What Constitutes Music?

2nd week
Introduction to Music

Properties of sound
Timbre
Rhythm
Pitch
Phonic structure/texture
Form

Timbre: tone quality or color of

a musical sound
bright, dark, rough, mellow, etc
chest voice/head voice/nasal
chest voice/head voice (#2-1)
nasal sound (#2-2)

 vibrato vs. straight tone (#2-3)

vibrato: a regular fluctuation of a sound,
produced by varying the pitch of the sound
nonghyeon: Korean vibrato (#2-10)

Rhythm: the relationship of sound

durations; the lengths or durations of
sounds as patterns in time
beat/pulse
a regular pulsation of sound; a basic unit
of steady, equal-length durations in music
(#2-5)

free rhythm
nonmetrical; with no regular pulsation (#2-4)

 meter: a system of grouping beats into

individual units
duple (#2-5), triple (#2-6) meter
accent: an emphasized beat
syncopation: accenting on a normally de-emphasized
beat (#2-7)

asymmetrical meters: grouping of 3+2, 3+2+2,

3+2+2+3, etc. (#2-8)
Indian tala, Southeast Asian colotomic meter,
Middle Eastern iqa, African polyrhythm, Korean
jangdan, etc.

tempo: musics rate of speed or pace (#2-9;

#2-10)

Pitch: a tone determined by its frequency

level; a relative quality of highness or
lowness of sound
pitch names (syllables)
solfege: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti (si)

Indian: sa, re (ri), ga, ma, pa, dha (da), ni

letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G
numbers

 interval: distance between two pitches

whole/half step
microtone/quatertone: smaller than a half step

octave : divided by 12 tones (in the West); 24

tones (in the Middle East)

range: all potential pitches that

instruments or human voice can produce

 scale: pitches arranged in ascending order

diatonic (major/minor scale)
oriental scale (#2-11)
pentatonic/heptatonic scale

mode: a musical system used as the basis

for composition and improvisation
associated with mood
European major scales (happy), minor scales
(sad)
makam (maqam), raga, etc.

 melody: an organized succession of

pitches forming a musical idea
melodic contour: the general direction
and shape of a melody
ascending/descending, cascading(#2-12), leaps
drone: a continuous or repeating sound (#2-13)

ornamentation: an embellishment or
decoration of the melody (#2-23)

 text setting: rhythmic relationship of

words to melody
syllabic: one pitch per syllable(#2-14)
melismatic: several pitches per syllable (#215)

Phonic structure (texture): musical

relationships among various parts
monophony: a single line of music (#2-15)
polyphony: multiple lines of music
Homophony: multiple lines of music expressing the
same musical idea (#2-16)
Independent polyphony: two or more lines of music
expressing independent musical ideas (#2-17)

Heterophony: multiple performers playing

simultaneous variations of the same line of music (#218)

Form
North Indian instrumental form
alap-jor-jhala-gat-jhala (#2-4)

sonata form
exposition-development-recapitulation

strophic form
a song tune that is repeated while the text changes
(#2-19)

sanjo
jinyangjo-jungmori-jungjungmori-jajinmorihwimori-danmori (#2-10)

 improvisation (#2-4)
compositional process in which a musician
exercises relatively great flexibility with given
material during a performance

theme (#2-20)
a short melody that is prominently stated and that
recurs one or more times in a piece of music

call and response (#2-21, #2-22)

a performance practice in which a leader makes a
musical statement and another performer (or group
of performers) responds with a musical answer