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NEW LINK: "THE MUTOPIA PROJECT" MORE THAN 2000 PIECES OF MUSIC (free download)

NATURE IN MUSIC

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Archaeological evidence known at this point of time report that the origin of the artistic activity dates back from more than 64,000 years, being its creator the homo neanderthalensis . In particular -and according to Science review- these are cave paintings in three Spanish caves located in Cantabria, Caceres and Malaga. Since then and to present day, man has expressed, from different artistic points of view, all the creativity that he has been able -or we would say,  has had the need- to transmit. From our origins, the contact, relationship, and interaction with nature have  been and  are  evident. Many artists have benefited from that  to create  their work in any field, either  pictorial, literary, sculpture, musical, cinematographic, etc. It would be a very intense and arduous study to refer to all these areas so, in this article, we are going to  focus on the inspiration that some great composers,  who preceded us,  found in those areas and we will analyze three of their mo
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WHERE DOES THE NAME OF THE MUSICAL NOTE COME FROM?

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Guido d'Arezzo As an introduction, we will say that since Prehistory there is musical archaeological evidence (bone flutes, whistles, Egyptian harps or metal wind instruments from Rome, among others). Unfortunately, we do not know what music sounded like in the early civilizations, since music was transmitted orally and there were no scores. The creation of the first musical symbols –the neumes- and their evolution towards the present score, was a work of many centuries (task which is carried out even now because new symbols are still being invented in order to perform contemporary scores). Sounds have always existed but, at some point in our time line, humans learnt to use some of them musically. But, how were the name of the notes allocated?  The first reference that the Western world has about it is attributed to the Scientist and Mathematician Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 – c. 170), who wrote a musical scale whose notes he named after the seven first letters of th
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91st Academy Awards

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The next 24th of February the ceremony of Academy Awards (the well-known Oscars) in twenty-four categories will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Nowadays, there are two awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences related to Music: 1. The first one is the Academy Award for the Best Original Song . This category was introduced in 1934, at the 7 th Academy Awards. “Original” means that the song –which would be eligible to win- must be original and written specifically for a motion picture. 2. One year later, the Academy began awarding films for their scores as well. The category was originally called Best Scoring and then Best Original Score; music written specially for the film by the commissioned composer. Along this time, lots of amazing films have been awarded, such as The Wizard of Oz , The Bridge on the River Kwai , Ben-Hur, West Side Story , Lawrence of Arabia , Mary Poppins , Doctor Zhivago , Cabaret , Jaws , Star Wars , Chariots of Fi
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PIANO EVOLUTION

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Do you know the evolution of the Piano? Which were the instruments that preceded it? In the following video you have a full explanation about his history. Enjoy it!
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COMPOSER OF THE MONTH - JUSTIN HURWITZ

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This month we want to talk about a very young film composer, who won several awards last year with the score for the musical film La la Land: The city of stars; we refer to Justin Hurwitz. He was born on 22 January, 1985 in Los Angeles - California. His parents are Ken Hurwitz and Gail Hurwitz, writer and classical dancer, respectively. Justin began to play piano at the age of six and composed his first song when he reached ten. In 1998 his family moved to Wisconsin and he joined Nicolet High School. During this time, he took some lessons with pianist Stefanie Jacob at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. Some years later, he attended Harvard University, where he was a classmate of the director Damien Chazelle. Both collaborated at that time in several projects together: (2003) Chester French: An indi-pop band formed by David-Andrew Wallach (vocalist), Maxwell Drummey (multi-instrumentalist), Damien Chazelle (drummer), Michael Judge (bassist) and Justin Hurwitz
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THE BANDS

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The origin of the bands is uncertain but it is believed that it occurred when the musicians accompanied the soldiers in the battle. The ancient Mesopotamian civilizations already used musicians in the war. In Roma times, musicians played bronze fanfare trumpets with the military, and sometimes hundreds of trumpeters would lead large processions. In the Renaissance, brass instruments began to develop and evolve to resemble the instruments used today.  European instruments were brought to the new world by the colonists. During the time of the American Revolution, marching bands consisted primarily of fifes, pipes and drums.  In the nineteenth century, new instruments were invented: flugelhorns, tenor horns, baritones, euphoniums, trombones, tubas, valve trumpets, French horns and other brass instruments of all shapes and sizes. Adolph Sax invented a family of sax instruments and existing instruments were also improved upon. The concert band became established and gradually
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COMPOSER OF THE MONTH - JUNKIE XL

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Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL) is one of the most famous film composers of the 21st century.  He was born in Holland in 1967 and in his youth, he was a rock and electronic music player in several bands ( Fear Factory, Dog eat dog ...) In the middle of the 90s, he started his productions for video games and films. At that time, his friends used to call him “Junkie”, because he was addicted to work in his production studio, were he spent a lot of his time. At the same time, he put his focus on electronic dance music, playing in night clubs. In 1997 he won the Grand Prix to the best producer of house music in his home country. Some of his albums were among others Big sound of the drags , Saturday night teenage kick , Radio JXL , etc. In 2003 he decided to move to Los Angeles, California, the city of the best film studios where he became into a great film composer. Some of his works in this field include: 300: Rise of an empire (2014) Divergent (2014) Mad Max: Fury Road (
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