Elements of Music

Music is a field (like most specialized fields) with its own vocabulary. Below are some definitions of musical terms, and then a general overview of some more rock-specific words.

Most of these definitions are taken and summarized from the free to use Music 110 Reader that is used for our department's Music 110 classes.

1) Sound - What we perceive as sound are vibrations (sound waves) traveling through a medium (usually air) that are captured by the ear and converted into electrochemical signals that are sent to the brain to be processed. Musical sounds have the following characteristics: pitch, dynamics, timbre (tone color), and duration.

• Pitch - the perceived highness or lowness of a sound.
• Dynamic - the perceived loudness or quietness of a sound.
• Timbre - pronounced like "Tam-ber". NOT "tim-bray". "TAM-BER". This relates to the type of sound. For instance, a clean guitar has a certain 'clean' timbre, while a distorted guitar has a different 'edgy' or 'crunchy' timbre. Or a voice can have a a smooth and gentle timbre, or a raucous and gravelly timbre. This characteristic of sound can be considered separately from pitch and dynamics, but sometimes a change in timbre is an unintended consequence of the technique used to achieve a certain pitch or dynamic. For instance, a singer trying to hit a high note might use a lot more air support, and in doing so, will sing louder and, with untrained technique, the voice will also respond by getting a little edgier. Professional opera singers (and other professional singers) spend many many years training to keep their vocal tone quality an independent variable, not dependent upon the pitch or dynamic that is called for.
• Duration - How long or short the musical sound is.

2) Melody - a succession of pitches in some sort of rhythm.

• Contour - the shape of a melody. Does is slowly rise and fall - a smooth or conjunct contour? Or does it jump all over the place, like an overactive stock on a heavy trading day? That would be a disjunct contour. Conjunct is a lot easier to sing, and usually is easier to hear and recognize, whereas a disjunct melody can be a bit more difficult to hear and recognize, and definitely much harder to sing (or play).
• Ascending or descending - if a melody rises in pitch overall, we call it ascending. If it lowers in pitch, we call it a descending melody.
• Interval - The distance between any two pitches. Some intervals sound more harmonious than others. We can call intervals consonant (pleasing to the ear) or dissonant (clashing and displeasing to the ear). Note - the terms "consonant" and "dissonant" are often in the ear of the beholder. In general, there are a class of intervals that are mostly universally considered consonant, and a class of intervals that are universally considered dissonant, but some of them are arguable. Also, some music (metal, for example) loves to use dissonant intervals and sounds to create a particular type of vibe that many people find pleasing.
• Range - efers to the distance from the lowest note to the highest note of a melody. A melody with a wide range such as the Star Spangled Banner is considered more difficult to sing than the narrow range of Mary had a Little Lamb.
• Phrase - A musical phrase is analogous to a written phrase; it is a unit of meaning within a larger structure.
• Countermelody - a secondary melody written to accompany the main melody.

3) Rhythm - Rhythm is how a musical sound or melody moves through time. Rhythm is usually arranged around a set of pulses or a beat.

• Beats - if you are listening to a song, and are tapping your foot in a consistent and steady set of taps, you are tapping the "pulses" or "beats" of the music. Lately, "beat" has changed to mean a drum pattern as a whole, or a drum pattern plus a bass line. So in this class, "beat" has at least two different meanings.
  • Generally, if you are listening to music, you can hear some pulses seem stronger than others - in general, these are the downbeat, which is the first of the group of beats.
• Meter - Most pop music either has 3 or 4 beats in a repeating pattern. This is called the meter. So if you are listening to a song and you can a repeating pattern of 1 - 2 - 3 -4 - 1 - 2 - 3 -4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4, it can be said that a song has a meter of 4. And the first beat of the pattern is called the downbeat.
• Bar - pulses or beats organized into consistent repeating patterns. Most commonly, we organize a bar into groups of four beats or pulses. If you hear the lead singer of a band start a song with a "1-2-3-4", they are counting out a single bar, with the 1-2-3-4 being the individual pulses or beats. This is also called a measure. Lately, bar has turned into meaning "rapper's lyrics", but that is born from the fact that rappers generally rap over a beat (drum pattern and bass line) that goes over a number of bars.

4) Key - A key is a collection of notes that have been found to sound good together, in a very specific way. All keys derive from western music division of pitch into discrete notes, which are named using the first 7 letters of the alphabet plus # for sharp, and b for flat. See keyboard illustration below:

In the key of C Major, the notes in the key are (in ascending order): C D E F G A B and C again. In the key of B-flat Major (abbreviated B^b), we have the notes B^b C D E^b G A and B^b again (the ^b symbol is pronounced "flat" in this context). In the key of D Major, the notes would be D E F^# G A B C^# and D again (the ^# symbol is pronounced "sharp" in this context).

5) Chords - chords are a collection of 3 or more notes. The most common type of chord in western music is the triad, which is a set of three notes, all of which are a musical interval of a third apart. So "C" to "D" (reference the keyboard above) are what's called a "second", and "C" to "E" is a "third". You can think of it as just skipping every other note name. So a C Major triad starts on the note "C", and also adds the third above the "C", which is "E", and then the third above that, "G". So a C Major triad is the notes "C" "E" and "G" all sounded together. I cannot really go into more depth here, you will have to go to https://musictheory.net and go through at least the following lessons:

• staff
• generic intervals
• specific intervals
• intro to chords
• seventh chords.