Ch. 2 Lecture "The Elements of Music"

[00:00:01]hey everybody this is Mr Gennaro again coming  at you with uh the week two lecture this covers material from chapter two the same textbook  resonances we're going to be looking at our module for week two in just a second and I hope you  guys are having a great start to your week here I'm gonna jump to my share screen here  we go so I hope that you have completed the week one module you were supposed to  look at the online attendance policy and then also go through the writing assignment  for week one we're moving on now to week two so let's go ahead and look at  the homework assignments first this week we have two assignments due because  we're coming to the end of unit one which covers chapters one and two of the textbook so this week  on Sunday you have your writing assignment to worth 25 points due you also have a unit 1  discussion post this requires you to do a little bit of extra listening to some music and also to  share your ideas onto the online discussion board and to comment on your classmates posts as well  so we have a couple things that we're looking at here's our writing assignment so I always say  that chapter two in some ways is one of the most important chapters of the textbook it really  gets us to think about music the way that trained musicians would so with that we learn a lot  of vocabulary that makes us be able to talk about music in a more specific way so for part  one you have a little bit of flexibility here you get to choose a song of your choice from any  genre of music then right toward the following prompts with that piece of music in mind so you're  really giving us a breakdown of the song it'd be great to have maybe a short paragraph for each of  these bullet points here all the way down so our first question what genre and sub genre would you  describe for your song we're going to talk about the importance of genre and sub-genre within this  chapter so we're kind of building off of this most of us know what genre Our Song fits into but give  me some reasons why it would fit in that genre the next question says describe the five elements  of music as they pertain to your song use as much vocabulary terms from the slides and chapter as  appropriate so these big five elements of Music we're going to spend a lot of time warning  about these in the first part of the lecture the first element is rhythm this has to do with  how the piece moves through time so we're thinking about things like Tempo that means how fast  or how slow the piece of music is moving what at what speed does the beat happen we can also  talk about the meter and that's basically how are the rhythms organized in this piece of music  we'll talk more about both of these terms uh when talking about the lecture slides next pitch pitch  is the highness or lowness of a sound so when you talk about the pitch for your song Tell Me  In what range does the melody lie if it's a voice that is carrying the melody for most of the  song you could tell me does that singer have a low voice or a high voice if you hear a piece that  features the trombone or the cello or the bass in an extensive way you could talk about how  those instruments have a lower musical range sometimes we use the word tessatura to describe  this same thing the melodic range how wide of a field of pitch do the instruments occupy the next  one dynamic in volume these are interchangeable but we use them in different ways most people  will think of volume like the volume of your computer your stereo your headphones so volume is  kind of how we describe music or Sound in general when it comes to how loud or how soft it is we  also have the dynamic dynamic is our musical word for volume but it also just means change it  means when things are going from low or soft to a loud volume right so Dynamic is all about change  and the character at which the music is delivered to us how Intense or maybe soft is it presented  we'll talk about these terms more in the chapter the next one to talk about for your song is  the articulation so this means how smooth and Legato or pointed and cicado uh these  the notes of the song are delivered to us within a song are there any variations in  articulation sometimes for example A hip-hop song might have very pointed in staccato delivery of  some rap lyrics but then have a much more smooth chorus that gives us some contrast for the song  so tell me what articulations do you hear in the piece of music that you chose in the last of the  five elements of music is Timbre this is basically what sounds are we hearing what instruments or  combinations of instruments and vocals do we hear are the sounds that we're hearing electronic  are they acoustic is it some combination of the two Timbre can also be described as  being warm it can be described as being metallic you can use lots of fun adjectives here  to describe what does the music sound like to you uh continuing we also want you to think about  a bigger idea for part three here what musical textures are present in your selection now when  we say musical textures we're only talking about um what layering of instruments are we hearing  we've all heard pieces of music that maybe have just one instrument or one singer and nothing  else happening so that's one type of musical texture that we call homophonic there's only  one sound happening we can also have musical textures where many people are playing the same  Melody we can have musical textures where one person is playing a melody and another musician  is maybe throwing strumming a guitar or playing on a piano in more of a background or a company  mental way so we'll talk about this term and the last Point here is what musical structures  patterns repetitions and forms can you hear um the best way to think about this for most  popular music is to think about songs have versus choruses and maybe a bridge different sections  of the song that sound markedly different to each other to our to our ears you can also say there's  a song repeat any of these things more than once what is the overall structure if you were going to  give us a flow chart of all the different sections of the song what would it sound like okay this  is writing assignment two I hope you have fun doing it I think it's a fun assignment because  you get to choose the piece of music that you want to talk about you might want to do something  that you're familiar with or if something from the lecture slides really strikes you you can talk  about that too okay moving back to module two let's look at our discussion post so this is our first unit discussion post it goes  with the end of unit one which like I said covers chapters one and two so for this you're going to  have to do this assign assignment in combination with the lecture slides okay so when you go  through the lecture slides and I really hope that you do it's really essential that you do  those to keep up with the class and all of the music that we want you to listen to uh go to slide  50 and you're going to see several videos that you can choose from okay I tried to give some variety  but also give you a sense of choice you get to listen to something that might be interesting for  you so let's read the instructions first watch and listen intently to one of the videos provided  on slide 50 of the week 2 lecture PowerPoint listen to your selected piece of music for 20  minutes or more without distraction I recommend wearing headphones no cell phones or electronic  use Etc while you're doing this and I encourage you to truly listen it can be hard sometimes  to find this time and maybe you might want to multitask and read or be on your cell phone while  you do your listening remember that we're talking about music as a piece of art here and we want to  be able to experience it without any distractions where all of your listening can go toward what  you're hearing I will say one thing that you can do to make this process easier is to write some  written notes so that as you're listening maybe just have a scrap piece of paper and a pencil  write down the things that really stand out to you while you're listening that way you don't  forget them and you already kind of have some good notes to help you with your writing portion  of this assignment here's the next part speaking of writing right three to four paragraphs about  your listening describe your overall listening experience refer to at least five themes from the  unit one reading lectures and presentations I've given a few theme suggestions under each video  it may be helpful to write notes as you listen as you describe your work remember that I've  intentionally chosen music outside of people's listening to test your use of the terminology  what is the purpose and intent of this music okay so to break this down um I really do want you  to give some real thought to this three to four paragraphs isn't too much to write about because  remember you can address all of the same ideas that we did in the first part of the assignment  okay uh the last thing we need to do here is comment to receive full credit comment on another  classmate's post after listening to a portion of their selected piece of music give a comment  in relation to a point they made you thought was interesting and a new idea you think they  could consider related to the piece they chose okay now I think this is very fun you get a chance  to share some ideas with your colleagues in the class you could choose someone who does the same  video as you or you could choose a completely different one if they chose a different video  than you chose okay but make sure that you give it a listen so that you can actually respond back  to their posts having an informed sense of what they're talking about okay so that goes over the  two assignments for this week in module two we're talking about writing assignment two and the unit  1 discussion post both due on Sunday January 22nd okay now this week uh you have your overview  this gives you a look at all the expectations of the week you can also I would recommend you  need to read chapter two of resonances and also go along with the