Element of music 1 notes
All audio by Dr. Sarah Satterfield
Slide 1
Hello, everyone! I am Dr. Satterfield, and yes, I do have a southern accent, so, you'll have to get used to that if you are listening to the audio. I am going to guide you through this journey of music appreciation. Hopefully you've had a chance to purchase the packet of lecture outlines. I'm hoping you were able to get a physical copy either delivered through the bookstore or the publisher. If you're using the e-book, just do the best that you can. I would encourage you to write your notes directly in your packet of lecture outlines. The great thing about recording the PowerPoints is you can go back and listen to this material as often as you need to. For the purposes of testing though, what you're responsible for is what is in bold. I do talk very quickly. There's no way to write down everything that I say, but as long as you catch the definitions for the bold-faced terminology, you'll be in good shape. I have my packet of lecture outlines in front of me. Grab yours and a pen and we'll get going! This is incidentally the longest section. If you can make it through this section, it is downhill after this!
Slide 2
We are going to be focusing in this PowerPoint on what I call the “elements”of music. The elements are the basic materials of music. If you think about architecture, architects work with wood work with bricks. If you're a painter, you're going to work with paint. If you're a musician, you're going to work with sound. Sound is one of the most basic materials in music. Sound is prevalent in society. You probably woke up to the sound of an alarm clock this morning. Since you started this presentation, you've heard the sound of me talking if you are following along with the audio. Sound is also very vital to music, and in music there's a specific process involved in sound production. Sound production always begins with the vibration of an object.
I am the flute professor here at CF, so you're going to hear some flute playing today! If I blow into an instrument like the flute [music note played on flute], there are vibrations inside of the tube of the instrument. If you strike a key on the piano keyboard, there are vibrations inside of that instrument. If you sing your vocal cords literally vibrate. So, with all of the instruments, there is some kind of vibration. Once the process of sound production begins with some form of vibration, the second step is transmission. The sound is transmitted from the object to the ear--from the flute to the ear, from the clarinet to the ear. The last step in the sound production process is interpretation. At the end of the process, our brain interprets or makes sense out of what we are hearing.
Slide 3
Our first term in bold is pitch. If you've been zoning out, zone back in now. Pitch in music is the highness or the lowness of a sound. If I play a sound like this [music note played on flute], it is higher than [music note played on flute]. The factors that affect pitch include the size of an instrument. An instrument like the tuba vibrates very slowly and thus has a low pitch. An instrument like the flute vibrates very quickly, creating a higher pitch.
The term tone is used when a sound has a definite pitch. The sound that you produce by blowing into a musical instrument is considered a tone. The opposite of that is a noise-like sound. If you were to drop a book on the floor, that is a noise-like sound, because it does not have a specific pitch. For the most part, in music we have tones--definite pitches. One example of a composition that uses noise-like sounds is John Cage's composition 4’33”. This rather infamous piece was written for a piano. When the piano player plays the composition, they come out to the instrument. They sit, they sit, they sit for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. They play absolutely nothing. The music is whatever noises the audience produces. If people start shuffling their programs, if they start coughing, that becomes the composition. That's an extreme example of the use of noise in music!
Slide 4
The term interval is the distance between two pitches. Envision a piano keyboard. Look at that notes C and E, which are labelled. The physical distance between the two is called an interval. When we name intervals, we use numbers. You might hear a musician say “This is the interval of a third.”“This is an interval of a fourth.” To come up with the numerical name, you would simply count the letters involved. If have an interval that goes from C on the bottom, up to E on the top, that is called a third in music. C is one letter name, D is two letter names, E is three. If I had an interval that went from C on bottom up to G, that is called the interval of a fifth. Count up your letter names: C is one, D is two, E is three, F is four, G is five. One of the most common intervals is the octave, an eight-note interval. If you went from C on the bottom up to that next C on top, that is eight notes: C D E F G A B C.
The pitch range is the distance between the lowest and highest note on an instrument. With an instrument like the flute, has about a three-octave pitch range. An instrument like a piano has about a seven-octave pitch range. The human voice, for most people, is more like one to two octaves.
Pitch is used in music to set the mood. High pitches [music notes played on flute] create a happy feeling in music. If you have low pitches [music notes played on flute], that is going to be a more of a sad mood to the music.
Slide 5
The term dynamics is used to describe the volume of the music--how loudor how soft the music is. The factors that affect this include the force. If I blow into the flute with a lot of force [music note played on flute], it createsa loud sound. If I blow into the flute with just a little bit of force, it's going to be a softer sound [music note played on flute]. Dynamics, like pitch, can beused to set the mood. If you want a relaxed mood to a composition, let's say you're singing a lullaby to relax a child off to sleep, you're not going to have loud dynamics.
Related terms here include dynamic accent, which means that you emphasize a note by playing it louder. Music would be boring if everything was the same volume, so we sometimes emphasize notes by playing themlouder. I will play a set of three notes on the flute, the first time without a dynamic accent, the second time with. With no dynamic accent [music notes played on flute], the music is bland sounding. When I add in a dynamic accent [music notes played on flute], emphasizing that middle note by playing it louder, I add a little bit more interest to the music. As I'm recording this I have a large cat behind me; he did not like the dynamic accent example that I just did. An even better example of a dynamic accent is the second movement of Haydn “Surprise Symphony.” It's very soft at the beginning, and then all of a sudden you have a loud chord that was intended to wake the audience up if they dosed off. My cat finds it very effective...
