World Music: Traditions and Transformations 2nd Ed. Ch. 1-6 Vocabulary (Bakan)

Five Propositions of Music (1)

a) Address the questions of 1) What factors account for people's many and vastly different views of what music is, and what it is not? 2) Given that there is not even general agreement about what music is in the first place, how might we establish a reasonable, common point of departure from which to begin our exploration of music-world music-as the global and extraordinarily diverse phenomenon of humankind that it is?
b) 1. The basis property of all music is sound 2. The sounds (and silences) that comprise a musical work are organized in some way 3. Sounds are organized into music by people; thus, music is a form of humanly organized sound. 4. Music is a product of human intention and perception. 5. The term music is inescapably tied to Western culture and its assumptions.

Tone

a sound whose principal identity is a musical identity, as defined by people (though not necessarily all people) who make or experience that sound

Human Intention and Perception approach (HIP)

1. privileges inclusiveness over exclusiveness 2. emphasizes the idea that music is inseparable from the people who make an experience it

Ethnocentrism

evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture

Ethnomusicology (2)

an interdisciplinary academic field that draws on musicology, anthropology, and other disciplines in order to study the world's musics-makes a first priority of engaging music in ways that reveal such insights

Musicultural

a phenomenon where music as sound and music as culture are mutually reinforcing, and where the two are essentially inseparable from one another

Culture

that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society

Identity

people's ideas about who they are and what unites them with or distinguishes them from other people and entities: individuals, families, communities, institutions, cultures, societies, nations, supernatural powers

vocables

a generic term used by musicologists to describe nonlinguistic syllables that are used in vocal performances (ex. beat-boxing)

society

a group of persons regarded as forming a single community of related, interdependent individuals

social institution

a system of behavioral and relationship patterns that are densely interwoven and enduring, and function across an entire society

Nation-State

share a national society and culture and a national homeland

Nationalist Music

often promoted by governments and other official institutions to symbolize an idealized "national identity"

diaspora

an international network of communities linked together by identification with a common ancestral homeland and culture

Virtual Communities

communities forged in the electronic sphere of cyberspace rather than in more conventional ways, represent the latest chapter in the complex story of transnational identity formation

Musical syncretism

the merging of formerly distinct styles and idioms into new forms of expression

fieldwork

a. a hallmark of ethnomusicologist research
b. involves living for an extended period of time among the people whose lives and music one researches, and often learning and performing their music as well

rituals

special events during which individuals or communities enact, through performance, their core beliefs, values, and ideals

composition

a process that involves planning out the design of a musical work prior to its performance

interpretation

the process through which music performers or listeners take an existing composition and in a sense make it their own through the experience of performing or listening to it

Improvisation

composing in the moment of performance

arranging

the craft of taking an existing musical work and transforming it into something new, while still retaining its core musical identity

tradition

a process of creative transformation whose most remarkable feature is the continuity it nurtures and sustains

Duration (3)

how long or short a tone is

frequency

how high or low a tone is (pitch)

Amplitude

how loud or soft tones are (volume)

Timbre

actual sound quality or "tone color"; what they sound like

rhythm

how the sounds and silences of music are organized in time

sixteenth notes

faster notes

eighth notes

medium notes

quarter notes

slower notes

beat

a. underlying pulse of a composition
b. what you tap your foot to when you listen to a song, or what you move your feet to when you dance

subdivision

individual beats divided into smaller rhythmic units
[ex. 2 evenly spaced notes per beat=duple subdivision, 4 evenly spaced notes per beat=quadruple subdivision]

measure

grouping of beats

meter

number of beats in a measure

metric cycle

longer type of meter; used to describe how the beats are grouped and organized

accents

produced by simply playing one note more loudly than the notes surrounding it (ex. high D sharp, when surrounded by high A, B, and C)

syncopation

an accented note that falls between beats

tempo

the rate at which the beats pass in music

free rhythm

no discernible beat (i.e. beat is not explicit)

Melody(4)

the particular sequence of pitches that unfolds

Melodic Range

the distance in pitch from the lowest note to the highest note

Melodic Direction

the ascending and/or descending movement of the melody as it progresses from note to note