chapter two lecture  slides as you're watching this video so please go ahead and go into module two open up  these slides it can be helpful to go along with them as I'm talking and I will ask you at certain  points maybe to pause this video so that you can click on the YouTube videos that are embedded  in the slides okay so I hope that you've opened these slides I'm going to open them up in Google  okay everybody so this is the chapter two lecture slides that go along with our textbook resonances  again make sure that you read the whole chapter um either before or watching this video it's  really helpful to hear the information more than once to really solidify it in your mind  and I would say again that chapter 2 is one of the most important chapters of the book  because it kind of is a building block for us for the rest of the semester we're going to  be using these elements of music to describe every piece of music that we listen to for the  rest of the semester so I would recommend maybe taking some good notes as you go along save these  because they'll be helpful throughout the course so part one of this chapter is called  the elements of music so let's ask some questions here what are the characteristics  of musical sound and non-musical sound we talked again last week about the sounds of the  junkyard or the sounds of birds that we have all these different sounds and we categorize them in  different ways right so a couple questions here all sound whether it's musical or non-musical  sound has certain characteristics in common the distinction between music and noise  is usually one of how we organize them we generally consider noise to be more irregular  and unpredictable so imagine you know you go to a really windy part of the forest and you  hear all these trees brushing against each other it's irregular it's unpredictable we would  probably consider this to be noise more than music Al sound is usually more predictable and  Exhibits easily identifiable patterns so my favorite definition of music is that  music is organized sound so when we think about music we have to hear usually something  that can be identifiable maybe something that is reminiscent of something that we've heard  before however think of a mechanical tool like a jackhammer which produces a very predictable  sound but is not generally thought of as music so just because something is predictable doesn't  necessarily that it can be music to our ears these are the five elements of Rhythm it's really  helpful just to remember these and commit them to Memory so first is rhythm we see a drum here we  see a musical representation of some drumming rhythms right here Rhythm has to do with how we  move through time we often think of the drums as being a very rhythmic instrument but of course  any instrument any singer even the talking of my voice right now follows in uh sorry falls into a  certain aspect of Rhythm it's how we move through time for a piece of music the next one is pitch  this is usually without it to be the lowness or the highness of sound so this is what we call a  treble clef in a musical staff this note would be the lowest and moving up up up up up we get  to the highest note up here within the range of notes that we see presented so again pitch we  usually think of as low and high and we also get into things like Harmony Melody chords so  pitch is a huge category and we'll talk about it a lot this semester volume now when we think  about volume you can think of like a knob on a guitar or on a car stereo or your your cell phone  maybe we have a control of volumes in this way but when we talk about musical volume we usually  use the word dynamics Dynamics refers again to the change of the music from soft to loud so  it's good to know the difference between volume and Dynamics we'll get more into that articulation  is the next element you we can see here these are five different kinds of musical articulation and  we use these small markers to tell the performer the instrument also the singer how we want the  sound to be delivered so when we think about articulation this has to do with how do we start  a sound how does a sound end we can always we'll look at some closer examples of this later and  the last one is Timbre Timbre refers to what are we hearing what instruments or what combination of  instruments are we hearing um your ear for example knows the difference between hearing a string  quartet and a rock band with electric guitars even though they're both string instruments  our ear can pick out the difference in how they sound different to each other it's almost like  we're talking about the character of the sound now let's break each of these down a little  bit more rhythm is the temporal aspect of Music temporal means having to do with time  essentially when does a sound occur and when does it end musicians utilize slow and fast rhythms  to create patterns musical textures and more pulse this is a big word pulse like the pulse  produced by your own heart is a sequence of regularly spaced sounds the frequency of the  pulses determines Tempo which can range from slow to very fast it makes sense that music  should tend to be organized around a pulse since our very existence is organized around  pulses our hearts beat to a pulse we breathe to a pulse we even walk to a pulse and we organize  time into pulse like the seconds of a watch hand it is usually not difficult to detect the pulse in  a musical work simply tap your foot or clap your hands and there is so we've all had this feeling  of listening to a piece of music and your toe just starts tapping or maybe your head starts  to Bob right so we are very attuned to Rhythm because it is part of our daily life through  our heart beating our breathing our walking all of her life has some sort of Rhythm and time  flowing through it now I told you before that we have different ways of representing the tempo or  the speed of the music so musicians describe tempo of a piece of music either through Italian terms  for example Largo lento Allegro Vivace or using a BPM marking this stands for beats per minute  so you can think a second hand of a clock for example clicks at exactly 60 beats per minute  because there are 60 seconds in a minute right so a traditional March music is typically around  110 to 132 BPM so about two times faster than a second as it is a comfortable speed for  walking so we see here a marching band this is about I'm just zapping my  fingers this is about the tempo that you could walk at comfortably for a marching  band now these are common Tempo markings like we've read up here a lot of these terms come  from Italian the Italian language because it was used widely spread across the classical  music era when this were all developed so the tempo text that we see grave very slow this would  be 25 to 45 beats per minute usually we see Largo a little bit less so but still slow and broadly 40  to 60 SEC beats per minute lento slow just means slow 45 to 60 BPM Adagio slow but with expression  it has a little bit more speed to it we can see 66 and 76. we have kind of the medium range of  tempo markings Andante literally means walking speed if you speak some Spanish you know maybe  and dar is the verb to walk so similar in Italian we can see that falls in this BPM range moderato  moderately Allegretto moderately fast and allegro moderato slightly slower than Allegro so we're  getting into the fast range almost right here and then the last is kind of the fast category of  tempo markings and these are just some there are many more that you can use and sometimes composers  or people who write music get creative with their Tempo markings too but looks like the best ones  Allegro this literally means going or moving so fast quickly and brightly 120 to 156 BPM Vivace  fast and lightly 156 to 176 Allegro vivaci that means very fast and Presto exceptionally fast we  get almost to 200 beats per minute there okay so when you talk about your homework assignment your  your discussion posts or your writing assignment make sure that you're using uh the tempo texts  right here to describe your piece if you want you can use a metronome app or a metronome  online to approximate your BPM marking if you can find it but usually this takes a little bit  of listening try tapping your fingers are patting your leg to find what you think the tempo or  the the regular pulse of the music might be we're moving on here with rhythm so besides  Tempo we have other aspects of Rhythm that we should know too um in music we just we categorize  or group music into metrical groups we call these measures sometimes musicians May refer to a  measure as a bar a term that comes from the bar lines we see below right here so again  a bar or a measure of music is from one line to the next line and all the space in between so  even here there's no here's our starting bar line all the way from here to here is one measure of  music now we do this to help the musicians stay organized we can actually group the music into  these segments that makes it easier to understand easier to follow and easier to group so it's  a little bit different from written language although you can think of a measure line  almost like a period it gives us a small way of organizing a thought now it is worth  noting that the measure line does not mean that the Music Stops we actually flow through most  of these with some exceptions the single bar line is pretty standard we see it all the time and  regularly the double bar line usually marks that there's some kind of important change happening  we can see bar lines that have extra Dots here this means that we would Loop this section as  many times as the composer might specify and last is the final bar line this one is a true end  to the piece you can see it has this much thicker bar and then there's more standard bar right  here this shows the end of a piece of music all right we'll continue here these allow  musicians to more easily follow along with their music understand the rhythms within a bar  and allows musicians to talk about sections of the music more easily to one another so instead of  just having to