Slide 6
When you perform music, you've got to be very fluent in Italian or have an Italian dictionary handy beside you because you are going to see lots ofItalian words sprinkled in the music. The term pianissimo means very soft. Anytime you see “issimo” at the end of the word, it means “very” something, in this case, very soft. If you're listening to a composition and you can barely hear that composition, that would be pianissimo. The term piano means soft. Mezzo piano means moderately soft. “Mezzo” means moderately, in this case moderately soft. Mezzo forte means moderately loud. So, now we're building up the volume in the music. Forte means loud. There's no mezzo, so just plain loud. Fortissimo means very loud. Most music fallssomewhere in that mezzo piano mezzo forte range. You don't have a lot of really, really soft music or really, really loud music. Most of it is right there in the middle. If you want an example of these different dynamic levels in music, listen to Chopin’s “Prelude.” This composition is written for just piano and even though you have just one instrument you can hear all those changes of dynamics in the course of the composition.
Slide 7
When you listen to a composition, the dynamics can change abruptly or gradually. If you look at that word “decrescendo,” it kind of looks like decrease. If you look at the word “diminuendo,” it looks like diminish. So, in both cases, the terms mean gradually softer. Just the opposite is a crescendo, meaning gradually louder. A great example of gradual changes is Modest Mussorgsky’s “The Polish Ox Cart” from a set called “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Mussorgsky uses dynamics here to paint this musical portrait of an ox cart. The music starts off very softly, representing the ox cart way off in the distance. The music crescendos as the ox cart gets closer to a small town, and then decrescendos as the ox cart moves off into the distance.
Slide 8
One other property that makes musical sounds different from regular sounds is they have a specific tone color also called the timbre—the unique sound of an instrument. When I play a flute, you can recognize that’s a flute. If I played the trumpet, you would know that that's a trumpet. The factors that affect this include the material. A wooden flute sounds totally different from a metal flute. Tone color is used in music to build a sense of continuity--to unify the composition. A lot of times in a longer piece of music, you're going to have the same tone color over and over again. By using that same tonecolor, it unifies and makes the music sound more continuous. Listen to“Dance of the Reed Pipes” from the Nutcracker ballet. At the beginning, you have the tone color of the flute. When that opening melody comes back later, that same tone color is repeated. So, by using that same tone color, Tchaikovsky builds a sense of continuity.
Slide 9
Now we'll shift gears into the musical instruments. Of all of the instruments, the oldest one is the voice. Since the beginning of civilization, people have shown an interest in vocal music. Almost everybody sings, but not everybody sings well. I do not sing well. Singing can be used to bring people together. Singing a composition like the Star-Spangled Banner unifiespeople. Sometimes in class, I'll ask students to give me an example of a composition that people sing that brings them together. One semester, someone said, [singing] “don't stop believin’.” I guess if people start singing that, other people just kind of sing along. If you're in Olive Garden, somebody sings “Happy Birthday,” you're gonna jump right in!
Methods of singing vary from one civilization to another. The very last topic we'll look at in here is called non-western music. There are some very distinctive methods of singing in non-western music!
Now let’s compare singing versus speech. One of the big differences here is the pitch range. The pitch range when you sing is about one to two octaves. With instruments it's anywhere from three, four, five up to seven octaves. So, we do have a much greater pitch range and instruments a smaller pitch range with voices.
Women’s voices are typically classified as soprano or alto, while men’s voices are typically classified as tenor or bass. When we get into opera in the Baroque period, we are going to see finer subdivisions. Yay, opera! I know everyone's excited about that.
Slide 10
An instrument for our purposes is anything that produces a musical sound. The human voice does produce a musical sound, but I'm treating it a little bit differently there. The pitch range, as I was just mentioning, is greater forinstruments. The voice is about one to two octaves; the instruments are anywhere from three octaves to seven octaves.
Throughout history, we find that instruments function in several different ways. Instruments often accompany other activities. As people are singingor dancing, instruments provide accompaniment. Instruments provide entertainment. If a marching band performs at halftime, the purpose of the music there is entertainment. Instruments can also be used forcommunication, giving us practical information. If you're in the military and you hear a bugle call, that communicates it's time to wake up. If you're watching a Miss America pageant and you hear a drum roll, that communicates there's going to be some type of major announcement. When we're back on campus, if we hear the bell tower chiming, that communicates the time.
Slide 11
Now we're going to go through the different families of instruments; I have a lot of stuff in bold here relating to the instruments. For the purposes of testing I want you to know what family each instrument belongs to, and then which is highest and which is lowest within each family. For violin, viola, cello, and bass, for example, you're just going to know that they are stringed instruments. And then also know which is highest and which is lowest. The violin is the highest of the string instruments. The violin is the smallest of the string instruments. I was mentioning before that size affectspitch, so since the violin is the smallest one, it is the highest. The bass is the lowest of the string instruments. I put in parentheses some great names that are connected to some of these instruments including, for cello, Yo-Yo Ma. That truly is his name.
Slide 12
To play the stringed instruments, you're going to use a bow and a technique called stopping. Simply connect these to string instruments. When you're playing a violin, viola, cello, bass, you're going to pull the bow across the strings. That's what starts the string vibrating, and that's how sound production begins. To change the pitch, you're going to use the stopping technique. You press the string against the instrument, literally stopping the vibrations.
The parts of the instrument include the body. If we were to tap the body, it's going to have a hollow sound to it. The tail piece is the base of the instrument. Go up a little further up is the bridge, which holds the strings up. If the strings rested directly against the instrument, they would not vibrate. The fingerboard is where the player presses the strings down. At the very top are the wooden pegs. If you need to make small adjustments to pitch, a little bit higher, a little bit lower, you can tighten or loosen the wooden pegs.
Slide 13
The violin, viola, cello, and bass, are all bowed string instruments because you pull a bow across them. There are also plucked string instruments like the harp, which started to be used in classical music around the 19th century, and the guitar, which is used more in popular music. You play those instruments by plucking the strings either with the finger or a plectrum. A fancy word for a pick, the plectrum is connected to string instruments. Usually plectrums are made out of plastic or leather.
