" recording techniques. The 1990s saw music recording

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