Intro to Music Unit 2

Common Ratio of Note Durations

2:1 is the common ratio. The whole note is twice as long as the half note, which is twice as long as the quarter, which is twice as long as the eighth etc...

Syncopation

Syncopation is created when a beat that is not normally accented is given an accent. For example, in triple meter, the first beat will get an accent and the two remaining beats will not.

Origin and Significance of Clef Signs

The treble comes from a G, the bass comes from an F, and the other clefs are C clefs. Each clef has a focal point on it: the G clef has a spiral around the G line, the F clef has a colon on the F line and the C clefs have the C line at their center.

Phrase

If we were to liken an entire piece of music to a paragraph, then short musical groups called phrases would be considered clauses in sentences. Many of them together, in both music and the paragraph will make larger structures, and form the work as a whole.

Hemiola

Hemiola is when a piece of music shift from one meter to the other by shifting the accents. Hemiola is specifically shifting back and forth between 3/4 and 6/8 i.e., two groups of triplets: ONE two three, Four five six and 3/4: One two, Three four, Five six. It is a shift between Simple triple (3/4) and compound duple (6/8)

Meter and Types

If you hear a repeated pattern where you can count along ONE two three ONE two three etc... where there is always a slight accentuation on the ONE, then you have a triple meter. If you hear a repeated pattern where you can count along ONE two ONE two etc... where there is always a slight accentuation on the ONE, then you have a duple meter. The same goes for quadruple and ONE two three four ONE two three four etc...

Melodic Symmetry--is symmetry a function of the notes chosen or the rhythm?

It is a function of both repeated melodic notes, and rhythms.

Chromatic note

It is a note with a sharp (#) or a flat (b) in front of it. The sharp sign raises the note by 1/2 step, and the flat sign lowers the note by one half step. Look at C, the black key above and to the right of it is C#, it is 1/2 step above C.

Half cadence

It is a pause that does not indicate closure or finality. It usually ends on the V or dominant chord.

Beat

A beat is a regular pulse that we hear repeated in music. By listening to the beat we can tell the meter of a piece, i.e. triple or duple, simple or compound.

Rest

A rest is measured silence and also follows the 2:1 ratio that the note lengths follow. To jump ahead a bit, there must always be the right number of beats in your measure depending on the time signature, though it is often the case that every measure does not have notes on every beat. To show the silences you write a rest.

Accent

Accent is stress on a beat

Cadence

In general, it is a stopping point in the music. If we contrast it with half-cadence, then a cadence or full cadence would be a pause that also indicates closure and finality and usually ends on a I or tonic chord.

Ledger line

In treble clef middle C cannot be notated on the staff because it is too low. The lowest note the staff can show on its own is the D above middle C which is placed below the lowest line of the staff. So we draw a ledger line below the staff which allows us to show a note lower than this D. The note on that ledger line then is middle C. We use the same principle to show middle C on the bass clef. The highest note the bass clef can show on its own is the B below middle C which is above the highest line on the staff. So we place a ledger line above the staff and we can show the note above this B, middle C which is on that ledger line. So, if we wanted to show the E above middle C on a bass clef, how many ledger lines would we need, and where would it go? Two and above the staff.

Voice range

It is the possible range an instrument or the voice is able to produce. As I mentioned elsewhere, the untrained voice can do about 2 octaves whereas instruments like the violin have a practical range of about 5 octaves.

Tempo

It is the speed at which the music progresses. Review the chart of tempo indications like Allegro, Andante, and Largo

Accidentals

Say your key signature includes a Bb, i.e., has a flat symbol on the B line at the beginning of the piece. That means that every time you see a B in the piece you are to play a B flat. The key signature at the beginning saves ink by just printing the Bb once at the beginning in the key signature and thus implying it every time there is a B. But if the composer wants a note that is outside the key signature, he-she must add an accidental i.e, a sharp, flat or natural. We know sharps and flats already, but a natural means that any implied accidental from the key signature, like the Bb, is undone and so a natural sign in front of a B note, even when there is a key signature that has a Bb in it, means that a regular B is played, also called B natural.

Enharmonic Spelling

The black key to the right of any given D is called D# because it is half a step above D. But it also has another name. The white key to the right of D is called E, obviously. That same black key (D#) which is to the left of E is also a half step below E, and so also is called Eb or E flat. Every key can have multiple names in this sense, particularly the black keys.

