1.2 Pitch, Dynamics, and Tone Color

• Vibrations produce sound, and they’re very fast & very small, so they are amplified in order to be heard. Musical sounds too have many qualities.

Pitch

• The rate of sounds vibration is frequency (low sounds have low vibration and few vibrations per second)

• Pitch is the musical term for the quality of sounds like high or low

• Noises are too complex to have pitches

• Choruses have pitch, and they’re divided into soprano (high fem), alto (low fem), tenor (high male), and bass (low male)

• Fixed pitches are calibrated, such as “A,” which is 440 vibrations per sec.

Dynamics

• Amplitude is the level of strength of sound vibrations (amount of energy)

• The level of sound in music is called it’s dynamics

  • Terms for dynamics are in Italian

Tone Color

• Tone color and timbre are the overall individual quality of sound

• Tone color is produced complex-ly, strings and other sound producing things vibrate along their entire length, and also in 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 lengths, etc.

• Overtones are these fractional vibrations, and they give sound tone color

• We define tone color using imprecise adjectives such as “bright” and “brassy”