Music History Lecture Notes

Describing Music

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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

– What you hear

• Note

– 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

• 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 C E G

– Re Fa La D F A

– Mi Sol Ti E G B

• Cluster – a chord that uses 3 or more tones right

next to each other

– Do Re Me C D E

– Ti Do Re 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– Sonata-allegro

– Slow movement

– Minuet, Scherzo and Trio

– Sonata-allegro

• Symphonic Movements

Melody

Pitch

Interval

Step

Skip

Leap

Octave

Range

Shape

Conjunct

Disjunct

Phrase

Cadence

Countermelody

Rhythm

No motion, no

rhythm; no

rhythm, no music

Meter

Measure

Duple

Triple

Conducting

Upbeat

Syncopation

Accents &

rests

Harmony

Chord

Scale

Arpeggio

Tonic

Tonality

Consonance

Dissonance

Drone

Texture

Monophonic

Homophonic

Polyphonic

Instrumentation

Thickness

Contrapuntal

Devices

Retrograde

Augmentation

Diminution

Inversion

Form

Repetition

Contrast

Variation

Improvisation

Call and response

Theme

Tempo

Largo

Adagio

Andante

Allegro

Presto

Dynamics

Piano

Forte

Fortissimo

Mezzopiano

Crescendo