Bluegrass music in the context of Flatpicking

The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings (sometimes five), usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow (col legno).

Violins are important instruments in a wide variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical tradition, both in ensembles (from chamber music to orchestras) and as solo instruments. Violins are also important in many varieties of folk music, including country music, bluegrass music, and in jazz. Electric violins with solid bodies and piezoelectric pickups are used in some forms of rock music and jazz fusion, with the pickups plugged into instrument amplifiers and speakers to produce sound. The violin has come to be incorporated in many non-Western music cultures, including Indian music and Iranian music. The name fiddle is often used regardless of the type of music played on it.

Throughout the history of the British Isles, the land that is now the United Kingdom has been a major music producer, drawing inspiration from church music and traditional folk music, using instruments from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. Each of the four countries of the United Kingdom has its own diverse and distinctive folk music forms, which flourished until the era of industrialisation when they began to be replaced by new forms of popular music, including music hall and brass bands. Many British musicians have influenced modern music on a global scale, and the UK has one of the world's largest music industries. English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh folk music as well as other British styles of music heavily influenced American music such as American folk music, American march music, old-time, ragtime, blues, country, and bluegrass. The UK has birthed many popular music genres such as beat music, psychedelic music, progressive rock/pop, heavy metal, new wave, industrial music, and drum 'n' bass.

In the 20th century, influences from the music of the United States, including blues, jazz, and rock and roll, were adopted in the United Kingdom. The "British Invasion"—spearheaded by Liverpool band the Beatles, often regarded as the most influential band of all time—saw British rock bands become highly influential around the world in the 1960s and 1970s. Pop music, a term which originated in Britain in the mid-1950s as a description for "rock and roll and the new youth music styles that it influenced", was developed by British artists like Black Sabbath, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, whom among other British musicians led rock and roll's transition into rock music.

The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Early folk music performers include Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Mississippi John Hurt, Josh White, and Cisco Houston. Lead Belly recorded "Cotton Fields" and "Goodnight, Irene" and folk singer Odetta released folk albums.

New folk musicians such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Peter Paul & Mary and many others recorded folk songs and new compositions in the folk style in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival also brought forward strains of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, bluegrass, blues, and rock and roll music.

The double bass (/ˈdʌbəl beɪs/), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, the Bass Fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions such as the octobass). It has four or five strings, and its construction is in between that of the gamba and the violin family.

The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, violas, and cellos, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo, and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, bluegrass, tango, folk music and certain types of film and video game soundtracks.

Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the South. As a genre, it blends the sound of Western musical styles such as country with that of rhythm and blues, leading to what is considered "classic" rock and roll. Some have also described it as a blend of bluegrass with rock and roll. The term "rockabilly" itself is a portmanteau of "rock" (from "rock 'n' roll") and "hillbilly", the latter a reference to the country music (often called "hillbilly music" in the 1940s and 1950s) that contributed strongly to the style. Other important influences on rockabilly include Western swing, boogie-woogie, jump blues, and electric blues.

Defining features of the rockabilly sound included strong rhythms, boogie woogie piano riffs, vocal twangs, doo-wop acapella singing, and common use of the tape echo; and eventually came to incorporate different instruments and vocal harmonies. Initially popularized by artists such as Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Burnette, Jerry Lee Lewis and others, the rockabilly style waned in the late 1950s; nonetheless, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, rockabilly enjoyed a revival. An interest in the genre endures even in the 21st century, often within musical subcultures. Rockabilly has spawned a variety of sub-styles and has influenced the development of other genres such as punk rock.

The United States' multi-ethnic population is reflected through a diverse array of styles of music. It is a mixture of music influenced by the music of Europe, Indigenous peoples, West Africa, Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, amongst many other places. The country's most internationally renowned genres are traditional pop, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, rock and roll, R&B, pop, hip-hop, soul, funk, religious, disco, house, techno, ragtime, doo-wop, folk, americana, boogaloo, tejano, surf, and salsa, amongst many others. American music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a near global audience.

Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, settlers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. Enslaved people from West Africa brought their musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributed to a melting pot.

The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."

American folk music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. The music is considered American either because it is native to the United States or because it developed there, out of foreign origins, to such a degree that it struck musicologists as something distinctly new. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and jazz. A lot of this music was created during hardships that told the story of the history.

Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dancing and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle (see old time fiddling) and plucked string instruments, most often the 5-string banjo without a resonator pan, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo–fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered by some to be a precursor to modern country music, but it is also has a contemporary active subculture of musicians in various parts of the United States. Old-time music can generally be distinguished from the more widely known bluegrass genre by the use of cross-tunings on the fiddle, by all melody instruments playing in unison, by a lack of individual instruments taking breaks to improvise, by sessions remaining in one tuning or key for an extended period (because fiddles and banjos are tuned especially for that key or even for one tune), and by banjos being frailed instead of finger-picked and lacking resonators to make them louder.

American popular music (also referred to as "American Pop") is popular music produced in the United States and is a part of American pop culture. Distinctive styles of American popular music emerged early in the 19th century, and in the 20th century the American music industry developed a series of new forms of music, using elements of blues and other genres. These popular styles included country, R&B, jazz and rock. The 1960s and 1970s saw a number of important changes in American popular music, including the development of a number of new styles, such as heavy metal, punk, soul, and hip hop.

American popular music is incredibly diverse, with styles including ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, rock, bluegrass, country, R&B, doo wop, gospel, soul, funk, pop, punk, disco, house, techno, salsa, grunge and hip hop. In addition, the American music industry is quite diverse, supporting a number of regional styles such as zydeco, klezmer and slack-key. Though these styles were not always in the sense of mainstream, they were commercially recorded and therefore are examples of popular music as opposed to folk or classical music.

A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar (often generically called a "Dobro") is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than regular acoustic guitars, which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became prized for their distinctive tone, and found life with bluegrass music and the blues well after electric amplification solved the problem of inadequate volume.

Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles (particularly Scotland), and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.

First recorded in the 1920s, Appalachian musicians were a key influence on the early development of old-time music, country music, bluegrass, and rock n' roll, and were an important part of the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Instruments typically used to perform Appalachian music include the banjo, American fiddle, fretted dulcimer, and later the guitar.

Rickie Lee Skaggs (born July 18, 1954), known professionally as Ricky Skaggs, is an American neotraditional country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, and banjo.

Skaggs was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2016 and both the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2018. On January 13, 2021, it was announced Skaggs had been awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Donald Trump, alongside fellow country musician Toby Keith.

Patty Loveless (born Patricia Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957) is an American country music singer. She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985. While her first few releases were unsuccessful, she broke through by decade's end with a cover of George Jones's "If My Heart Had Windows". Loveless issued five albums on MCA before moving to Epic Records in 1993, where she released nine more albums. Four of her albums—Honky Tonk Angel, Only What I Feel, When Fallen Angels Fly, and The Trouble with the Truth—are certified platinum in the United States. Loveless has charted 44 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five which reached number one: "Timber, I'm Falling in Love", "Chains", "Blame It on Your Heart", "You Can Feel Bad", and "Lonely Too Long".

Loveless's music is defined by a mix of sounds, including neotraditional country, country pop, and bluegrass music, with her singing voice garnering favorable comparisons to Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris. Recurring songwriters whose work she has recorded include Matraca Berg, Kostas, Jim Lauderdale, and Steve Earle. She has collaborated with Vince Gill, George Jones, and Dwight Yoakam, among others. Nearly all of her albums were produced by her husband, Emory Gordy Jr. Although she largely retired from performing in 2009, Loveless has sporadically contributed to other artists' works in subsequent years. She has won five awards from the Country Music Association, two from the Academy of Country Music, and two Grammy Awards.

Jackie Keith Whitley (July 1, 1954 – May 9, 1989) was an American country music and bluegrass singer and songwriter. During his career, he released only two albums, but charted 12 singles on the Billboard country charts, and seven more after his death.

Born in Ashland, Kentucky, Whitley grew up in nearby Sandy Hook. He began his career there in 1970, performing in Ralph Stanley's band. Establishing himself as a lead singer in bluegrass music, Whitley moved to Nashville in 1983 and began his recording career there. His first top-20 country hit single, "Miami, My Amy", was released in 1986. In 1988, his first three singles from his second studio album Don't Close Your Eyes, the title song, "When You Say Nothing at All", and "I'm No Stranger to the Rain" were number-one hits. During the final years of his life, Whitley struggled with a lifelong alcohol addiction. He completed his sessions for his follow-up album, I Wonder Do You Think of Me, before dying of acute alcohol poisoning in 1989 at his Goodlettsville home at age 34. The album's "title song", along with "It Ain't Nothin'" and "I'm Over You", were released as singles after his death.

William Smith Monroe (/mənˈroʊ/ mən-ROH; September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) was an American mandolinist, singer, and songwriter who created the bluegrass music genre. For this reason, he is often called the "Father of Bluegrass".

The genre takes its name from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, who named their group for the bluegrass of Monroe's home state of Kentucky. He described the genre as "Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."