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Music History Lecture Notes
Describing Music
This presentation is intended for the use of current students in Mr.
Duckworth’s Music History course as a study aid. Any other use is
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Copyright, Ryan Duckworth 2010
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2 Elements of Music
• Sound
– Notes
• Silence
– Rests
• The arrangement of the sounds and
silences defines the particular music we
are listening to.
The sounds of silence
• Is there such a thing?
• Humans, especially Americans are
uncomfortable with silence
Sound
• All sound is vibration
– An object sets air molecules in
motion
– Your ear and brain interpret the
vibrations as sound
• Without an ear to hear it, it’s not a
sound, it’s just vibrating air molecules
• Sound travels at 340 meters per
second
– 760.9 miles per hour (mach 1)
– The sound barrier is the point at
which an object is moving faster
than the air molecules can get out of
the way
Describing Sound
• Any sound can be described by several
characteristics
– Pitch (highness or lowness)
– Loudness (amplitude)
– Contour (shape)
– Duration (length)
– Tempo (speed)
– Timbre
– Location
Grouping sounds
• Sound can be grouped
– Horizontally (consecutively)
– Vertically (simultaneously)
– Randomly (noise)
• When you group sounds together into
music it can be described in terms of
– Melody
– Harmony
– Rhythm (meter)
Music vs. Noise
• Sound happens all around us – what separates music
from noise?
• Noise just happens, music is organized
• The difference between music and a random set of
sounds has to do with how the fundamental aspects
combine and relate.
– Just like dance isn’t a raging sea of unrelated body movements
• Of all the creatures on this planet, only humans can
make music
– Birds, whales and coyotes “talk” in a way that seems musical to
us
• Music must be organized
– Music: sound organized in time by a human
Describing Sounds: Pitch
• Refers to both its frequency and relative position
in a musical scale
– The answer to the question “what note is that?”
• Frequency is measured in Hertz (vibrations per
second)
– Humans without hearing loss can
hear sounds between 20-25,000 Hz
– The piano plays notes between
27.5-4186 HZ
– The strongest sense of pitch comes
from between 55-2000 Hz
Pitch – Part 2
• Tone
• Note
– What you hear
– What you see written
on music
•In Western music we pick 12 tones out of the
spectrum of tones within an octave and make
them the only “legal” notes
•They are named A,B,C,D,E,F,G or
Do,Re,Mi,Fa,Sol,La,Ti,Do (the other 5 tones
are created by making those 7 either sharp (#)
or flat (b)
•Notes with the same name vibrate at double
of half frequency
Timbre
• How a sound sounds
• Also called tone quality or tone color
• “everything about a sound that is not loudness
or pitch”
• What makes a trumpet sound different from a
piano
• How you can tell whose voice is on the other
end of the phone
• What distinguishes my voice from Brad Pitt’s
Loudness
•
•
•
•
Volume of a sound in relation to those around it
The overall amplitude of a sound wave
Use terms louder/softer instead of higher/lower
The ratio between the loudest sound you can
hear and the softest is 1,000,000:1
• Loudness is measured in decibels
– A 3 decibel increase is a doubling in volume
(logarithmic)
– Names after Alexander Graham Bell
Sound Level Examples
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
0 Db - Mosquito flying 10 feet away
20 Db - A recording studio
35 DB - A typical quiet office without computers
50 Db - Typical conversation
75 Db – Comfortable headphone listening
105 Db - Classical music concert at loud passages
110 Db – A jackhammer 3 feet away
120 DB – A jet engine 300 feet away or a typical Rock concert
126-130 Db – The threshold of pain
– Note 126 is four times as loud as 120
• 180 Db – Space shuttle launch
• 250 Db – Center of a tornado or volcanic
eruption
Describing Music: Dynamics
• Dynamics refer to the volume or relative
loudness of a song
• Songs can be loud, soft, both and all
levels in between
• Dynamics add to the expressiveness of a
work
Dynamic Markings
•
•
•
•
•
•
PP – pianissimo very soft
P – piano – soft
MP – mezzo piano – medium soft
MF – mezzo forte – medium loud
F – forte – loud
FF – fortissimo – very loud
Dynamic Markings
• Crescendo – gradually get louder
• Decrescendo – gradually get softer
• Sforzando – suddenly louder on one note
or chord
Speech, Math and Music
• All human music stems from either
mathematics or speech
• It either calculates out the pitches OR
• It emulated human speech patterns
• Human speech is inherently musical
– We use pitches in our speech to add or imply
meaning
– Without pitch, some speech cannot be
interpreted
Organizing Music: Melody
• Melody is the most recognizable of the
elements of music
• Often referred to as the tune
• The part of the song that you can hum
• A melody is a series of tones (pitches) that
can be recognized as an individual song
• If pitches are like words, the melody is the
complete sentence
• Melody is horizontal music
Melody Characteristics
• Contour (shape) - the direction of the melody as the
notes go up (higher pitch) and down (lower pitches)
– Shape can be demonstrated by a single line that rises and
falls with the pitches of the music
• Interval – the distance between two consecutive
notes
• Range - the distance from the lowest note to the
highest note
– small, medium, large
• Movement - how the melody generally moves from
one note to another
– Conjunct - moves mostly by small intervals (steps and
skips)
– Disjunct - moves mostly by leaps
– Melodies often have both types of movement
Melody Structure
• Each melody can have different parts
• Like a story is made up of sentences, a melody
is made of phrases.