Slide 14
Our second family is the woodwind instrument. Woodwinds are called woodwinds because they were originally made mostly of wood. The one exception is the saxophone. The saxophone is the most recent of the woodwind instruments, and it was never made up out of wood. For the purposes of testing, I want you to know what family each instrument belongs to, and then which is highest and which is lowest, so piccolo (andyou're lucky, my piccolo is at CF so I cannot demonstrate for you) is the highest woodwind. It’s very small in size. The flute is also a woodwind instrument. I played it before, I'll play it again. Great flute players include James Galway and Jean-Pierre Rampal. On the graphic on the PowerPoint there are different types of flutes. The one that looks like the number four is called the contra bass flute. So, you have little tiny flutes and big flutes--the full pitch range with just that one instrument.
Slide 15
The oboe and English horn are also members of the woodwind family. Hopefully no one played oboe in band because I’m going to diss the oboe for just a second. If you think back to your high school band experience, normally the socially awkward person in high school plays the oboe. My youngest daughter plays the oboe, so I can say that. Generally, oboe players are very intelligent, but not everyone gravitates toward this instrument. It sounds a lot like the instrument that snake charmers play producing a tense, nasally sound.
Slide 16
I bet we have some in the class that play the clarinet. The clarinet, the bass clarinet are important members of the woodwind family. Because clarinets come in different sizes, we have the full pitch range with this one instrument. Clarinets are very flexible instruments. On the regular clarinet, you can play high passages and low passages, slow and fast. A lot of flexibility with the clarinet family!
Slide 17
The last of the core members of the woodwind family are the bassoon and the contra bassoon. The bassoon is sometimes referred to as a clown of the orchestra. I forced my oldest daughter to play the bassoon. She was a bad trumpet in middle school band, and for one very dark year of my life, I was her middle school band director. Their band director had a heart attack. I understand 100% why he had a heart attack at this point. They were going to cancel band and they said, “Oh, you're a musician. You can teach band.” And that was the worst experience ever. God bless middle school music directors. Someone donated a bassoon to the band, and like I said she was a bad trumpet player. So, I said one day, “Who wants to play the bassoon?”Of course no one volunteered, so I forced her to play it. The good thing is if you play a really weird instrument, you can get a scholarship, so she got a scholarship to go to TC for high school.
The contrabassoon is the lowest woodwind. It's even lower in pitch than the tuba. If you uncoil that thing it is close to 18 feet long. It is a very expensive instrument. If you buy a contra bassoon, that's going to set you back a minimum of $15,000. It is crazy how much some of these instruments will cost!
Slide 18
The saxophone and recorder are also members of the woodwind family. The saxophone was the one that I mentioned was never made out of wood. It was invented in the mid-1840s--much more recent than the other ones. A guy named Adolf Sax created it in the 1840s, and that's why we call it the saxophone. The recorder is the instrument you plated back in elementary school. Interestingly, there's more music written for the recorder than any other instrument in existence. You can get a master's degree in recorder performance. I know a guy that got his master's in recorder performance. Of course, you can't get a job if you have a master's degree in recorder performance, so now he's a librarian at UF. But he comes home at night andmakes a cup of hot tea. He sits in his recliner and plays the recorder. Catscircle at his feet. When you get a master's degree, ask yourself, “Can I actually get a job in recorder performance?” Good chance the answer is no.
Slide 19
Now to playing the woodwind instruments. On the flute and piccolo, there is an opening on the top of the instrument. You blow across that opening[music note played on flute], that puts air into the tube of the instrument and then you open and close the keys [music notes played on flute]. For all of the remaining woodwind instruments like for the clarinet, bassoon, andoboe, you blow against or into a reed (link reed to woodwind instruments). The reed is a piece of cane.
Slide 20
Now to the brass instruments. I know we have some brass people here in the class. For the brass instruments, like the others, I want you to know what family they belong to, and which is highest and lowest. Trumpet is the highest of the brass instruments, because it is the smallest in size. The trumpet was my nemesis. It was the one instrument I really struggled to play. When I was in college as an undergraduate I had to learn how to play all the different instruments; the trumpet for me was the hardest one.
The French horn, a second member of the brass family, is a beautiful instrument. Its mellow sound blends well with other brass instruments, as well woodwinds. I direct the woodwind ensemble here on campus, and in the woodwind ensemble we have a French horn player. The trombone has the distinction of being the loudest brass instrument. I think trombone players pride themselves on that. My sister plays the trombone, and she plays it very loudly. The tuba is the lowest brass instrument. It's not as low as the contra bassoon but it's the lowest member of the brass family.
Slide 21
To play a brass instrument you blow into a mouthpiece and then the sound comes out through the bell, terms to link to brass instruments. The mouthpiece is the part you blow (“buzz”) into. The bell is where the sound comes out. If a brass player points their bell directly at you, you can definitely hear it!
To change the pitch, you can do several different things. You can do a lot by simply tightening and loosening the lips. By having tighter or looser lips, you can get higher and lower pitches. You can also use valves for pitch change. The valves look like little buttons. My using different combinations of valves and lip tension, you can get higher and lower sounds. You can also change pitch by using a slide. On a trombone, you push your slide out and pull itback in to get higher and lower pitches.
The sound can also be altered by using a mute, linked mainly to brass instruments. A mute is a device inserted into the bell of the instrument to muffle the sound. If you want a softer sound, you can write a softer dynamic or you can tell the player to insert a mute into the bell.