point a musician can say you know what note do you have in bar three of this  piece of music and you could count one two three and then you know that you're on the same  page with the person that you're discussing with a little bit more about Rhythm here the pulses  of music while consistent are not always of equal weight so some pulses of Music have extra  musical weight or significance when pulses are organized into groups containing strong and weak  beats the term we use as meter is established so let's look at some examples these are pretty easy  to understand once you know what to listen for while measures can contain any number of pulses  the most common groupings are two three and four these groupings are termed duple triple and  quadruple meter so again this has to do with how many beats how many strong beats are we  hearing within a piece of music on a regular basis a measure in all three of these meters will  begin with a strong pulse termed the downbeat so let's look at this diagram here you  can see this is duple meter two beats the downbeat is on beat one and we have  a slightly weaker beat here on beat two triple meter three beats again strong beat one  beats two and three are weaker and then quadruple meter beat one is strong two is weak three is a  little bit medium actually and four is back to weak so know these terms uh when you talk about  your song Tell me what meter do you think your song is in you're gonna have to do some listening  for this uh we can also talk about the conducting patterns here when a conductor is moving through  a piece of music leading an orchestra or a band or maybe a choir they conduct patterns similar  to these to help show the flow of the beat so these are some different examples I would  encourage you to pause the video in a second to listen to all three of these selections I think  these are songs that you would all recognize too which is nice so the first one is in duple  meter it's the Stars and Stripes Forever which is a very popular American song This has a duple  meter I'll play just a little bit of it right now [Music] so if we listen one two one two one two  one two one two one two one two one two okay pretty easy to feel so again this is that  March music that we hear by John Philip Sousa Stars and Stripes Forever when you if I were  to write about this for my homework assignment I could say it is in a duple meter with a strong  weak feel the tempo is probably about 132 beats per minute and it moves pretty quickly so I  might want to call it maybe it's an Allegro tempo let's listen to the next one now we're  moving to Triple meter this comes from the animated movie Howl's Moving Castle  it's a very very famous song as well again this will be in the triple meter  one two three one two three one two three this opening is a little bit um vague in terms  of the temple he's kind of taking his time there we go one two three one two three two three one two three one two one so we could keep listening through the  whole song really says in that triple meter for most of it even when it moves from the piano  to the orchestra coming in as well so again when you listen to this you know think about what are  we hearing in the first video example we heard a group of a huge wind band so the texture we'll get  into later think about that term the texture that we're hearing is many many different instruments  in this one we're starting off with again a homophonic texture we hear just the piano so that  would be something really important to reference let's check out our last video this is  from AC DC so we're kind of moving through different genres here of course too this  is in quadruple meter the beat is strong weak medium weak and this is AC DC's Back in  Black so here's our quadruple pattern here let's listen to it one two three four one two  three four one two three four one two three four one two three four now this one is unique because  remember in in rock and roll music we actually are putting a pretty loud hit on two and four you  can hear it in the snare drum really loud hits on two and four so in rock music they are playing  kind of against the quadruple meter but it still fits into that four um that that measure of four  for the rhythmic organization let's continue here so that was a lot about Rhythm we're moving  now to pitch so again pitch has to do with the highness or the lowness of the sound that we  hear if you think of a mosquito definitely a high pitched kind of hum versus the sound of a whale  call may be quite low so what's interesting here is that even though we use the words high and  low to talk about Pitch sound of course is not physically located in high or low spaces but most  people conceptualize pitch from this viewpoint part of why we do that is because of music  notation how we write music on a piece of paper we do write the lower notes lower on the  staff in the higher notes as we go up and up and up way higher up here so this is a graph  right here all of these notes are the same they're all the note C that you could find on the  piano or the guitar but this shows the C in the very lowest space and the very highest space  of musical representation we could hear all these different sounds if we had an instrument  that could play them all uh most listeners can easily perceive the difference between a  high-pitched sound and a low pitch sound our use of the terms high and low to describe  pitch reflect the characteristics of sound waves so let's talk more about what is pitch actually  how does um one why does one piano string or one piano key sound different from striking another  so all sounds are produced by vibrating bodies whether it's a string of a guitar or a piano  vibrating or the sound of a trumpet vibrating this air column uh all these produce different  sound waves whatever the source is these are perceived by the ear the eardrum and decoded  by the brain we learned about that last week pitch is determined by the frequency of the  sound wave while we use the terms high and low to described pitch in actuality High sounds  are actually faster vibrating sound waves and low sounds are actually slower vibrations  the frequency of a pitch is measured in hertz levels so we use HZ as the abbreviation let's  watch these videos really quickly so this is a Tibetan symbol if we watch this video we'll  see that the bowl produces a specific pitch now this is a great representation because we can  imagine that the whole metal Bowl here is actually resonating because it's all one solid piece of  object it can only give us this one specific pitch you know ask yourself if the bowl was bigger  would it have a lower or a higher pitch again if it was bigger the answer would  be it would have a lower pitch because the sound waves are actually moving slower  the whole object is vibrating at a slower speed because it has more density more mass  now this is interesting as well the second video here is a resonance experiment  it actually shows how on a metal plate sending sound waves into the plate what is the  formation of these grains of sand on top of it [Music] so they're talking in the video about the  different Hertz frequencies that they are sending into this metal plate causing it to  vibrate and making these very interesting patterns these actually come  from the sound waves themselves so I would encourage you to watch pause this video  watch this one all the way through it is pretty interesting to see the different shapes that  are formed as the pitch gets higher and higher now when we talk about Pitch it can be a little  bit hard to talk about because it's something that we can't see we can definitely hear pitches being  lower or higher but it helps to have a visual representation too so this is a tool here called  an oscilloscope this is what it would look like uh in in person but nowadays we actually have  virtual oscilloscopes too an oscilloscope allows us to visualize the sound waves by viewing  the oscillation of the Waves so you can see here that the sound wave actually would start on  this line the sound happens and then it actually moves in the opposite direction too now remember  sound doesn't truly travel this way it's more of a circle imagine like a ripple in a pond but  this lets us see how it's moving through time now this oscilloscope opening it up here is  pretty fun to play with you can choose different pitches in fact if you look right now  it's actually recording my voice and showing what the sound waves are sounding like  pretty interesting I'm gonna clap my hands there's some other interesting information here you might want to play  around with this a little bit okay more about Pitch here so when we  talk about Pitch we're saying that there is a signal frequency of human audio Spectrum  this means what sounds can art here actually can our ear actually understand there's a certain  level where a sound is going to get too low or too high that it actually goes beyond the realm  of human hearing now you might have heard maybe you are seen a dog whistle before it's a whistle  that you blow into where you can't hear anything but actually the dog's ears really perk up right  that sound is outside the realm of human hearing but the pitch is still happening we just can't  hear it the dogs can so we're gonna watch this video in a second that shows and you can actually  experience this the whole range of human hearing note this wave has the same volume level  measured by acoustic pressure all the time however human sound perception  differs depending on frequency for lower frequencies that are below 1 K Hertz  you might want to increase your volume but don't forget to lower it later to avoid damage  to your hearing so basically what they're saying is as the sound gets higher pitch  it is going to appear to be louder to our ears even though technically they are the same  volume it's kind of an interesting phenomenon um if you don't hear anything below 40 to 50  hertz even at full volume your audio Hardware is probably incapable of playing lowest frequency  so if you want to really test this you might have to use some headphones actually you might want to  try