66 Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Musical Elements

During this course you will be somewhat of a music journalist. One must use musical terminology to describe music. Although music is an art form and can be very moving emotionally, a music journalist will keep their distance when describing music through emotional or aesthetic terminology, unless asked for specifically. Chapter 1 lists the musical terminology that you will become familiar with. You do not need to know how to read music, but you do need to know terminology for describing what you hear. The following terms, traditionally in Italian, will be used frequently and should be studied thoroughly.

One cannot understand, define, or explain music without knowledge of primary musical elements. Read through each musical element and familiarize yourself with these terms. Italian is the language of musical terminology. However, you may use other words to indicate a term.

1. Tempo: This refers to how fast a piece of music is. If you do not know tempo markings such as allegro, lento, and so on, you may use “beats per minute” (BPM) to assist you.
2. Melody: A series of pitches that make up a musical theme or tune one remembers easily
   1. Contour of melody
      1. ascending pitches
      2. descending pitches
      3. wavelike ~~~~ (Does the melody go up and down like a wave?)
   2. Pitch (Frequency): the sound that we hear and give a name to, such as A4 or D#3
   3. Range: the high and the low of a musical piece
   4. Intervals: the relationship between two pitches
   5. Cadence: the end of a phrase, like a period in a sentence
   6. Phrases: a musical sentence
   7. Countermelody: an accompanying melody sounded against the primary melody
3. Harmony
   1. Chords: simultaneous combination of three or more pitches
   2. Triad (a type of chord consisting of three pitches built on alternate notes of the scale
   3. Major and minor modes: Both are scales of seven pitches. Primary difference is the third of the scale. The minor takes the third down a half step and suggests a more somber or sad mood.
   4. The “tonic”: the first note in a scale—also called the “1” or the “do”
   5. Dissonance and consonance: Dissonance is a combination of pitches that sound discordant and unstable, as if they rub against each other and need to resolve. Consonance is the opposite; the pitches seem to be stable and harmonious with one another.
4. Dynamics
   1. The various volumes within a piece of music (loud, soft, etc.)
   2. Crescendo: getting louder
   3. Decrescendo: getting softer
5. Rhythm: the controlled movement of music in time
   1. Syncopation or offbeat
   2. Nonmetric (Gregorian chants)
   3. Polyrhythm: many rhythms
6. Meter: number of beats in a measure
   1. Measure: a grouping of beats, notated on the musical staff with bar lines
   2. Duple meter: simple meter that can be divided by two beats in a measure
   3. Triple: basic pattern of three beats to a measure
   4. Downbeat: the first beat in each measure
   5. Upbeat: the last beat of a measure that is in anticipation of the next measure’s downbeat
7. Musical Form
   1. Strophic (best example are traditional church hymns)
   2. Through composed
   3. Binary (A-B)
   4. Ternary (A-B-A)
   5. Sequence
   6. Call and response (Example: The lead singer sings a short phrase, and a chorus of others responds.)
   7. Improvisation: creating music on the spot during a performance (This is always present in jazz.)
   8. Movements: found in large-scale compositions, such as symphonies (This is like three or four chapters of a book. The book is the symphony, and the movements are the chapters.)
8. Musical Sounds
   1. Octave: pitches 1 and 8 on a scale
   2. Half step: smallest interval used in Western music system
   3. Whole step: interval consisting of two half steps
   4. Chromatic scale: an ascending or descending sequence of pitches that are half steps
   5. Sharps and flats: The sharp sign, #, is an indicator to move a pitch up by a half step. The symbol for flat, b, indicates lowering a pitch by a half step. Example: G# raises the G up by one half step. The Gb will lower the G by one half step.
   6. Microtones: an interval that is smaller than the half step and used in non-Western music and some modern 20th-century music
   7. Tonic chord: a triad built on the “do” or the “1” or the “tonic”. In the key of G, the tonic chord would be built starting on the G pitch.
   8. Key: the common center of pitches
   9. Transposition and modulation: Transposing is taking a piece of music and playing/or singing it in another key. Modulation is moving the musical work up or down to another key in the middle of a musical work.
9. Musical Texture
   1. Monophony: single-line texture or melody without accompaniment (Example: “Happy Birthday”)
   2. Polyphony: two or more melodic lines combined into a multivoiced texture (Example: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”)
   3. Homophony: a primary melody with accompaniment (Example: all pop music)
   4. Imitation: the same melodic idea presented in one voice and then repeated in another (Example: canons and rounds)
10. Voices and instrumental families: Timbre and tone color determine instruments and voices.
    1. Instruments
       1. winds
       2. brass
       3. percussion
       4. strings
    2. Voice fachs
       1. Soprano
       2. Alto
       3. Tenor
       4. bass