Slide 22
In the percussion family, there are two main types of instruments: definite pitch instruments (instruments that produce tones) and indefinite pitch(instruments that produce noise-like sounds). Sound production generally involves striking the instrument. If you have a lot of pent-up frustration, percussion instruments are great ones to play because you physically hit the instrument. The timpani is a definite-pitch percussion instrument. Each of its drums has a different pitch to it. The xylophone, which is very similar to the layout of a piano keyboard, is also classified as a definite-pitch. The bass drum, gong, and conga are indefinite pitch, producing noise-like sounds.
Slide 23
Now moving to the keyboard instruments. We'll look at three main keyboard instruments. First off, the piano. The piano was invented around 1700. Since then it has become the most popular of the keyboard instruments. When you play a piano, you press one of 88 different keys. What happens next is a felt-covered hammer strikes a string. Inside the instrument thereare long strings (low) and short strings (high). The string starts to vibrate. That's how the sound is produced on the instrument.
One technique that's used in more recent music is something called prepared piano. This involves inserting objects in between the strings. Nuts, bolts, and pieces of bamboo are literally stuck between the strings ofthe instrument. Listen to the composition “Perilous Night” to hear what prepared piano sounds like. Do not try that at home because it is not great for the instrument.
Slide 24
The harpsichord is the historical predecessor of the piano. It's smaller anddifferent in terms of sound production. When you press down a key on a harpsichord, a mechanism inside plucks a string (plucking motion versus a striking motion). The harpsichord is largely obsolete now. Once the piano was invented, this instrument fell to the wayside.
Slide 25
The last of the keyboard instruments is the organ. Organs are often linked to religious music. The first period of history that we're going to talk about is the Middle Ages and the organ was used very extensively in that period of history. When you press down a key on the organ, air is released up through those pipes. The long pipes have low sounds, while the short pipes have higher sounds.
Slide 26
The most recent instruments are the electronic instruments. Tape recorders started to be used in music right about 1950. Composers would record sounds from nature, such as the sound of bird calls or maybe the sound of a river. They would record sounds of traditional instruments. They would cut and splice those together to make music. You can make an entire piece of music by cutting and splicing recorded sounds.
The synthesizer was also invented right around 1950. If you look at the graphic on the PowerPoint, we have come a long way! This is a very early synthesizer. Now they're much smaller and less expensive. Those early synthesizers would fill up entire rooms.
The computer is the most recent electronic instrument. Computers can be used to both perform and compose music. There are computer programs that help you write your own music.
For an example of tape recorder music, listen to Edgar Varese’s “Poemeelectronique.” This was considered a landmark of modern music. It is totally prerecorded; nothing was done live here. Varese recorded sounds and cut and spliced those together to make music. When you listen to it, you will question why it is considered a landmark of modern music, but it was.
Slide 27
Now we'll move to the top of Page 16. And look at rhythm. And rhythm is very basic in life. If you think about the tide, transport yourself to that picture, there, the rise and fall of the tie that occurs at a very rhythmic interval. If you think about our heartbeat, our heart beats at a very regular interval. That's an example of rhythm. And rhythm is also very basic to music. And I have your definition as letter B here, rhythm in music is a system of organizing time. This is the time aspect. This is the temporal aspect of music. And that's a really broad definition, but by the time I talk about the different aspects of rhythm, hopefully it will be clear exactly what this refers to in music.
Slide 28
The first aspect of music we'll look at is the beat, which is a recurrent pulse. If you're tapping your foot to a composition, that's the beat of the music.
A second aspect of rhythm is the meter. Meter means you're organizing beats into strong beats, and one or more weak beats. Strong beats are ones that are emphasized, and weak beats are ones that are not emphasized. There are several different meters in music, each one determined by the number of beats in a measure. A measure is a rhythmic group that is set offby bar lines. The little vertical lines in the music are called the bar lines. Whatever rhythmic figure you have in between those bar lines, that is called a measure. The way that this ties into meter is that the number of beats that you have in a measure dictates the meter. When you have two beats in a measure that is called duple meter. When you have three beats in a measure, that is called triple. In between the bar lines, if you saw two notes or notes that added up to two counts, that is called duple. If you saw three notes, that is called triple meter. A couple of other meters that are common in more recent music are quintuple meter (five beats per measure) and septuple meter (seven beats per measure). Listen to Dave Brubeck’s“Unsquare Dance.”
And then one more thing related in to meter, the term syncopation means that you have an accent in an unexpected place. Listen to George Gershwin's “I Got Rhythm,” which is in duple meter. Normally in duple meter, it is counted strong, weak, strong, weak. But in the case of “I Got Rhythm,”there's an emphasized note right after the beat, creating syncopation. What we hear in “I Got Rhythm” is [singing and snapping fingers] “I got rhythm; I got music; I got my girl, who could ask for anything more?” And again, my apologies for the singing; desperate times call for desperate measures. The emphasized word “I” is right after the first beat. Syncopation is common in jazz and a lot of Gershwin's music shows the influence of jazz.
Slide 29
A very straightforward aspect of rhythm is the tempo of the music. Tempo is the speed of the music--how slow, how fast it is. Just like dynamics, you have to be very fluent in Italian to perform music because you have to read all these Italian words that tell you the speed of the music. The markings largo, grave, adagio mean very slow. If you're listening to a composition and it is just barely moving along, the tempo would be labelled largo, grave, or adagio.
Andante means moderately slow. Moderato means moderate. In English, itlooks like the word moderate. Allegretto is moderately fast. When you stick that “etto” on the end of the word, it means moderately something, in this case moderately fast. Allegro means fast. We chop off the “etto,” so just fast for allegro. Allegro is often compared to a running speed. Prestomeans very fast so now you're running at a faster tempo—the finish line is in sight. Prestissimo means as fast as possible. If it is late at night and someone is chasing you, you might be running at a prestissimo tempo. There are many, many more tempo indications. Those are just some of the most common.