to listen on the headphones in such case yes also if you stop hearing sounds somewhere between  10K Hertz and 20K Hertz do not increase your volume for safety reasons every human ear hears  a bit differently and have different hearing thresholds hearing range also change with age  younger people can usually hear higher frequencies so I'm going to go ahead and play this it's going  to start on the lowest frequency and as it goes up we're going to try to find the moment where  our ears can no longer hear the sound due to how high it is you're also going to notice that  the waves are going to go from very big and very far apart to much tinier and closer togethers  because remember we're increasing the frequency or the occurrence of the Waves when we increase  the pitch um and again I'm gonna watch my volume here if you want to do this please do the same  when you get into the really high frequencies you can hurt your ears so just have your finger  on the volume knob just in case here we go starting very well I can't even hear it now I hear that really rich  bass around 40 50 hertz thank you okay it's getting louder and not  louder but just higher in Pitch right [Music] [Music] I'm gonna watch my volume here [Music] [Music] now it's getting higher there'll be  a certain point where we can't hear it anymore because it will get too high  see if you can find what that is for you so right around there for me maybe around 17 K  Hertz I think is where I could no longer hear that sound I'm a little bit older than you guys  so maybe yours was closer to 18 or 19 K Hertz but you know pretty interesting phenomenon to  hear that's the whole range of human hearing more talk about Pitch so when we talk about pitch  in terms of hurts we can talk about any number we just saw a whole range from about one Hertz to 20K  Hertz and that's a really really wide spectrum of sound now that doesn't mean that we have 20 000  notes though so when we talk about musical pitch we have a different way of breaking things down  than using the Hertz so for music Across different musical systems we organize sounds to create  different pitches different musical traditions utilize different systems of pitch based  on different structures and rationale organization of pitch in the western musical  system is kind of like this so the Western musical alphabet has just seven notes a b c d e f  g these would be like the white keys of the piano however we do also add additional notes that  fit in between these seven to give us a total of 12. we also add the sharps and flats between  these notes creating notes like B flat or G sharp so again this gives us a total  of 12 different chromatic pitches this is the sharp sign it raises  the note by a half step and this is a flat sign it does the opposite  it would lower a pitch by a half sub so these examples that I've given here  are just a couple but you could think that the note B flat is a note that is lower than  the note B but not quite as low as the note a G sharp is a note that is higher than G but  lower than the note a one important thing that I didn't mention about the Western musical  alphabet A B C D E F G is that as you can see here it repeats back on itself so once you get  to G we would restart the alphabet back to a well we could find an unlimited number of  frequencies like what we just heard on the Spectrum in the previous slide we do not use  all of these pitches to create music instead we identify and select a limited number of specific  pitches we have 12 notes in the western tradition in music theory other cultural tuning systems will  be covered later so just to say just because in European classical music we have 12 pitches uh if  you were to go to maybe West Africa or to China Japan they would have probably a system that  has fewer notes usually maybe five sometimes six six notes as we can see on the piano keyboard  there are actually 12 pitches between two notes with the same note when the musical alphabet  restarts so again like we said starting in a we move through the alphabet when we get to G we  restart the alphabet again back at a we don't continue with h because this a and this a would  sound not exactly the same but very very similar the we call these notes a to A or B to B um an  octave so the octave is divided into 12 notes when we play all 12 of these notes we call it  a chromatic pitch set or a chromatic scale this would include all of the pitches used in western  music the majority of Music we are familiar with will not utilize all 12 chromatic tones instead  most musical utilize a subset of the 12 possible [ __ ] to create other musical scales with fewer  notes so the most common scale that we hear um in a vast majority of our music  actually has eight of these notes selected so if you count or seven a b c d e f g that could  be your seven and then it restarts on a or c d e f g a b c again eight notes this is a pretty common  scale but you can see that we're not using any of these black keys so there are too many scales  to talk about but they could use any number of combination of The Black Keys and the white keys  of the piano to create different kinds of sounds one thing that's interesting always to recognize  is that even though the octave is divided into 12 notes it does have this prefix of oxed like an  octagon this means that it has to do with the number eight so if you count a to A or B to B you  would find that it would take eight steps until you got back to the next note so a b c d e f g a  that is our eight that's what we call an octave foreign so we talked about this term earlier  but let's revisit it this is melodic range intestator so this has to do with pitch but it  has to do with how low and how high of notes are we actually hearing within a song so the melodic  range or tested her the distance between low and high pitches and changes in register are also  important musical elements so this is telling us that we want to be able to say within a song  what's the lowest note that a signal would have to sing and the highest note we would call  that whole range the tessatura how high and how low we can also talk about this term  register that if you're a singer you might know this that we have different ranges  of voices too is it in the low register or the base range is it in the tenor register  the alto or maybe even the soprano register these are some good examples let's look  at this first one of happy birthday perfect so that's a great example you can see even  here the tail end where you can see it here when we had both the low and the high octave at the  same time these notes were exactly one octave apart so they sound the same they have the same  note name these are both for example these right here are both G's they have the same note name  because they sound very similar to us the only difference is that we have a low version  of the note and a high version of the note in different ranges so this is reading standard  musical notation written on a staff we can also talk about you know pitches just as a spectrum  from low to high let's watch this video here so the big takeaway from this video I  think is just to have another type of representation representation of the pitches  in this case I think that this idea of kind of stairs is very clear of showing each of these as  a different pitch and how we move from low to high the other takeaway too is that when you talk about  the tessatura that you can think of this more like a within a short song or maybe within a smaller  phrase or a smaller section of a piece of music many songs will have a wide variety  of tested heard because they have low instruments and high instruments but you  could talk about this with just a melody of a singer are they using their whole  range of their voice or is it more narrow so think about this it takes kind of an acute  ear to listen for pitch but with some really thoughtful listening you can also develop that  skill and that's part of what we do in this class so continuing here we have the roles of pitch and  music now pitch obviously is very important but we have different jobs I like to think of them  we call them roles but how does pitch function if we have Melody Melodies are constructed out  of a sequence of pitches we just saw that with Mary had a little hand for example this is the  part of a musical work that you might sing along with we all know the melody of our favorite  songs or they might get stuck in your head Melodies have various characteristics including  shape and motion which can be conjunct this is when the melody primarily moves up and  down the scale and also disjunct in which the melody contains larger intervals and leaps  so when we think about Melody just like we saw with the bouncing ball on the stairs in the  previous slide think about the shape how is it moving from one to another or what is the motion  is it moving upward or is it moving downward we can get more specific with these terms conjunct  and disjunct conjunct means that we're moving almost entirely from one note to the note  right above it or below it's a very small movements throughout a Melody there's also more  disjunct melodies where we have much bigger leap so imagine going from the bottom stair all  the way to the fifth or sixth stair within that collection of musical notes these are two  terms that you can use in your writing as well usually we can hear the difference the next row of  pitch is harmony harmonies are constructed out of groups of pitches that are usually sounded  simultaneously and constitute chords while a sequence of harmonies is termed a chord  progression in a musical work the harmony is usually unobtrusive and might be repetitive so  this idea Harmony is when we stack more than one note on top of each other they're happening at  exactly the same time we call this harmony this can be done with two singers singing in harmony  with each other or instruments like the guitar or the piano that can actually play more than one  note at the same time and produce these chords with sometimes you know anywhere between two to  maybe even ten different pitches at the same time even more with