Music Terms

Pitch

- Measured form to describe how HIGH or LOW a sound is

- Can be put in an order/scale

Perceptual aspects of sound

Pitch

Timbre

Length

Loudness

Location

Timbre

- QUALITY of a sound

- It's what distinguishes your voice from your mom's or a trumpet from a piano

- "Brightness" or "darkness" of a sound

- Dr. Lowry's metaphor: we're all wearing clothes but they're all different materials

Scale

- The ORDER of PITCHES

- Set of musical notes ordered by pitch, going up and down like steps on a ladder

- SEVEN PITCHES in typical Western musical scale

Equal-tempered scale

- When the DISTANCE between each pitch is the SAME

- A system that divides each octave into 12 equally-spaced semitones, such that each note is approximately 6% HIGHER in frequency than the note below

Note

Although pitch is how high or low a sound is, a note is a HUMAN NAME or a WRITTEN SYMBOL for a specific pitch

Pure tone

- A sound that has only ONE single FREQUENCY

- Rare in nature

- Used mainly for experiments

Frequency

Frequency is the actual, MEASURABLE speed of a sound wave, while pitch is how your brain hears and perceives that sound

Cent

- UNIT OF MEASUREMENT or RULER for sound

- Just like a dollar is made of 100 pennies, one semitone/half-step (like from C to C-sharp) is made of 100 cents

Semitone

- Smallest musical interval used in Western music

- Aka half-step or half-tone

- Literally ADJACENT notes (interval between two adjacent notes in a 12-tone scale)

Texture + 4 types

- How different LAYERS OF SOUND combine, interact, and relate to one another in a piece

- Four types: monophony, polyphony, homophony, and heterophony

Monophony

SINGLE melodic line with NO accompaniment

Example: singing happy birthday perfectly, altogether

How it would look:

━━━━━━━

Polyphony

MULTIPLE melodic lines INTERWOVEN with eachother

Example: singing row row row your boat but starting at different times

How it would look:

━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━

Homophony

MAIN melody with ACCOMPANIMENT/CHORDS (most common in Western music)

Example: typical pop song, singing happy birthday but with different harmonies

How it would look:

━━━━━━━

I I I I I I I I I

Heterophony

TWO OR MORE voices SIMULTANEOUSLY performing variations of the SAME melody

Example: singing happy birthday altogether but one of more voices are a little off

How it would look:

⎯~⎯~⎯~⎯~⎯~⎯ (but like imagine thats one long curvy line on top of a long straight line)

Form

- Overall STRUCTURE of a piece

- Arrangement of musical units of rhythm, melody, and harmony that show repetition or variation