Music Section One Flashcards
What is it called when composition and performance happen simultaneously?
Improvisation
What is the broadest definition of music?
Sound organized in time
What is required to create music?
A time frame, sound waves and a cognizant mind to perceive and interpret those sounds
What does the amplitude affect?
The decibel level or how loud or soft the tone is
What is the pitch?
The higher or lowness of the sound
What can a normal human ear hear?
20 to 20,000 cycles per second
What does orchestral musicians in the United States usually tune their instruments to?
440 hz
What are two kinds of music sounds?
Pitched and non pitched
What instruments provide most of the no-pitched sounds in music?
Percussion instruments
What two musicians organized instruments into four groups?
Curt Sachs and Erich von Hornbostel
What are the four instrumental groups?
Chordophones, Aerophones, Membranophones, idiophones and later electrophones
What instruments make up chordophones?
Violins, harps and guitars which have one or more strings; plucked, bowed, or struck
What instruments are in Aerophones?
brass and wind instruments such as horns and flutes that feature a vibrating column of air
What is a Membranophone?
Any instrument that has a skin or other membrane stretched across some kind of frame and the skins vibrates when struck
What are examples of Idiophones?
When the body of the instrument itself vibrates when struck such as bells, woodblocks and xylophones
What instrumental category was added after the discovery of electricity?
Electrophones
How did were Western musical instruments grouped before Sachs and Hornbostel?
Into families
What are the five families of instruments?
Strings, Brass instruments, Woodwind instruments, percussion instruments, keyboard instruments
What are string instruments?
Instruments that are bowed or plucked
What are Brass instruments?
Aerophones in which the column of air is moved by breath alone
What are Percussion instruments
Membranophones as well a s idiophones plus some chordophones that are struck rather than bowed or plucked such as the piano
What are keyboard instruments?
A fifth category of instruments with keys
What is among the best known early electronic instruments?
Theramin
How do you play a Theramin?
The performer regulates frequency with one hand and amplitude wit the other by disturbing the electrical fields that surround the protruding bars
After the development of electronic instrument what was the next important step in their development?
The end of the 2nd World War
What is musique concrete?
When electronically generated sounds and sounds produced by live instruments were recorded on tape before being manipulated into collages to be performed
What cities were famous postwar centers for electronic music?
Paris, Rome, Cologne and New York City
A single isolated musical sound has how many properties?
Four, pitch, duration, volume and timbre
Pitch
The highness or lowness of a sound
What is the musical term for the distance between A and the next higher or lower A?
An octave
How are pitches arraigned on a piano?
High pitches are to the right, low pitches to the left
What is another term for half-step?
Semi tone
What is a whole step?
The distance between every other key
What is the lowest A note called?
The Fundamental
What is the Fundamental colored by?
The faint prescense of the higher pitches called partials or overtones
How many equal parts is an octave divided into?
Twelve
What are the twelve different pitches in ascending order called?
The Chromatic Scale
What do you call two notes that are identical in pitch?
Enharmonic pitches
How many phrases is most of Western music based on?
7 pitches
What is the most common scale?
The C major scale
What are the four patterns that the seven most commonly used pitches in music fall into?
major and three variations of minor
What is the 7th scale degree known as?
The leading tone
What is the resting tone in music often known as?
Tonic Pitch
What is the 5th scale degree called?
The dominant pitch
How many half steps does a whole step have?
Two
How many half steps does a minor third step have?
3 half steps
How many half steps does a major third have?
4 half steps
How many half steps does a perfect fourth have?
5 half steps
How many half steps does an augmented fourth have?
6 half steps
how many half steps does a perfect 5th have?
7 half steps
How many half steps does a minor 6th have?
8 half steps
How many half steps does a major sixth have?
9 half steps
How many half steps does a major 7th have?
11 half steps
How many half steps does a minor 7th have?
10 half steps
How many half steps are in an octave?
12 half steps
What is the distance between two pitches?
An interval
What are the two styles of intervals?
Harmonic or melodic
What is a harmonic interval?
The two pitches occur simultaneously
What is a melodic interval?
The two pitches occur in succession
Wha intervals are either ascending or descending?
Melodic intervals
What intervals exceed an octave?
The major and minor ninth and the major and minor tenth
What are the three different variations of minor scale?
Minor, harmonic and melodic
When two notes are the same pitch just different tonics what are they called?
Relative major and minor
What are major and minor scales that begin and end on the same tonic pitch called?
Parallel
What happens to degrees 3 and 7 in a blues scale?
They are lowered, left normal, or somewhere in between
What is a melody?
A series of successive pitches
What is the term for two pitches occurring at the same time?
Harmony or counterpoint
What do all melodies have?
A contour or profile
How does a conjunct melody move?
Through mostly half steps and whole steps
What is a common contour for melodies?
an arch
What are the high, middle and low parts of an instrument’s range called?