Slide 30
Often in music a tempo marking will be paired with a modifier. Modifiers will often give a clue to the character of the music. Con brio, for instance, means brilliant. If you saw in the music “Allegro con brio” that would mean a fast, very brilliant sound to the music.
The tempo of the music, like the dynamics, will change. The Italian words for the tempo changes include accelerando, which means gradually faster. In English, it looks like the word accelerate. If you're accelerating, you get gradually faster; if you're accelerando-ing in music, you're getting gradually faster. My youngest daughter says “Green means go. Red means stop. Yellow means go faster.” That is what she has witnessed from the backseat of my SUV...
Rallentando and ritardando mean gradually slower. If you're coming towards the end of the composition, and the music is winding down, that is called a rallentando or a ritardando. “A tempo” means the original speed. Once you've gotten faster or once you've gotten slower, you're going to generally return to the original speed. That’s indicated with the phrase “a tempo.”
One last term relating into rhythm, the metronome. This is a device that ticks or flashes light at a certain speed. Do not carry one on an airplane; you might not make it through TSA. A lot of times in music after the tempo marking, you'll see a metronome marking. You might see the word “allegro” (fast) and then a tempo marking of say 120.
Slide 31
Now we’re going to shift gears into musical notation. Notation is just a system of writing music. The system of writing music that we have today is a result of centuries and centuries of development. It's not a new system; it is one that does continue to change over time. We'll talk about two facets of notation: pitch notation and rhythmic notation. With pitch notation, you'regoing to have notes on a staff. A note is an oval shaped symbol. The staff is a set of five horizontal lines. I was talking about how the notational system is the result of centuries of development and that it is continuing to evolve today. One of the things that changed was the staff at different points in history. The staff that had anywhere from 1 to 13 lines on it, but we did ultimately settle on the five-line staff. The higher the note is on the staff, the higher its pitch.
Not all notes are going to fit onto the staff; some are too high and some are too low. If you need to extend the range of the staff upward or downward, you're going to add short horizontal lines called ledger lines.
Slide 32
To name the notes, we use the first seven letters of the alphabet, A throughG. Those letters correspond to the white notes on the piano keyboard. We generally start with the note C when we're labeling notes, because that's the middle key on the piano keyboard. If you start in the middle of the keyboard, you have C D E F G A B C, and then that pattern would repeat over and over. To name the black notes, you're going to use sharp and flat symbols. A sharp (#) raises the pitch. When I say raise, that means it takes it to the right on the keyboard, so little bit higher. The flat (b) symbol lowers the pitch (left-hand side of the keyboard). So, if you saw in music Dbyou would find the white note D and then the black key to the left of it would be Db. A natural sign cancels out a sharp or the flat. So, again, the sharp sign raises pitch, the flat sign lowers pitch, the natural sign cancels the sharp or the flat.
Slide 33
Also relating into pitch notation is the clef sign. A clef sign tells musicians the pitch of each line or space on the staff. The common clefs include the treble clef, which is for high instruments. If you play flute, trumpet, or sing soprano, that is a high part, so, your music is printed on the treble clef. The treble clef is also called a G clef in music. I was saying before that the clef sign tells you the pitch of each line or space. If you were to draw a note to the side of that little curl there, that is the note G in this particular clef. Knowing that, you can figure out all of the other notes by simply going forward and backwards through the musical alphabet.
Bass clef is used for low instruments. If you play a tuba or trombone, that'slow in pitch. Those instruments would read from the bass clef. The bass clefis sometimes called the F clef. If you were to draw a note in between those two little dots there, that is the note F in this particular clef.
A bit less common, the alto clef is used by just one instrument in the orchestra, the viola. The viola is the second highest of the string instruments, and it reads from the alto clef. The tenor clef is sometimes used by trombone and bassoon players. Those instruments normally play from the bass clef but if their part is a little bit higher than normal, they can switch over to the tenor clef.
The grand staff is a combination of treble and bass clef staffs. It is used by instruments like the piano. With a piano, your right hand plays one thingwhile your left hand plays something different. And since you're doing that at the same time, your music would be printed on a grand staff.
Slide 34
The next aspect of notation is rhythmic notation. Pitch notation tells you how high or low a note is, depending on where that note appears on the staff. Rhythmic notation tells length--how long, how short the note is. I put the most common note lengths in the PowerPoint beginning with the whole note. That typically gets four counts. The half note generally gets two counts, quarter note one, eighth note a half of a beat. There are some longer and shorter notes, but those are very common ones in music.
Slide 35
In music, you can increase the length of the note by using a dot. When you add the dot to the right of the note, it increases the length by half of the original value. I am not great at math, but we'll get through this. If you were to go back to the chart in the PowerPoint, the quarter note gets one count. The dots increases the length by half of that. Half of one is one half. So, the dotted quarter note would get one and a half counts. If you go back to my chart of note lengths, there is no note in that chart that gets one and a half counts. If you want something to get one and a half counts, you'llhave to somehow alter the length of that note.
You can also lengthen the note by using a tie. When the tie is used, the first note gets its value plus the value of the second note. So, the second note is being absorbed into that first one. If you had the rhythmic figure in the PowerPoint without the tie it would sound like [sings taaaa taa]. When the tie is used, you don't hear that second note. It’s pushed together with that first one. [sings taaaaaa] So it sounds like one long note.
You can also lengthen notes by using a fermata. That little symbol on top of that quarter note there is a fermata and that just means to hold the note out not really a specific length of time but just hold the note out. The quarter note normally gets one count. A fermata means you're going to hold it longer.
