Music Terms

Question 1

What is Free Meter?

Answer 1

-No consistent beat
-Can’t tap your foot to it

Question 2

What is Pulsatile Meter?

Answer 2

-Has a consistent beat
-No recurring pattern of accented beats

Question 3

What is a Metered Rhythm?

Answer 3

-Has a consistent beat
-Has a recurring pattern of accented beats

Question 4

What is Divisive Meters?

Answer 4

Made up of groups that can be evenly and symmetrically divided.

Ex: Duple (2/4, 4/4, 6/8)
Ex: Triple (3/4, 9/8)

Question 5

What is Duple Meter?

Answer 5

2/4, 4/4, 6/8

Question 6

What is Triple Meter?

Answer 6

3/4, 9/8

Question 7

What is Additive Meter?

Answer 7

Made up of asymmetric groups of 2 and 3 beats

Ex: 9 (2+2+2+3 or 2+3+2+2)
Common in Arab, Persia, Indian musics

Question 8

What is Tempo?

Answer 8

-The pace of music
-Expressed in BPM (Beats per minute)

Question 9

What is Time in music

Answer 9

Time follows the tempo (BPM) and time signature (3/4, 4/4)

Question 10

What is Pitch?

Answer 10

The highness or lowness of a note depending on it’s frequency and vibration

Question 11

What is melody?

Answer 11

A succession of notes, varying in pitch, which have an organized and recognizable shape.

Melody has both pitch and time

Question 12

What is a phrase?

Answer 12

Melodies are usually made up of a number of phrases

Ex: twinkle twinkle little star is a phrase (It’s also made up of 6 ohrases)

Question 13

What is Melodic Contour?

Answer 13

The shape of a melody or phrase

Phrases can ascend, descend, or form an arc. (Usually ascend)

Question 14

What is a scale?

Answer 14

The total group of notes that make up one octave of a melody.

(Some scales only contain a few notes)

-Piano can play 12 notes in one octave

Question 15

What’s a Heptatonic Scale?

Answer 15

7 note scale (Major scale)
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-(do)

Question 16

What’s a pentatonic scale?

Answer 16

5 note scales (common in folk, Japanese)

Question 17

What’s an interval?

Answer 17

The distance between two pitches.

-Either in half or whole step
ex: b-c is a half step, d-e is a whole step

Question 18

What is Temperament?

Answer 18

-Has to do with precise tuning of the pitches in a scale

-the exact frequency at which a pitch vibrates

-Greek concept of scale

-The mathematical relationship between pitches

Question 19

What is Dynamics/Intensity?

Answer 19

The loudness or softness of a piece of music.

Question 20

What is Dynamic Range?

Answer 20

some pieces can be very quiet and the very loud at time throughout the same piece.

Question 21

What is Timbre?

Answer 21

Teh degree to which each of the harmonies or overtones is present in a given sound.

How something sounds based on harmonies

Voices have different timbre, so do instruments (flute sounds diff from guitar)

Question 22

What is Musical Texture?

Answer 22

The perceived relationship of simultaneous musical sounds.

How various lines of music in a pieece work together/

Question 23

Whats is Monophony?

Answer 23

Single sound, One line of music played by one thin (one voice or one instrument)

Ex: a singer singing a melody alone with zero accompaniment

Pianist playing melody with right hand and chords with Left is NOT an example of monophony

Question 24

What is Homohphony?

Answer 24

Main Melody supported by other voices.

A pianist is homophonic, main melody followed by chords.

Ex: Lead singer followed by band

Question 25

What is Polyphony?

Answer 25

Mulitple independant lines of music (multiple melodies) being played at the same time.

No one clear main melody, instead theres’s several main melodies

Ex: Western Classical Music

Question 26

What is Heterophony?

Answer 26

Two or More parts playing almost the same melody at the same time but with slight style or ornamentation differences

Ex: singer and instrument playing same melody

Found in Japanese folk

Question 27

What are changing textures?

Answer 27

Texture of a piece changing within the piece itself

Ex: song starting with solo singer (monophonic) then the band jumps in (homophonic)

Question 28

What’s form in music?

Answer 28

How the various parts of a song are organized

Question 29

What is Strophic Form?

Answer 29

the repetition of a musical unit, a stanza or verse
(AAAA)

Most old British Folk songs

Question 30

What is meter?

Answer 30

A recurring pattern of accented and unaccented beats (not fast nor slow)

Question 31

Antiphony texture (other texture)

Answer 31

When there is more than one group of instruments or voices, usually placed in different parts of a church or concert venue.

Call and Response

Question 32

Drone/Melody texture (other texture)

Answer 32

Scottish Bagpipes (that one low continuous sound with melody overtop)

Question 33

Verse-Chorus Form

Answer 33

Many pop Songs (AB AB AB)

Repeating verse with different lyrics and then repeating melody

Question 34

Through Composed

Answer 34

Longer art pieces

Western classical

not repeats

Question 35

How is sound created?

Answer 35

Through vibrations and the frequency rate of these vibrations

Faster vibration makes a higher pitch

440hz (octave below 220hz, octave above 880hz)

Question 36

What is equal temperament?

Answer 36

Invented in modern period, How a piano is tuned

each half step on the piano conatins 100 cents, all steps are of equal size. What our tuning is today

Question 37

Whats the greek temperament belief?

Answer 37

That theres a mathematical order to the universe hidden in music, used physics to tune but it doesn’t work just sounds out of tune to what we’re used to today.