American popular music Ch 1

composer

a person who writes music

Lyricist

a person who writes words to music

call and response

a song style in which a singer or musician leads with a call and a group responds

Montuno

alternates fixed vocal refrain with solo vocal improvisation

Rhythm

by its simplest definition, means musical time. The origin of the word is Greek, meaning "flow." Rhythm is indeed the embodiment of timely flow.

Gospel Music

church music that blends elements of folk music, spirituals, hymns, and popular music

Producer

convincing board of directors to back a project

Polyrhythmic

describes a musical texture in which two or more melodic lines of relatively equal importance are performed simultaneously.

Monophonic

describes music consisting of a single melodic line. Whether it is sung/played by one person or many, as long as the same notes and rhythms are being performed, monophonic texture results.

Groove

evokes the channeled flow of swinging, funky or phat rythms

Verses

lines of a poem or song

Who were the Skillet Lickers?

one of the very first southern string bands to appear on commercial recordings

Sharecroppers

people who rent a plot of land from another person, and farm it in exchange for a share of the crop

Who was Lighting Washington?

prison song leader 1934

Form

refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections.

Riff

repeated pattern designed to generate rhythmic momentum

Arranger

reworked songs to complement a particular performer's strengths

A&R (artists and repertoire)

sought out talent

Melody

successive line of single tones or pitches perceived as a unity. Its characteristics include range, shape, and movement.

Backbeat

the accenting of the second and fourth beats of a steady four-beat pulse

tune families

the members of which could be interchanged in the flow of performance

Harmony

the use of simultaneous pitches or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them

Lyrics

the words of a song

Timbre

tone color

Homophonic

type of music where a melody line is supported by a harmony (chords). Ex. popular music.

Ballad

type of song in which a series of verses telling a story, often a tragedy.

A Cappella

without musical accompaniment

Who was James Gideon (Gid)?

(1885-1960) leader of the band, chicken farmer and part time fiddler.

Who was Jos'e ("El Negro") Ricardo?

(1888-1937) Afro-Argentine musician in tango tradition

Who was Francisco Canaro?

(1888-1964) Uruguay-born violinist and band leader.

Who was Carlos Gardel?

(1890-1935) A star that became the greatest champion of Tango; he had "a beautiful voice" and macho looks

Who was Mississippi John Hurt?

(1892-1966) Representative of songster tradition worked as a farmer until his recordings were discovered by scholar in the early 1960s.

Who was Dink Roberts?

(1894-1984) Songster recorded Coo-Coo at age 80

Who was Tommy Jarrell?

(1901-1985) Influential old time fiddler and banjo player from Mt. Airy, NC

Who was Jean Ritchie?

(1922-2015) folk singer and song collector

old-time music

A category of music comprising string band music, ballad songs, sacred songs, church hymns, and a variety of functionally specialized music genres such as lullabies and work songs.

musical process

A formal analysis of the way popular music actually sounds.

Chorus

A group who says things at the same time

Hook

A memorable musical phrase or riff

DJs (disc jockeys)

A person or persons who play records publically or use prerecorded music and samples to make techno, rap, and other forms of music.

Formal Analysis

A system of musical interpretation informed by the Western academic tradition and usually applied to written music.

"Soldier's Joy"

An old-time fiddle tune originating in Europe and influential in the United States.

Cantillation

Chanting of a sacred text by a solo singer, particularly in the Jewish synagogue.

Reverb

Electronically making the instrument or voice sound like it is in a large room - reverberating

Who was Tanner?

GID

Shape

Melody takes its own direction, or shape. When musicians talk about the shape of a melody line, they are referring to the literal geometric line that could be made if the notes were joined together as in a dot-to-dot puzzle.

Movement

Movement can be either conjunct or disjunct. When the melody moves stepwise and is connected, the movement is termed conjunct. Melody that leaps from pitch to pitch with no natural connection or flow is said to be disjunct.

dance music

Music designed to accompany or inspire dancing.

string band tradition

Old-time string bands drew on the traditions that English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh immigrants brought with them to America.

"Barbara Allen"

One of the most widely performed examples of the British Ballad tradition, first definitively documented in London in 1666

Spirituals

Religious folk songs that blended biblical themes with the realities of slavery

broadsides

Single printed sheets, distributed by publishers, that might contain a royal decree, news of a crime, or some other event. Precursor to music sheets

Strophic

Song structure in which the same music is repeated with every stanza (strophe) of the poem.

Dialect

The distinctive aspect of language unique to a geographic region, social group, or ethnicity.

slap-back

The distinctive, "wet" sound environment used in Elvis Presley's early recordings with Sun Records.

Range

The range of a piece is the distance between the lowest and highest tones. Singers refer to an arrangement being in a low, medium, or high range, meaning that the notes focus on those scale pitches.

Sampling

The technique of using digitally encoded sound (often from a popular song) to create new musical material (often a new popular song).

British ballad tradition

Tradition of ballad songs from Great Britain which was brought to America. Many ballads in this tradition are published in Francis J. Child's five-volume English and Scottish Popular Ballads.

Folk music

Traditional music originating in popular culture usually transmitted orally, often related to aspects of social or national identity and frequently of unknown authorship.

R&B (rhythm & blues)

African American musical genre that emerged after World War II. Consisted of a loose cluster of styles derived from black musical traditions, characterized by energetic and hard-swinging rhythms. At first performed exclusively by black musicians for black audiences, R&B came to replace the older category of "race records."

black spirituals

African American slaves forged alternative interpretations of spirituals that bore double meanings of religious salvation and freedom from slavery.