The high, middle or low register
What is rhythm?
The way music is organized in time
What is a beat?
The steady pulse that undelies most music
What is tempo?
The speed of the beat
What is very fast in Italian and what is the number of beats?
Presto at 200 bpm
What is the Italian term for fast and number of bpm’s?
Allegro 120 bpm
What is the Italian term for moderate and what is the bpm?
Moderato, 108 bpm
What is the Italian term for at walking tempo and what are the bpm’s?
Andante 84 bpm
What is the Italian term for slow and what is the bpm?
Adagio 72 bpm
What is the Italian term for very slow and what is the bpm?
lento or Grave, 40 bpm
If there is no steady tempo what is the music said to be?
Unmetered
If there is a perceived beat, but it speeds up and slows down for expressive review what is it called?
Rubato
How are beats normally grouped?
Into measures
What are measures separated by?
Bar lines
What beat of any measure is always the strongest?
The first beat
What is the first beat of any measure called?
The downbeat
What is meter?
The pattern of emphasis superimposed on groups of beats
When words fall before the downbeat what are they called?
Anacrusis or pickup
How is meter indicated in music?
With a time signature
In a time signature what does the lower number indicate?
A durational value
What does the upper note in a time signature indicate?
How many of the durational values will occur in one measure
What rock song from the 1950’s has a clearly articulated compound meter?
Put Your Head on My Shoulder
What does irregular meter feature?
Measures that have differet meters alternating in an irregular pattern
What is polymeter?
When two or more meters are operating simultaneously
What music piece is considered syncopated?
St. Louis Blues
What is cross-rhythm also known as?
Polyrhythm
What does Beat refer to?
A regular underlying pulse that is not always audible
How does harmony occur?
When two or more tones are sounding simultaneously
When was common-practice tonality codified?
By about 1750
What is a chord?
Three or more pitches
What is a triad?
A three note chord consisting of two intervals of a third
What is a major triad?
A three note chord that has a majo third on the bottom and a minor third on top
Describe a minor triad
Aminor third on the bottom and a major third above
What are the two least common triads?
Diminished, two minor thirds; and the augmented triad, two major thirds
What is the lowest note in a triad?
The root
What is the middle note in the triad?
The third
What is the highest note in the triad called?
The fifth
When the third of the triad is on the bottom what kind of inversion is it?
The first inversion
What inversion is it when the fifth is on the bottom?
It is the second inversion
What are the two types of accidentals?
Sharps and flats
How many major and minor scales are there?
12 major and 12 minor
What is Dissonance?
The quality of a pitch, interval, or chord that it makes it seem unstable or tese
What is Conssonance?
Thequality of a pitch, interval or chord that makes it seem a suitable point of rest or resolution
What musical piece uses dissonance?
Nacht
What does diatonic mean?
Within the key
What does the quality of a diatonic triad depend on?
Which scale degree is at its root
What are the most common predominant harmonies?
Supertonic and subdominant
What is a chain of triads called?
Chord progression
What is the lowest voice in a series of chords?
A bass line
How can harmony be made more complex?
To modulate (change keys)
What composer concluded that music had been so chromatic that the onnly possible next step forward was to fee dissonance from the need to resolve to the tonic?
Arnold Schoenberg
What two musical pieces have no tonic pitch?
Six bagatelles or nacht
What are the four types of texture in Western music?
Monophony, homophony, polyphony and heterophony
What musical piece usus heterophony?
Dippermouth Blues
What is among the most noticable features of a given piece of music?
Instrumentation
What is arranging?
The art of taking an exiting piece of music and giving instuctions as to what each individual performer should play
What is dynamics?
The loudness or softness of a sound
What does ppp stand for?
Painississimo, as quietly as possible
What doess pp stand for?
Pianissimo, very quietly
What does p stand for?
Piano, quietly
What does mp stand for?
mezzopiano, somewhat quietly
What does mf stand for?
Mezzoforte, somewhat loud
What does f stand for?
Forte, loud
What does ff stand for?
Fortissimo, very loud
What does fff stand for?
Fortississimo, as loudly as possible
What expressive factor affects the sound of piece?
Articulation
What is the term when the bow of the violin may be bounced from the string, or the finger used to pluck it?
Pizzicato
What is the primary way that tension is created?
through harmonic dissonance
What is the smalles unit of form?
A motive
What do phrases often come in?
Related pairs
What is the first member of a phrase pair?
The antecedent
What is the second member of the pair phrase?
The consequent phrase
What is the term for a resting point in a piece of music?
Cadence
What does a half cadence rest on?
The dominant harmony
What is a full cadence also known as?
An authentic cadence
What does coda mean in Italian?
Tail
What is a musical idea repeated at different pitch levels?
A sequence
What is a common way of structuring a composition?
Theme and variation
Who published Piano Variations?
Aaron Copland