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A rest in music is a symbol for silence--how long do you sit in silence? With that chart of common note lengths, that was how long you would play or sing a note. A rest is how long you will sit in silence. If you saw a whole rest in music, you would sit in silence for four counts. If you saw a half rest in music, you would sit in silence for two counts.
One other term relating to rhythmic notation is the time signature. The time signature is a fraction that tells meter. The top number of the time signature tells you the number of beats in a measure, and the number of beats in a measure is what dictates meter. If you have a four on top, that would mean four beats per measure--quadruple meter. When you have a two one top--two beats per measure--that is duple meter.
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Now moving away from musical notation. If you are not a musician, after that brief introduction to musical notation, your head’s probably spinning. This is going to be a little bit easier to grasp.
We'll talk next about the melody of the music. Melody is a series of notes that creates a recognizable whole. If you are singing along with a piece of music, that is the melody of the music. It's the part that does make thewidest, the most direct appeal.
We can talk about several characteristics of the melody. The range is the distance between the lowest and the highest note. I mentioned the term pitch range before--the lowest to highest note on an instrument. The melodic range is the lowest to the highest note of the melody.
The shape is the upward or downward motion. Do the notes go upor do the notes go down? You can diagram that using a kind of line graph. If you had a melody like “Joy to the World,” you would diagram the shape of that melodyas a steadily descending line. You start high [sings] “Joy to the world, the Lord is come,” and steadily go down and pitch.
We can also discuss the type of movement. If you have a conjunct motion, that means it moves by steps. What I mean by moving by steps is moving to adjacent keys on the piano keyboard versus skipping around. If you were to plot out “Joy to the World,” that is a conjunct melody. It starts on C and then it just goes straight down the keyboard. Disjunct moves by leaps. In other words, it skips over notes. The “Star-Spangled Banner” is a great example of disjunct motion. If I plotted that out on the keyboard, it starts on the note G, leaps down to the note E, leaps down to the note C, goes back up to E, goes back up to G, and then goes way up to C. [sings] “Oh say! Can you see?” Literally C there at the end. Listen to Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for a Common Man” as an even better example of disjunct motion.
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Now moving to the style of performance. Melodies can be performed in a staccato style or a legato style. Staccato means short and detached. When you see a dot underneath or on top of the note head, that indicates staccato. So, if I [plays a staccato scale on the flute], that is short and detached, or staccato style. Legato means smooth and connected [plays a legato scale on the flute]. The notes run together a bit more with a legato melody. Listen to “Dance of the Reed Pipes” from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.”The flute part there is very staccato [sings]. If you think about “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the original “Wizard of Oz” [sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”], that’s more smooth and connected. A lot of your vocal music is legato.
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Now moving to the structure of melodies. Melodies are made up of phrases, which are group of notes. In grammar, phrases are groups of words; in music, groups of notes.
A cadence is a resting place at the end of a phrase. It's like a punctuation mark in grammar. If you were singing a composition, you would take a breath most likely on the cadence point. Cadences can be conclusive, like a period in grammar. When you see a period, you know that the sentence orparagraph is over. The same is true if you were to hear a complete cadence. They can also be inconclusive, like a comma in grammar. When you see a comma, you know something else is coming after. It is not conclusive.
Think about a simple melody like “Mary had a Little Lamb.” [sings] “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow.” That entire thing is the melody of the music. You can break it down into two phrases, two groups of notes: [sings] “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.” If I stop right there, that would be consideredan incomplete cadence because it does not sound conclusive. You're waiting for something else to happen. When you reach that final phrase, [sings] “Its fleece was white as snow,” that is a complete cadence. It sounds like the end of the music.
When you analyze phrase structure you use letters of the alphabet. Letter A is your first phrase, B your second phrase. [sings] “Mary had a little lamb,little lamb, little lamb” That's the A phrase. [sings] “Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow.” That's the B phrase. So, if you have two phrases like that, it's diagrammed AB. If you had three phrases, it's ABC. You can have a lot of phrases in a melody.
A couple of final terms relating into melody. Sequence means that you repeat the melody at a higher or lower pitch. A great example is Beethoven's “Symphony Number 5” [sings] “bum-bum-bum-buuuum; bum-bum-bum-buuuum.” You're repeating that same melodic idea, just higher and lower.
The term theme refers to a melody used as the basis for a longer composition. “Mary had a Little Lamb” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” – are short, self-contained melodies. But when melodies are used for a longer composition, it's called the theme of the composition. Listen to Mozart’s“Symphony Number 40.” You have a theme at the beginning of the first movement that’s stretched out and built upon throughout the composition. Melody is the part of the music that you sing along with. We're going to shift gears now into harmony, which is what is in the background.
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Harmony is the structure of chords and how they progress. The chord--thefirst part of that definition—is three or more notes. A chord progression is a series of chords. The composer is going to use the chords in a certain order depending on what effect they want in the music.
Chords can be classified as either consonant or dissonant. Consonant is pleasant; dissonant is unpleasant. I would say 99% of the music we listen to is consonant. It is pleasant. Very rarely are we going to intentionally listen to something that's dissonant, or unpleasant. The term resolution is a movement from dissonant to consonant. What's happening is the tension that you have in the dissonant chord is resolved when you move into the consonant, more pleasant-sounding chord.
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The triad is a three-note chord. Chords can have four notes or five or morenotes, but the simplest one is this type that has just three notes. The root is the bottom note. You can choose any note as the bottom note of the triad. You stick two more notes on top to create that three-note chord.