• A phrase is a section of a melody that makes
sense on its own.
• A phrase often ends with a cadence
• A cadence is a place in the music where the
melody feels finished, complete, or comes to a
rest
• Melody is transposable. It is not the pitches, but
the relationship between the pitches (intervals)
that makes a melody
Describing Sounds: Rhythm
• The durations of a series of notes and how
they group together in units
– Example: the ABC song
• Tempo refers to the overall speed (pace)
of a piece
• Rhythm is what we dance to, sway our
bodies to, and tap our feet to
Basic Rhythms
The Beat
• Many people use the term beat – to refer
to the rhythm of a song (that song has a
nice beat)
• Beat actually refers to the regular
pulsation in music
– It’s what you could march or dance to
Describing Music: Rhythm
•
•
•
•
Rhythm is music in time
Rhythm is musical motion
Without rhythm there can be no music
Refers to the duration of a given tone
• No motion, no rhythm: No rhythm, no
music.
Describing Music: Rhythm
• Musical time is measured in meter
• Meter refers to the regular pattern of
accented and unaccented beats in a song
– When you tap your foot hard versus light and
how they group together
• Meters are shown on written music as
measures (bars)
• Musical meter often matches or
compliments poetic meter
Common Metrical Patterns
• Western music tends to fall into a few
common meters
– Duple (multiples of 2)
– Triple (multiples of 3)
– Irregular
• Meters can contain any number of beats
• The most common are 2, 3, 4, 6
More Rhythm Terms
• Down Beat – the first beat of a meter,
usually the strongest feeling beat
• Upbeat – the last beat of a meter, usually
a weak beat that propels the music
forward
– Upbeat does not mean fast in this sense
Expect the Unexpected
• If the meter in a song never changed, it
would be very boring. Musicians make
music more interesting by adding
unexpected elements to the beat
• Something unexpected in music is called
syncopation
Describing Music: Tempo
• Tempo refers to the speed or pace of
music
• Tempo is measured in beats per minute
BPM
• Tempo not only affects the speed of a
song, but often its emotion
• Tempos were first indicated by the Italian
musicians of the 1600s.
• We still use Italian terms today to indicate
tempo
Tempos
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•
•
•
•
•
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Grave – very, very slow
Largo – very slow (40-60 BPM)
Adagio – quite slow (66-76 BPM)
Andante – walking pace (76-108 BPM)
Moderato – moderate (108-120 BPM)
Allegro – fast (120-168 BMP)
Vivace – lively
Presto – very fast (168-200 BPM)
Modifying Tempos
• Certain words can be added to tempo
marking to make their meaning more
precise
– Molto – very
– Meno – less
– Poco – a little
– Non troppo – not too much
Changing Tempos
• Tempos may change suddenly or
gradually
• Gradual changes in tempo have special
names
– Accelerando (accelerate) – get faster
– Ritardando (holding back) –get slower
– A tempo (first tempo) – return to the original
tempo
Describing Music: Harmony
• Harmony refers to simultaneous
happening in music – 2 or more tones
occurring at once
• Harmony adds depth to music, much the
way perspective add depth to a painting
• Harmony acts as a structure to support
melody
– A note in a melody can change meaning with
a change in harmony
• Like flavor – Oregano in tomato sauce is good, but
put it into banana pudding…
Describing Music: Harmony
• Harmony is a defining characteristic of modern
western music
• Harmony is vertical music
• To talk about harmony is to talk about the
movement and relationship of chords and
intervals
• These relationships ultimately lead to
expectations as to what comes next.
– Expectations that a skillful composer can either meet
or violate for expressive purposes.
Harmonic Expectations
• By the age of 5 you had created a mental
set of rules about how harmony works in
your culture’s music.
• You can detect when these rules are bent
or violated without having a complete
knowledge of why or how
– Just like you can tell that this sentence is
wrong, even though it is grammatically correct
• The pizza was too hot to sleep.