The impact of the dot upon duration

The dot increases the value of a note by half. So, as noted a whole note (four beats) with a dot would be six beats 4 + 4/2 = 6. A half note with a dot would be three beats 2 + 2/2 = 3, and to continue, a quarter note with a dot would be 1 and 1/2 beats 1 + 1/2 =1 1/2 and and eighth note with a dot would be 3/4 beat 1/2 + 1/4 = 3/4. How long would a dotted sixteenth note be? 3/8

Components of Melody

The components of a melody are the pitch, beat, meter, and rhythm- but mainly the pitch and rhythm.

Staff

The modern staff has four spaces and five lines and notates pitch. The higher the note is on the staff, the higher the pitch denotes.

Rhythm

The movement of pitches through time

Types of Melodic Motion

The notes in a melody can proceed by step, by leap, or can repeat and not move at all.

Flag and Beam

The notes that are an eighth note in length and smaller have at least one flag on top of them (the smaller the note value, the more flags. When there are several flagged notes that follow each other rather than having a mess of eighth or sixteenth notes with flags making it difficult to see the notes the flags are beamed together which means they are connected by a line. If several sixteenth notes (shown by two flags) are beamed together they are beamed with two lines to show that they are all sixteenth notes. With 32nd notes three lines etc... but there are not beams for notes that have a value of a quarter note or more.

Time Signature--give examples of what each of the numbers could mean in different time signatures. For example, in 4/4 the top number means there are four beats in a measure and the bottom number means that a quarter note gets one beat.

The time signature looks like a fraction. The numerator lets you know how many beats there are per measure, i.e., in duple meter it would be two, in triple, three, and in quadruple 4. The denominator lets you know what note value gets the beat. It will always be an even number because, as we know from the common ration of note durations, the not values are divisible by two. If a half note gets the beat then the denominator will be two, if a quarter gets the beat then it will be 4, an eighth will be 8 etc... So a triple meter where an eighth note gets the beat would be 3 (for triple meter)/8 (for the beat value) 3/8. A quadruple meter where the sixteenth note gets the beat would be 4/16. As a side note for those interested, the C sign which has come to mean Common time or 4/4 has an interesting derivation. It is not a C, but an incomplete circle. In the music of the 14th and 15th centuries they used two signs primarily to denote something like a time signature: the complete circle O meant the song would be in three or triple meter, while the incomplete circle C meant it would be in duple meter. This was the middle ages remember and Christian thinking penetrated everything. The trinity, the number 3, was seen as a perfect number and so it was denoted by the perfect circle. The number 2 was imperfect and so was shown by an incomplete, imperfect circle. This C as common time is a remnant from that way of thinking.

Types of text settings

There are 3 types of text settings. Syllabic means one note to one syllable, neumatic means two or three notes (a few) to one syllable, and melismatic means several notes (more than 4) to one syllable.

Clef

There are three different types of clefs: F or bass, C, and G or treble. They are all movable depending on the voice range and their placements denote, in the case of the F clef where the F below middle C is (between the two points to the right of the rest of the clef, in the middle ages the points were connected to the rest of the clef making to lines, so it actually looked like an F instead of l : which no longer resembles an F), the C clef which denotes where middle C is (over the years it has morphed into something that often looks like a K or a B, but middle C is in the exact middle of the clef), and the G clef which shows where the G above middle C is (the G clef also no longer looks like a G but the G line when this clef is used is wherever the spiral curl is. The main F clef is the bass clef which puts the F below middle C on the penultimate line from the top. The main G clef is the treble clef which puts the G above middle C on the penultimate line from the bottom. There are two often used C clefs: the tenor clef which places middle C on the penultimate line from the top, and the alto clef which places middle C on the middle line of the clef.

Compound Meter

This sometimes can be interpreted as either triple or duple. Usually compound meter is when there are two separate meters taking place. On the immediate level there is a triple meter, we hear the triple meter pretty clearly. But then this measure of triple meter is grouped with another measure of triple meter or several measures of triple meter to come up with a compound meter. The example in the text shows 6/8, which is basically two measures of 3/8 (triple). We would hear it like this: ONE two three Four five six, ONE two three Four five six etc... The 'Four', or the first triplet of the second group is not as accented as the first triplet, and this lets us know that they are grouped together as one measure of 6/8 compound time and not two measures of triple meter. We also see occasionally 9/8 which is 3 groups of triplets, and 12/8 which is a quadruple meter with four groups of triplets.