Common triads include the tonic triad, which is built on the first note of the scale. I'm going to talk about scales in the next section [plays scale on the flute]. So, that's what a scale sounds like, and when your triad is built on the first note of the scale, that is called the tonic triad. It's very stable andpleasant sounding. The dominant triad is built on the fifth note of the scale. Instead of starting on that bottom note, tonic, this triad starts on the fifth note of the scale [plays scale on the flute]. Go up five notes, stack two notes on top, and that's the dominant triad. One of the most common chord progressions, the dominant-to-tonic progression, goes from V to I. You'regoing from the chord built on the fifth note of the scale, that's the dominant, to the chord built on the first note of the scale, that's the tonic. Another chord that's very common is the sub dominant, built on the fourth note of the scale [plays scale on the flute]. Go up four notes, stack two notes on top, and that is the sub-dominant. If you do a harmonic analysis of almost all music written before the late 19th century, you can boil it down to tonic,first note of the scale; dominant, fifth note of the scale; or sub dominant, fourth note of the scale.
One other term relating into the harmony, is the broken-chord, or arpeggio. This means the notes of a chord are played one after another versus at the same time [plays an arpeggio on the flute].
To see just how important harmony is in music, listen to Chopin's “Prelude in E Minor.” The melody here moves very, very slow. It is the underlying harmony that adds interest to the music.
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The term key means that you have one main note, one main chord, and one main scale. If you say “this composition is in the key of C,” it means the main note is the note C, the main chord is the one that's built on the note C,and the main scale is the one that starts and ends on the note C. If it's in the key of G, the main note is G, main chord is G, and main scale starts and ends on G.
The tonic pitch is the main note. Typically, a composition will begin on the tonic pitch, end on the tonic pitch, and feature lots of tonic pitches in between. In math, the term mode refers to the most frequently recurring number in a set. The tonic pitch is like the mode of music; the most frequently recurring note. The tonic chord is the main chord, built on the first note of the scale. The melody revolves around the tonic pitch. The harmony revolves around the tonic chord.
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That brings us to the term scale. A scale is a series of ascending or descending notes. Scale comes from the Italian word for ladder. You ascenda ladder; you descend ladder. Most of the music that we're going to listen to is based on either the major scale or the minor scale. Major scales and minor scales use intervals called half steps and whole steps. I mentioned the term interval towards the beginning--the distance between two pitches. Half steps are generally the distance between white keys and black keys. Awhole step is going to be two half steps. You have a specific pattern of wholesteps and half steps in a major scale, and a specific pattern used in the minor scale. This is what a major scale sounds like in music [plays scale on the flute]. This is what a minor scale sounds like [plays scale on the flute]. They're basically the same length as each other just a slightly different pattern of whole steps and half steps.
The key signature is a group of sharps or flats that tells key. In a major scale, you could have certain sharps or flats and a minor scale you have a certain number of sharps or flats. In a musical notation those are documented in the key signature.
Another scale that's used in more recent music is the chromatic scale. Chromatic scale is just half steps. With a major scale and a minor scale, you have a mixture of whole steps and half steps. In a chromatic scale, it is just half steps [plays scale on the flute]. It sounds very different.
One other term relating in to the key is modulation, a change of key. A composition might start off in a major-scale based key, and then it might change key. That change of key is called a modulation. The tonic key is the main key. No matter how often it modulates or changes key, there's always one main key, the tonic key. Your main pitch is the tonic pitch. Your main chord is the tonic chord. Your main key is the tonic key.
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Now moving to musical texture. Texture refers to the number of layers of sound, what kind of layers they are, how they are related. When I say the number of layers of sound, that's basically how many people are performing. If you have one clarinet player, and that's one layer of sound. If you have two clarinets playing, that's two layers of sound. When I say what kind of layers they are, I am asking is it melody or is it accompaniment? If you have two clarinets playing, are both people playing the melody? Is one person doing melody, one person doing an accompaniment? And then how the layers are related. Are they playing the same thing or are they playing something different?
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The simplest of the textures is monophonic: one melody. The prefix “mono” means one; “phonic” pertains to sound. If you look at the graphic in the PowerPoint, that is monophonic texture and that's how musical notation looked in the Middle Ages. You can create a fuller sounding monophonic texture by writing parts in unison, which means you double the parts. If we were to sing a composition together as a group, everybody singing the same notes and rhythms at the same time, that is called monophonic in unison.
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Much more common is polyphonic. Polyphonic means many melodies.“Poly” means many; “phonic” pertains to sounds. If you have four voice parts--soprano, alto, tenor, and bass--at the same time, that's a four-part polyphony. There are four different melodies stacked on top. The more people that you have playing or singing, the more likely it is going to be polyphonic in texture.
Just as it's very common to have unison in monophonic, it's very common to have imitation in polyphonic. Imitation means there are echo effects in the music, kind of like a round. If we were to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” as a round, dividing up into three different groups and starting at different times, that is called imitative polyphony in music. Listen to Josquin Desprez’scomposition “Ave Maria.” That composition comes from the Renaissance--a golden age for imitative polyphony in music.
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Also very common is homophonic, which means melody with accompaniment. Melody is the part that really draws you in;accompaniment is what is in the background. Listen to Claudio Monteverdi’s “Tu se’ morta” for a great example of homophonic texture. There's one man singing, but there is material in the background, creating homophony.
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Form is the structure of the music--essentially how many sections are in the music. And there are a couple of different forms that are very common in music. One of the simplest ones is ternary form, a three-part form. And for the test I want you to know how to diagram it. It is diagrammed either ABAor ABA’. That apostrophe means there's a slight variation. You basically have the same melody again (A), but with a slight variation. Envision an Oreo. An Oreo a great example of ternary form. The chocolate wafer on topis melody number one (A), and then we have something totally different, the cream filling (B). The chocolate wafer on the bottom (A) rounds things out. In music, whatever you hear at the beginning (A) will always come back at the end with ternary form.