Harmony Definitions
• Interval – 2 notes sounded simultaneously
– Melodic intervals refer to the distance
between two notes played in succession
– Harmonic interval refers to 2 notes played
simultaneously
• Chord – 3 or more notes played
simultaneously
Special Chords
• Triads – A 3 note chord built on alternating notes
of the scale – can be in any order
– Do Mi Sol
– Re Fa La
– Mi Sol Ti
C E G
D F A
E G B
• Cluster – a chord that uses 3 or more tones right
next to each other
– Do Re Me
– Ti Do Re
C D E
B C D
Music Is Like Life
• Both need consonance and dissonance
• Consonance – agreement, a pleasant
sounding chord
• Dissonance – argument, a harsh sounding
chord
• If you don’t have both, life and music are
boring
Organizing Harmony
• Harmony not only functions to support a
melody, but also to give it direction
• All music moves toward a final resolution
– Your ear hears a goal
• This goal is called tonic – the tone of
greatest importance (Do)
• Not all music uses the same Do, and not
all music arrives at the goal
Organizing Harmony
• Every song has a tonality, based on the
tonic
• There are two basic tonalities
– Major – sounds happy, triumphant, joyful
– Minor – sounds sad, melancholy, despairing
• Each tonality has its own special scale
• Many songs use both tonalities
The Colorful Notes
• Most western music is built the 8 note
scale. This music is called diatonic
• Some music uses parts of a 12 note scale.
This music is called chromatic – meaning
colorful.
Describing Music: Texture
• Texture refers to how a song “feels”,
similar to how you describe the feeling of a
cloth
• We feel music with our ears
• Texture refers to many different aspects of
music
– Instrumentation
– Dynamics
– Composition styles
Texture and Instrumentation
• Texture can also refer to the various
timbres or instruments at any given point
in a song
– A song played on acoustic guitars feels
different from the same song played on
electric guitars
• Not all instruments play all of the time in a
piece
Types of Texture: Compositional Styles
• Monophony – Single voice. Melody alone.
Can be many performers, playing the exact
same thing, simultaneously.
• Homophony – Parallel voices or melody with
chordal accompaniment.
• Polyphony – Many voices. Two are more
combined melodic elements. Counterpoint –
note against note.
More on Polyphony
• Much of Western music is polyphonic.
• Counter Melodies – two distinct melodies
performed simultaneously
• Imitation – having the same melody played
before the first melody is finished (round)
• Contrapuntal Devices – Creating
polyphony by varying a single melody
using a set of rules
Contrapuntal Devices
• Retrograde – backwards
• Inversion – upside down
• Retrograde Inversion – upside down and
backwards
• Augmentation –
longer time values
• Diminution – shorter time values
Appreciating Music
• To appreciate music, you have to
understand how it is organized
• Even with popular music, you have
learned to appreciate its organization
• You think your Grandpa’s music is boring
and he thinks your is just noise
• You have not learned to appreciate the
organization of each other’s music.
Describing Music: Form
• Just like a book has chapters, music often
has sections
• These sections often fall into special
patterns which make up the form of the
piece
• Form balances similarity and variety
• When you can understand form, you can
understand larger works
Why Form
• Like life, music needs elements of the familiar
and contrast
• Familiar achieved through repetition of a theme
• Contrast refers to something outside the normal
• Variation takes the familiar and modifies it
(thematic variation)
• Improvisation takes a basic structure and
makes-up new musical elements
Basic Types of Form
• Binary – two part – AB
• Ternary – three part – ABA
• Much popular music relies heavily on repetition
and variation
• Many songs are built on a verse and chorus
system
• Verse may be varied or completely different
• Form often amplified by rhyme scheme
More Complex Forms
• Sonata Form
– Exposition
– Development
– Recapitulation (Coda)
• Sonata Cycle
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–
–
–
Sonata-allegro
Slow movement
Minuet, Scherzo and Trio
Sonata-allegro
• Symphonic Movements
Melody
Meter
Pitch
Measure
Interval
Duple
Step
Triple
Skip
Conducting
Leap
Upbeat
Octave
Syncopation
Range
Accents &
Shape
rests
Conjunct
Harmony
Disjunct
Chord
Phrase
Scale
Cadence
Arpeggio
Countermelody Tonic
Rhythm
Tonality
No motion, no Consonance
rhythm; no
Dissonance
rhythm, no music Drone
Tempo
Texture
Largo
Monophonic
Adagio
Homophonic
Andante
Polyphonic
Instrumentation Allegro
Presto
Thickness
Dynamics
Contrapuntal
Piano
Devices
Forte
Retrograde
Fortissimo
Augmentation
Mezzopiano
Diminution
Crescendo
Inversion
Form
Repetition
Contrast
Variation
Improvisation
Call and response
Theme