Melodic Contour

the overall "shape" of the melody, which is a product of its range, direction, and other features

determinate pitch

tone can be identified by any of the 7 notes (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) (instrument ex. piano, guitar, violin)

indeterminate pitch

rather than being dominated by one pitch, the individual tones they produce generate many different pitches that compete for the ear's attention, with no clear "winner" among them (instrument ex. drums, cymbals, triangles)

scale

an ascending or descending series of notes of different pitch

mode

more comprehensive and multidimensional; tell a musician not only what pitches can be used in a given performance, but also offer instructions on how to use each of those pitches

octave

a musical phenomenon that is nearly universally recognized in the world's music traditions

range

how low or high, as well as soft or loud your voice can get

tonic

scale degree/step

major scale

employs seven pitches per octave, sound happy

key

scale used for a musical work

pentatonic scale

five pitches per octave

minor scales

employ seven pitches, sound sad

interval

the distance between any tow notes

blues scale

combines features of major, minor, pentatonic, and traditional African sclaes

microtone

tiny intervals

ornamentation

"decoration" of the main notes of the melody

articulation

style of notes

staccato

short clipped notes

legato

long, sustained notes

chord

a group of two or more notes of different pitch

harmony

a chord that "makes sense" within the context of its musical style

chord progression

when the music moves steadily from one chord to another

harmonization

each note of the melody becomes the basis of its own chord

arpeggio

"broken chord" harmony

crescendo (5)

gradually gets louder

decresendo

gradually gets softer

dynamic range

range between the softest and loudest notes

acoustic

unamplified

ensemble

music groups

harmonics

overtones; not a distinct pitch, merge together with each other and fundamental pitches

didgeridoo

Australian aerophone instrument

music instrument

any sound-generating medium used to produce tones in the making of music

instrumentation

types and numbers of instruments that dictate the timbral landscape of music

Hornbostel-Sachs classification system

4 prominent universal categories: chordophones, membranophones, idiophones, and aerophones; created in 1914; eventually electronophones was added later

chordophones

instruments in which the sound is activated by the vibration of a string or strings over a resonating chamber (ex. guitar)

aerophone

sound emerges from vibrations created by the action of air passing through a tube or some other kind of resonator (ex. flute)

membranophones

instruments in which the vibration of a membrane stretched tightly across a frame resonator produces the sound (ex. drum)

idiophones

instruments in which the vibration of the body of the instrument itself produces the sound (ex. cymbals)

electronophones

must be plugged in to create sound, and amplify it

digital sampling

allows for any existing sound to be recorded, stored as digital data, and then reproduced either "verbatim" or in electronically manipulated form

overdubbing

the ability to layer dozens upon dozens of separate musical tracks one atop the other

multitrack recording

ability to record multiple tracks on a single machine

single-line textures (6)

simplest type of texture; monophonic

unison

performing the same sequence of pitches in the same rhythm

polyphonic

two or more distinct parts

drone

sustained, continuous tone

harmonized texture

emerge when notes of different pitch occur together to form chords or harmonies

multiple-melody texturue

features two or more essentially separate melodic lines being performed simultaneously (round or canon)

polyrhythm

music in which there are several different parts or layers, with each defined mainly by its distinctive rhythmic character rather than by melodies or chords

interlocking

moving in the opposite direction, a single melodic or rhythmic line may be divided among tow or more instruments or voices

call-and-response

a. a very important musical process linked integrally to the subject of musical texture
b. involves back-and-forth alternation between different instrument or voice parts (ex. cantor and choir)

ostinato

a short figure that is repeated over and over again; typically the smallest unit of organization upon which musical forms are built

layered ostinatos

two or more ostinatos are "stacked" one on top of the other

cycle

a repeated unit typically longer than an ostinato

12-bar blues

each cycle is 12 measures/bars long and has the same basic chord progression as the others; same length and chords, but differ in their instrumentation and textures

verse-chorus form

way most songs today are written, alternating verses with a repeated chorus (ex. Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are, Gavin DeGraw - Not Over You)