a big Orchestra you can imagine  too that's one of the chords that you can create now chord progressions are how we move through the  song usually a song has some kind of overarching um movement through different kinds of chords  that gives its certain flavor if you've ever tried to play a song on the ukulele or the guitar  you are essentially learning how to play chord progressions a melody and Harmony sound good  together when they are based on the same scale and contain some of the same pitches however every  Melody can be harmonized in many different ways using various chords likewise a single Harmony  can be used to accompany many different melodies there's a lot of information here what they're  essentially saying is that you know the melody and the harmony are going to share some of  the same musical notes a b c d e f g all the facts and all the charts they're going  to have something in common that makes them fit together that isn't always true but it is a  good way to start especially when writing songs um Melodies can be harmonized in many  different ways so sometimes we alter the chords underneath the melody to create a  different kind of sensation to our listening um and also a single Harmony can be used for many  different Melodies so a lot of songs have the same chord progressions or the same harmonies um just  in different ways last the base the base is the lowest sounding voices it acts as the bottom  of a pyramid of sound made by a full Ensemble and this gives us a foundational reference  for musical Harmony so when we're listening um to a chord of some type hearing the bottom  note really gives us a strong foundation for how we interpret that sound so it can be hard  to listen to but try to listen to the bass um in some of your favorite songs and see if  you can um that that can guide your listening to so when we the next musical element  that we'll talk about is volume volume is pretty easy to understand and  its effect on music is a little bit less obvious maybe than you might realize you cannot  appreciate the impact of heavy metal by listening it with the dial turned down just as you cannot  sing a baby to sleep at the top of your voice so think about that some genres of music or you  know lullabies for example there are certain volumes that just make sense to sing them and  that's because the volume interprets how the music is conveyed to us but also how we interpret  it and how we experience it changes in volume can also communicate meaning in music a gradual  increase in volume can indicate growing excitement why Sudden Change in mind can indicate a dramatic  mood shift so listen within your songs to How is the volume changing is it gradually getting louder  that really does cause some excitement if this if it suddenly gets much softer that is also kind  of a surprise right we are maybe expecting it we measure volume scientifically using decibel  scales the abbreviation for this is DB so this is more about maybe the scientific way of  measuring volume but now we're going to get into um how that looks on a spectrum so we can see  here the very lowest thing we can hear we're not talking about pitch anymore we're talking  about just following decibels is about zero is the absolute quietest thing then we have some  leaves around 20 DBS somebody Whispering is about 30 decibels soft music around 40  BBs maybe a normal conversation 60 DBS driving a car about 80 digital so we're getting  louder and louder on the decibel scale home appliances somewhere in the 90s DBS 100 now right  around here we get at this risk of hearing loss so just around over 100 to 110 decibels the sounds  that you would experience would actually start to contribute toward hearing loss which is why it's  so important to wear ear plugs at things like a loud concert where maybe the decibels can be up  to 120 right that exposure for a long time or even for a short time can really cause some severe  hearing loss getting higher than 120 yeah we have some some jet Pilots here that is what we call the  pain threshold of sound and then at 140 it really does become harmful where you can actually cause  some very serious damage to your eardrum and the other inner workings of the ear so again we're not  always aware of this the sounds that we experience all around us but here it is on the decibel scale  and how we can be smart about knowing about it now in a piece of music we don't use decibels  it's too scientific and not really very clear how do you make you know make sure that your  violin is playing at exactly 50 decibels we can't quite get there right so instead musicians  have created a system of abbreviations that stand from these musical dynamics okay so the  volume Dynamics are more about the musical and artistic term for volume and expression again so  volume and also expression changing the volume of a piece of music definitely changes how we  perceive it in the message that it could tell us a few terms that will help us talk  about volume which is also referred to as a dynamic level an increase in  volume is referred to as a crescendo you can think of the word increase so  this is an increase in volume over time while a decrease is termed a decritioned like  a decrease decrease or a diminuendo these terms mean the same thing getting softer musicians and  orchestras bands and choirs describe volume using Italian terms including things like fortissimo  very loud Forte loud mezzo Forte medium loud mezzo piano medium soft piano soft and pianissimo very  soft well this book will not employ these terms you might encounter them elsewhere while we are  used to using a volume knob to change the volume on our stereos remember that musicians have to pay  special attention to their Dynamics by adjusting various techniques to achieve different volumes  so again we will use these terms throughout the semester as you're listening to Pieces tell us  what Dynamics you think you might be hearing um I like this part where they talk about  changing techniques on the instruments or the voice to get different volumes imagine  blowing into a trumpet but you have to play piano very softly right or having a drum solo and  you decide to kick it up to very loud if you do that the whole time people are going to get their  ears hurt right so we always play with how can I maybe start soft and increase some volume a lot of  songs have this kind of Crescendo maybe before the big chorus right where they're moving from maybe a  mezzo piano volume to more of a Forte or even for TC no volume so it's very important to know these  terms most of them are kind of elaborations of each other right so we have Forte which means loud  mezzo just means medium so we're saying medium lab not quite as much we also have fortissimo which  is forte but very much Forte same thing on the piano side piano means soft mezzo piano means  medium soft and pianissimo is very very soft okay moving along to the next musical elements we  have articulation articulation has to do with how pitches are begun sustained and released and  involves changes in the dynamic level as well in music production we use the term envelope to  describe the dimension of sound so these are two different approaches we have articulation which is  how musicians are instrumentalists would use the term but we also have the term envelope that you  might see if you were making beats on the computer right you can control the envelope of the sound  meaning when does it start and when does it end uh the envelope is independent of pitch but it  determines the character of that pitch for example a pitch might begin with a gentle increase  in volume or a sudden decrease or no Dynamic change at all once it has begun to sound a pitch  might be sustained for a long time or it might be abruptly cut off and when it is ended it might  be released with a decrease in volume an increase in volume or no Dynamic change the effects of  articulation toward music are easy to perceive once it has begun to sound a pitch might be  sustained for a long time or it might be abruptly cut off so we're going to break these down one  more time that's why they're down here so if I sing and then immediately cut it off oh it just  stops right little echo in here I can also go oh kind of fading out right I can  make it start nice and smooth or I can go so we're using different combinations  of the voice in this case you could hear this on instruments too but hearing that the  articulation really does change the same material but hearing how it is start and  ended really does change with the articulation now the four elements of the envelope or the  articulation are the attack Decay sustain and release all sounds have a starting point a natural  reverberation or decay a sustained and a release at one end of the spectrum a series of pitches  might be heavily punctuated with forceful onsets and no sustain the traditional term Italian sorry  the traditional Italian term for this articulation is staccato so this means very short short and  accented and it's difficult to replace with an English equivalent so we still use this Italian  term staccato to describe this kind of short of a sound at the other end of a series of  pitches might be smoothly connected with gentle onsets and great deal of sustain the  term for this articulation is legato between these extremes are an enormous priority  of approaches to beginning sustaining and releasing notes many of which are unique to the  instruments that produce them so again we had two contrasts here staccato short and accented  and legato smooth and sustained connected now I don't play these right now but  these are two really good examples of Legato and staccato pieces of music  in this first one the bulletin Noob we hear very very smooth and connected it's  supposed to sound actually like a river so it makes sense that it has this very smooth  approach and this other one you can even see kind of a highlight from this video thumbnail is going  to be much more short and accented and detached in this case this comes across as being very light  and bouncy but other times cicado can be much more forceful so again pause this video