Music Terms

Note

A musical sound or the symbol used to write it down

Cadences

A progression of chords moving to a harmonic close, point of rest, or sense of resolution

Scale

A series of notes that go up or down stepwise

Flat

A symbol put in front of a written note in a piece of music to lower it by one half step

Oeuvre

A work of art

Staff

Staff (or Stave) is a set of five lines and four spaces on which notes are written to indicate their pitch. A clef at the beginning of the staff tells which notes are on which lines. Another name - SCALE

Pitch

The highness or lowness of a musical tone.

syllable

The origins of the syllables came from an 11th century Italian monk named Guido d'Arezzo. Upon finding a Latin hymn which got progressively higher line by line, he took the first couple of letters of the text of each line to create six musical syllables. Over time, these syllables were transformed into the seven familiar names do, re, mi, fa, so, la and ti.

Sharp

The symbol placed before a note to raise it one half step.

Clef

is a musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes. Placed on one of the lines at the beginning of the stave, it indicates the name and pitch of the notes on that line. This line serves as a reference point by which the names of the notes on any other line or space of the stave may be determined. Only one clef that references a note in a space rather than on a line has ever been used. There are three types of clef used in modern music notation: F, C, and G. Each type of clef assigns a different reference note to the line on which it is placed