Listen again to that Tchaikovsky “Dance of the Reed Pipes,” now as anexample of ternary form. You have the flutes at the beginning (A), and then a contrasting middle section with brass instruments (B), and then it comes back to the flutes (A).
Also very common is binary form, which is diagrammed AB, AAB, ABB, AABB. If it ends with the B section, you know it's going to the binary form. With binary form, you have two sections of music. The A section is totally different from the B section. Sometimes one or more repeats. If you had AAB, just that first section is played twice. If you have ABB, that second section is done twice. More commonly, you can have a repetition of both sections: AABB.
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Also common is strophic form. Strophic form and theme and variations havevery similar definitions but one is more often vocal and the other more ofteninstrumental. Strophic form is the same music over and over again. It'scommon in church hymns to have this. If you think about “Amazing Grace,” that hymn has the same music repeated. The words change, but the music stays the same. Strophic form is also very common in classical music. Listen to Franz Schubert’s “Heidenroslein.” It has the same music over and over.
The equivalent of strophic in instrumental music is theme and variations. With theme and variations, you also have the same music over and over just slight changes. The A section is the main theme, the main melody. It'srepeated over and over again. The apostrophes indicate slight variations. Every time the theme is played, it's changed just a little bit. So, maybe it'splayed a little bit faster. Maybe it's played in a minor key, or staccato versus legato. I mentioned Haydn’s “Surprise Symphony” as an example of dynamic accent. It is also a great example of theme and variations format. You have the same melody repeated over and over again, each time changed slightly.
Instrumental music can also be in rondo form. With rondo, you have multiple melodies: an A melody, B melody, and C melody. The Beethoven’s “String Quartet in C Minor” is a great example of rondo format. The A theme is in aminor key, dark sounding yet very fast. The B and C sections lighten up just a bit. Rondo form is a form borrowed from literature.
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As we near the end of the discussion of the elements of music, I wanted to mention the performance itself, and those involved in it. The performer is responsible for bringing the music to life. No matter how explicitly a composer writes out the music, the performer plays a major role. A lot of times the performers are going to use improvisation. Improvisation is where you make up the music. It's common in styles like jazz. Earlier in history, it'scommon to improvise embellishments. Embellishments are musical decorations. You might have a passage written [plays three simple notes on the flute]. If you improvise an embellishment, if you make up a decoration [plays same three notes on the flute with the embellishment of a trill added to the last note], it makes it sound more interesting.
A virtuoso is a performer with incredible technical ability. If you hear stories of people that can hear a composition one time and then play that composition on the piano without ever looking at the music, that person is a virtuoso. I listed out there some of the virtuosos that we're going to talk about this semester--Mozart, Liszt, Paganini, Yo-Yo Ma. All of those have incredible technical ability.
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A second person that's vital to the performance is the conductor. The conductor is the person that leads the musicians. In the PowerPoint, you can see a conductor in action. He's holding in his left hand a baton. Sometimes a conductor is going to use this thin stick to lead the musicians. It'ssometimes easier to see the baton versus just seeing the hands waving around. The conductor reads from the score, which shows the parts playedby each instrument. If the instruments are not playing the correct thing, the conductor will be able to tell.
Conductors are assisted by the concertmaster. The concertmaster is the top violin player. In early periods of history, the concertmaster would actually lead the musicians. If the conductor was not there, the concertmaster would step up on the podium and take over.
And then we as listeners are also very important in the performance. As a listener we evaluate the music itself--is it well written music? We also evaluate the performance of the music. You can have great music that somebody can mess up in performance and, likewise, you can have poor music that you give it to an incredible musician, and they can make it sound good.
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Our very last aspect of music is musical style, a characteristic way of using the elements. Style let’s you distinguish types of music. We have differences in terms of say dynamics, when we look at classical music versus rock. Dynamics typically are much louder in rock because of amplification.
Style also lets you distinguish composers. If you were listening to 50 compositions by Mozart, and then like 50 compositions by Beethoven, they have a vastly different style. To me, Mozart's music is very light, very happy. Beethoven tends to be a bit darker.
And then style lets us distinguish geographical areas. African music, for example, is totally different from American music. African music puts a lot of emphasis on rhythm. African music is very danceable music. It's not as singable. American music emphasizes melody; African music emphasizesrhythm.
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And lastly, style lets us distinguish periods of history. And that's the way that I tend to use the term style--to refer to the specific epics of history. Jot down the dates of these style periods. The longest style period, the Middle Ages, goes from 450 to 1450. We'll start that in the next PowerPoint. The Renaissance lasted from roughly 1450 to 1600. These dates are somewhat arbitrary, incidentally; they didn't just wake up on January the 1st, 1450 and say, “Hey, we're going to create the Renaissance today!” We assign the dates later in history. The Baroque Period last from 1600 to 1750. Classical is the shortest period of history being just 70 years from1750 to 1820. The Romantic went from 1820-1900. That's a great one. And then the Modern Period or Contemporary, which we subdivide into to shorter periods: 1900 to 1950 and then 1950 to the present. We use that dividing point of 1950 because that's when you have the introduction of electronics into music, and also the birth of popular styles like rock and jazz. That totally changes the nature of music.
What we're going to do for the next section of the semester is go through these different style periods and look at how music changes. Obviouslymusic of the Middle Ages is totally different from music of the Contemporary period, but what changes in the music? Once we're done talking about these periods of history, we'll focus more on popular music so if you're not into the classical stuff, just bear with me.
I promise that is the longest of the PowerPoint presentations. Everything else is considerably shorter, but we covered a lot of material. It will get easier from this point, so rest your hand