and watch these  two on your own right now so that you can start to get a sense of what we're talking about it's hard  to talk about these things in words sometimes so watching the videos and really listening to  the pieces is the best way to understand them okay musical elements we're continuing  with the next one is Timbre this is the final characteristic and is universal to all  sounds Timbre pronounced Timbre and is our way of defining the quality of the sound again quality  means that you can tell what instrument is playing whether one has no musical training or is  an accomplished performer we are all skilled at identifying minor variations in tamper  disability lets you know that your mother is calling you from the other room not your  sister it helps you to tell the difference between the guitar and a piano so this is just  our ability to hear that there are different characteristics of different voices different  instruments and really any sound that we hear performers can alter their Timbre to fit a certain  genre or Style by adding different effects to their voice or instrument so imagine the Timbre  of an opera singer versus a scat singer maybe or a jazz singer they're going to have a different  approach to how they use their voice a symphony orchestra produces a wide range of tampers due to  its many instruments instrument combinations and techniques while a rock band produces another so  think about a symphony orchestra that has at least 20 or more different types of instruments each one  has a unique Timbre and when you combine them with each other we get new variations in tamper that  can alter or change throughout a piece of music uh Timbre is actually achieved due to variations  in the overtone series of different instruments so variations in Tampa are made possible that by  the existence of the overtone series this is a sequence of higher pitch frequencies that are  activated every time a pitch is produced when you strike a key on the piano for example you are  not only sounding the pitch associated with that key you are also activating dozens of pitches at  set intervals above that pitch Each of which might sound at a relatively high or low volume this is  a little bit hard to explain at first but this is essentially what we're talking about if we struct  this note it's a pretty low note on the piano we are hearing that as the predominant note but all  of these other notes here up to 16 actually are actually all being sounded within this original  note it's a little bit funny to understand but we hear very very faintly all of these notes  in combination in some level and the way that we hear this combination is what makes different  instruments sound uh different from one another so some instruments might have more of the second or  fourth partial While others have more of the third and the fifth and it's those minute differences  that makes each instrument sound somewhat unique the combination of these overtones produces Timbre  two instruments playing the same pitch sound different therefore because they are activating  different pitches in the overtone series at different volumes the complexity of this process  allows for a near infinite Variety in timbres Okay so this is something that I don't expect you to  know all of the overtones that are being achieved but it is an interesting thing to note and I think  it's a big part of how you listen is starting to recognize why you different instruments sound  different from each other or why does um you know your your best friend's voice sound different from  your other friend's voice right it's all because they have slightly different vocal cords and  are activating different overtones at all times now this one is a little bit beyond the musical  elements but it probably should be included in them in its texture now texture is the contents of  an interactions between various layers instruments or voices in a musical work musical textures can  be best broken into four categories so this is the idea of if we had a rock band of a guitar a  bass a piano and a drummer in what way are all the instruments playing are they all playing at  once maybe one song starts off with a monophonic texture the guitarist is starting with just the  guitar with a single Melody line performed by a soloist or in unison with no accompaniment no  other instruments are playing now they say a soloist or an Unison so this could maybe be two  guitars playing the exact same notes at the exact same time so this is what we call a monophonic  texture there's only one musical idea happening a homophonic texture is adding an accompaniment  that has different pitches probably chords but that is secondary to the melody creates a hum of  Sonic music gold texture so this is similar to monophonic but slightly different homophonic would  mean that we have a main solo Melody line but we also have a secondary part that is not competing  with it but just supporting it we usually call this accompaniment so a great example of a  homophonic texture would be one person is singing while they play the guitar and the guitar is just  playing chords while the vocal Melody is happening homophonic continuing on we have polyphonic  texture in polyphonic music every voice is independent but equally important there is  no distinction between Melody and harmony so in polyphonic we think poly just means many and phonic phone means sound so many sounds in  polyphonic music there isn't just one Melody there could be two Melodies happening at the same time  each one can be important and they fit together almost like a puzzle they have to be played  together to create the total musical texture and the last one is heterophonic texture in  heterophonic music multiple instruments or voices each perform a unique version of the same  Melody such that true Unison is not achieved so in heterophonic textures all the instruments  are playing something similar but they're making it slightly different all over the place  so that it is never truly altogether yet they are so Alpine the same song it  can be a little bit harder to identify so these are three different examples one is  monophonic and homophonic in this example we hear an Australian song um originally played  on the cello but then later on even a secondary layer of cello comes in so that's why I put this  one as starting off as monophonic and moving to homophonic musical texture check out this video  the next one is polyphonic musical texture this is a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach called the little  Fugue in G minor is an example of a musical fugue Fugue is a type of polyphonic musical form  and each voice has a unique Melody which creates the whole try to follow different  voices represented by the different colors so in this video you're going to see that  there are usually about four voices I think there's no more than four and they're  each represented in a different color they're all happening on top of each other  but coming in and out at different times and contributing toward the whole so this is a  great example of polyphonic musical texture and the last one that I would want you to watch is  hydroponic musical texture this is an Irish folk song called The Wind that Shakes The Barley is  played by the Irish folk group The Chieftains and all the instruments are playing toward the same  song but they're all making slight variations and changes to the melody which makes it sound very  rich and interesting it sounds very dense and layered even though they're all still playing the  same basic Melody so again watch these videos on your own pause this video and go back and watch  those three to better understand those terms okay moving right along to form is the  repetition variation and contrast within music so let's break these down repetition repetition  occurs when we hear the same thing twice whether it is a long and complicated Melody a short  melodic fragment a rhythm or a harmonic pattern reputation is really important in music for a  couple reasons it allows us to understand and enjoy music more easily when we hear something  over and over we kind of get used to it right music repetition makes it feel familiar and  internal repetition allows us to predict what will happen next in popular music this is utilized  a lot when you hear a new song that you can expect to hear the chorus the catchy part with words  and Melody that both repeat several times we all know when we hear a pop song that we're going  to hear that recognizable chorus usually several times throughout a song uh pop songs also  have repetitive chord changes and ostinatos this is a good term to know uh repeating  accompaniment known formally as an ostinato asinatas are important in many types of music  and will play a role throughout this book so as you think about this think about when  you hear a song with a guitar riff it kind of repeats maybe over and over through the  song that's a great example of an ostinato moving past repetition we get into variation  so if the song was only repetitive it would get pretty boring pretty fast right so we  always have slight variations that occur too variation occurs when musical material  returns but with those alterations and last is contrast contrast naturally  refers to the introduction of new musical material that has not been heard before within  a piece of music so again sometimes we hear a piece like Bohemian Rhapsody for example a lot  of people know has many different contrasting sections within it that's part of why it  sounds so Whimsical and funny in some ways so repetition in contrast I just made this  chart here it shows that some music has much more repetition than others and others have much  more contrast So within the repetition category I put dance music like folk disco EDM trance  music and minimalist music that we'll get into later this semester we have the balance between  reposition and contrast through folk music pop music jazz rock hip-hop rap r b country Indie Etc  and then also classical and orchestral Music These have some elements of repetition but others have  contrast I think it's the perfect balance is