Quiz 6 Flashcards
Characteristics of sound
All sound—speech, sound effects, and music—is made up of the same basic elements: pitch, loudness, timbre, tempo, rhythm, attack, duration, and decay.
Pitch
The highness or lowness of a sound. High-pitched sound often suggests something delicate, bright, or elevated; low-pitched sound may indicate something sinister, strong, or peaceful.
Loudness
The relative volume of sound.
Timbre
The characteristic tonal quality of a sound. It not only identifies a sound source—reedy, brassy, tympanic—but also sonic qualities such as rich, thin, edgy, or metallic.
Tempo
The speed of a sound
Rhythm
A sonic time pattern. It may be simple, constant, complex, or changing.
Attack
The way a sound begins—can be hard (crisp) or soft (gradual)
Duration
How long a sound lasts. Sound short in duration can convey restlessness, nervousness, or excitation; more-sustained sounds can create a sense of peace, persistence, or fatigue.
Decay
How fast a sound fades from a certain loudness.
Quick decays - confinement, closeness, or definiteness
Slow decays - distance, smoothness, or uncertainty.
Nonverbal Speech
Words carry meaning, of course. It is often not what is said, however, but how it is said that conveys the meaning’s overall intent.
Emphasis
Stressing a syllable or a word
Inflection
Altering the pitch or tone of the voice
Speech Patterns
Important to natural-sounding speech and believable characterization. Mainly the lines they use make sense for the character
Pace
The speed of spoken words can convey nonverbal infor- mation about the passion, urgency, or boredom of a situation.
Mood
Feeling of words and sentences.
Accent
An accent can tell you if a speaker is cultured or crude, an American from rural Minnesota or someone from China, England, or India. It can color material.
Diegetic Sound
Sound that comes from within the story space, such as dialogue and sound effects. See also contextual sound and nondiegetic sound.
Silence
The pauses or silences between words, sounds, and musical notes that help create rhythm, contrast, and power - elements important to sonic communication
Music
like sound because there is pitch, loudness, tempo, tone color, and envelope but also includes melody, tonality, harmony, consonance, dissonance, texture, tempo, and dynamic range.
Melody
A succession of pitched musical tones of var- ied durations. Because each tone has duration, melody also establishes rhythm. Hence melody has both a tone quality and a time quality and cannot be separated from rhythm.
Harmony
A simultaneous sounding of two or more tones, although three or more tones are usually neces- sary to be classified as a chord.
