MUSHL- Dimensions of Sound Pt. 1

Dimensions of sound:

• All sounds characterized by elements of rhythm, pitch, volume, articulation, and timbre.

• these elements combine in time to produce a sonic object of a given textue that either exhibits or lacks form. can be regular and constant, can be irregular

• to get to music from just sounds --> on top of these elements, music has form, and/or texture

• Rhythm: temporal aspect of sound, how we divide up noise in music, pattern of on and off.

• Music often features rhythmic patterns: pulse and tempo, frequency of pulse determines tempo; whether its fast or slow (higher frequency = speeding up tempo)

• When pulses are organized into groups containing strong and weak beats, meter is established --> measure/bar, bar lines

• time signatures: top number tells how many beats will be within each barline

• common groupings in music: duple meter - 2 pulses, triple meter - 3 distinct pulses, quadruple meter - feel 4 distinct pulses

• downbeat: the pulses in each of these meters are not of equal weight, the first pulse would be stronger in comparison to the others

• pitch: refers to highness or lowness of sound, high pitch = high frequency sound wave and low pitch = low frequency sound wave

• Between two equivalent pitches separated by an octave, there is a near-infinite collection of other possible pitches --- this collection is called the chromatic pitch set --- the interval, or distance, between adjacent keys (two keys right next to each other) is a half-step, two keys with one key in between is a whole step.

• major scale and minor scale: different combinations of whole steps and half steps