what makes this music so captivating and then other  music relies more on its contrasts like free jazz jazz solos and free improvisation we also  have musical theater in Opera Avant Garden music in 20th century modernist music like Williams  mix from John Cage that you heard last week all of these music are much more interested in  finding um contrast in less continuity within them these are four other videos that  you can check out each one deals with I would say some pretty extreme  examples of repetition in different ways foreign it was a big section on the elements of music  maybe take a break and pause and come back but this is part two so part two is music in the  world we've talked about all the elements of it but what role does music play in our lives with  so much music in the world it is difficult to make any sweeping statements as there will always be  exceptions to where I attempts to categorize music however as humans we like to categorize  things we have developed systems to do so so categorizing music is useful in helping us  talk about it it helps us find a radio station or playlist that we like to help us discover  new musical artists that we may like based on our previous taste however these categories  can also be artificial limiter exposure and stunt the possible appreciation of new music  this happens sometimes right we might say oh I only like rock music well if you only listen  to rock music it'd be pretty hard to tell if you you know if that's true or if you just  haven't given other things a chance maybe as an example uh the creation of conventions  and genre is natural as people try to emulate what they already like while this leads to the  formation of common conventions between musical artists too much imitation can actually stifle  a genre this is why Innovative artists who go beyond the genre of their music hold special  significance to us to us like Jimi Hendrix so this is to say that you know people get into  a genre they like it so they try to replicate it through their own music and while that is good  and it creates a certain kind of sound sometimes if you're only imitating that music doesn't  really Advance very much and it all starts to sound kind of the same we've all probably  heard things that might fall into that category now within music we have three primary  popular categories that have been created they are useful to know for reference and  for their frequent use but they also have some limitations as described on the  next three slides so the three primary categories that most people can identify are  classical music popular music and folk music now if I tell you that I like classical music  you immediately understand that I probably mean orchestral music or Opera and that I probably  listen to music that is fairly old but there are problems with this categorization to begin  with much of what is classical today was popular in the past when Mozart wrote his Symphonies for  example his object was to satisfy popular demand and sell concert tickets and his audiences behaved  the same way that fans at a rock concert do today so people don't always realize this but Mozart  was writing popular music during the classical era and what if I actually prefer experimental  orchestral music composed last year it is common practice referred to such repertoire  as classical but is far from as far from Mozart as you can get so there are still people who are  writing classical music even you know nowadays let's move on to pop to our music the textbook  gets into greater detail so make sure that you're reading the whole chapter two um of this part  of the book now popular music this category is generally understood to contain commercial  music that appeals to large numbers of people but what about individual artists or songs  that fail to achieve any popularity whatsoever what about an experimental rock bands that takes  the same attitude towards their work as a serious classical composers Mozart a classical composer  might have more in common with a popular artists like Jimi Hendrix than Hendrix has in common with  Pink Floyd Mozart and Hendrix were both gifted instrumentalists who dazzled their audiences with  virtuous performances and wrote music to Showcase their skills while the band Pink Floyd is known  more for their Nuance production complex song structures and unusual instrumentation again  however this category is not without its value while there is an enormous diversity of popular  musics they do tend to be characterized by certain forms instrumentations Styles and performance  venues there might be such much to separate Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd but their music  shares important elements of instrumentation and style and it might be heard in the same types of  settings so this is to say that even though music might happen in the same place they might have  very different things in common with each other so these categories are useful but it's  always important to look Beyond them too now Folk Music Folk is also a slippery category  folk music is typically described as music of unknown authorship that is passed down from  generation to generation in a particular region it tends to be fairly simple and in a distinctive  style and it is performed on instruments that are integral to the local musical culture  however problems quickly arise as we try to label individual pieces or practices in the United  States for example The Works of Stephen phosphor Wallace have long been considered folk music songs  Like My Old Kentucky Home and Camptown Races have certainly entered folk culture and many who sing  or play them know nothing other composer or origin but can a commercial song created and published  by a professional composer truly be considered folk music different problems arise as we address  the musical practices of non-mustion societies many of which do not employ musical notation  and reject Notions of individual authorship but do not but do the absence of a named composer  official sheet music and copyright notice mean that a work in the North Indian classical  tradition is folk music the complexity sophistication and Technical demands of  Music in this category would suggest not a further challenge arises when we try to  identify the folk music of a region or Nation what does take the United States if I tell  you that I listen to American folk music you will probably imagine someone like Joan Baez  playing guitar and singing songs from the Anglo folk tradition indeed music such as heart has  come to be known as Folk Music with a capital f if I ask Spotify to play folk music for me I'll  hear Joan Baez and others like her however her music represents only one cultural strain within  the United States what about the polka music of Midwestern communities what about the Corrido  balance of Spanish-speaking communities near the southern border what about the dance music  card at Native American powwow gatherings are any of these Traditions less  folk or less American than the others uh the text brings up this category of category of  this important notion I should say of categorizing music by purpose so instead of saying that music  is within a genre or within the classical folk or popular categories instead think about what  is the purpose of the music this is oftentimes a much more accurate way of describing a piece  of music this textbook primarily organizes music based on its function in human life instead we  will focus on what music Across these categories shares in common the purposes from which  individual Works were originally created and continue to be consumed these categories also  have their shortcomings many musical examples included in a given category could just as easily  be included in another we will admit that at the onset all the same these categories seem more  useful than classical popular and folk and they tell us much more about what really matters music  as an integral aspect of The Human Experience so we can see here each of these Musical pictures  have different things going for them they have different purposes here we see probably a marching  pep band they're probably playing for a football game or some other kind of big Sports function or  School event that music is designed to entertain this in the video or so in the middle here this  is a picture of probably a community drum circle we see children we see parents we see people  different ages playing Maracas and different kinds of drums this music is not rehearsed it is  not really meant to entertain an audience it's more for the people coming together and playing  with each other to share music as an activity and the last one we see someone playing the  guitar next to a tree this is playing music mainly more for personal enjoyment right you're  not playing for any audience other than yourself or maybe you're just practicing to get better  at your instrument maybe you're trying to tell a story or relieve some emotion right that's why we  could play the instrument with no one else around now let's get a little bit more into  genre because it is the reality of how we talk about music oftentimes genre  is a way of making connections between closely related works and music artists that  share stylistic formal and cultural elements each also hosts a variety of sub-genres that  communicate more specialized information about the music contained therein genre is primarily  a marketing tool in the 21st century it helps properly label merchandise identify consumers and  advertise music it also helps in tracking sales genre is important to music consumers  in that it helps build community genres are sometimes self-named by the fans genres  can also be divisive genre has been used to separate black and white performing artists  though their music may be very similar a good example of this are race records which were  oftentimes black performers and also hillbilly records which were all white performers these were  both very similar types of music but they gave them these different labels to try to separate  the audiences we also have r b and rock and roll r b being a very black art form and rock and roll  starting as a white art form really both almost identical music but marketed in different  ways rhythm and blues versus rock and roll and genre can sometimes not  give the full picture so sub genres are very useful and are often more specific I love this example here from the textbook  the importance of sub-genre let's look at two examples string quartet and French reggae the  former string quartet provides us with precise information about instrumentation a string  quartet is always two violins Viola and cello and it suggests a multi-part work a multi-part  concert work intended for the stimulation of players and listeners we might also make  assumptions about the consumer of such a genre who is probably although not always well educated  and reasonably well-off and we might expect to hear performances in a formal Concert Hall  surrounded by well-dressed and attentive listeners however genre in this case tells us nothing at  all about the style geographical origin historical context or social significance a work in this  genre of string quartet might have been composed in 1780 or 1880 or 1980 or yesterday although  the string quartet originated in german-speaking Europe This genre has been accessible to composers  performers and listeners across the globe for at least the past 100 Years A String Quartet might  be pleasant and lyrical or disjoint and jarring it might be fairly simple or mind-boggling complex it  might last eight minutes or 80 minutes and genre provides us no idea about what sort of meaning  political social or otherwise might be connected in such a work so this genre of or sub-genre  excuse me of string quartet doesn't really tell us a whole lot about the music other than some  small specifics about what the instrumentation is the case is quite different with  the term french reggae as a genre on the one hand this genre tells us less about  instrumentation we can expect to hear certain instruments probably like the electric guitar  electric phase drums perhaps electric organ trumpet and saxophone but taking away or  adding instruments does not fundamentally destabilize the genre on the other hand it  tells us much more about everything else first and foremost the regular designation tells  us all we need to know about style which is a core identifying feature of the genre it also limits  the scope of time and place reggae has only been around since the late 1960s and it was developed  in Jamaica by Rastafarians a nation and culture that are Central to the genre's identity no  matter where individual songs might come from the sub-genre identification of French reggae tells  us even more about geographic location in language finally reggae carries certain political social  and racial connotations it is usually performed by musicians of African descent and it often opposes  ideals of pan-african unity and social justice these values in turn help us to understand how  and why people consume the music and how French reggae might become an integral part of someone's  identity so this genre already tells us more about the purpose again of the music itself why  was it written and who was it written for now another category that you should know is  this delineation between fixed composition versus improvisation we're using the same example  though I think quartets tend to be in the fixed composition category such that the pitches  in rhythms in every performance are identical while the French reggae invites improvisation  and variation from performance to Performance such that two Renditions of the same song  might sound quite different if you look at these pictures it already tells you something  in this first picture the stringertech they're all have sheet music in front of them they're  reading the notes The rhythms the Dynamics all the markings from the composer and playing it  the same relatively speaking every single time they tend to be playing fixed  compositions things that don't change hardly at all from performance to Performance  the other picture shows a bass player and a regular band he has no sheet music so he has all  the songs in his knowledge or knows how to work with the songs Through improvisation so that he's  following and abiding by what the song is trying to say but he might do it in very different ways  each time so again we can tell a lot from this this these two categories of fixed composition  versus improvisation when we talk about fixed composition versus improvisation we were talking  about different roles in the creation of Music the role of the composer versus the role of the  performer in the first case the string quartet the composer has all the power he's telling them what  notes to play and how to play them the performers are there just to interpret what's on the page in  this example whoever wrote the song has given this performer on the base some freedom to improvise  and to make the song his own in some ways now it's important to say that not all  Traditions distinguish between these two roles which makes it particularly difficult  to Define our terms we will identify and examine the contributions of different  individuals composers orchestrators Arrangements adapters and performers to  the creation of unique musical objects in the tradition that relies on fixed composition  it is assumed that the creator of a work will make all decisions concerning pitch Rhythm form  instrumentation and length and that performers will follow these instructions precisely fixed  compositions are usually enshrined in notated music although they do not have to be this does  not mean however that every performance of a fixed composition will be identical performers are  usually invited to make minute adjustments to some of these elements such as articulation temporal  and Dynamics with the result that each rendition is unique to the discriminating listener so you  know from one night to the next you might play a passage slightly louder or maybe change the  articulation slightly depending on how you're feeling in the moment as a performer but generally  speaking we're following the fixed composition still improvisation is much more difficult to sum  up this is due to the fact that there are nearly as many approaches to improvisation as there are  musical traditions every culture has different ways of improv improvising improvisation implies  a production of new musical elements in the course of a live performance but it also occurs within a  set of boundaries no improviser is free to play or sing whatever they want instead an improviser will  tend to apply formulas to the transformation of musical material or respecting certain fundamental  characteristics of the style and composition so this is basically to say that improvisation  is based on whatever style of music that you're playing in and following the Norms or practices  that have been as previously established by others now improv across different styles in jazz for  example improvisation is Guided by the form in harmonic structure of a fixed composition  that serves as the basis for performance while improvising a player is free to choose  pitches and rhythms but they must fit with the predetermined harmonies so choices are somewhat  Limited improvisation means something different to a dollar phone player in West Africa pictured here  who will constantly vary a repeated melodic figure used to accompany singing it means something  different again to a member of a Javanese gamelan who might not know how a performance will  unfold ahead of time but understands exactly how to vary their melody in response to instructions  from the drummer we can see that pictured here and last it means get something else to  a baroque violinist who performs a mixed composition but is free to add ornaments and  flourishes according to stylistic guidelines so in each of these pictures we see people who  are used to improvising within their own style of music but the way that that improvisation happens  can varies across these different traditions uh we'll learn more about these two  categories the West African ballophone player and the Japanese Gammon  in later chapters in the textbook okay we're coming to the end of chapter two  lecture this concludes with part three it's called the emotional expression and cultural context  of music though we can talk about the emotional effects of Music in general terms this will vary  from one listener to the next the diversity of genre reveals how people expect a wide range of  emotions from the styles of music they listen to we're going to take a look at this piece of music  called the cheerful person the thoughtful person and their moderate person clearly we see some  emotions already coming through even in the title of the piece as an example consider two  excerpts from a musical work created by the German composer George Friedrich Handel  in 1740 entitled The cheerful person the thoughtful person and the moderate person The  Original Italian was La Allegro El pinceroso for most of this work two archetypal characters  the cheerful person and the thoughtful person argue about whether it is better to be happy  or pensive each calls forth the emotional state for which they advocate a cheerful person with  an aria which is a type of song entitled Come Thou good goddess fair and free and the thoughtful  person with an Arya entitled come rather goddess sage and holy although this music was written  over 250 years ago the emotions expressed are still easy to perceive by many today but what  is it exactly that makes the first Arya sound happy and what makes the second sound reserved  the answer can be arrived at by comparing and contrasting the dimensions of sound that were  enumerated above the first Aria is quick in Tempo while the second is slow the first contains  fast moving rhythms while the second does not I'll let you listen to this yourself this is  the video example of the two Arias that they're talking about take a listen to both and see if  you can feel that difference in the emotional quality of the two even without understanding  the language that they're speaking the music conveys this to us through all the musical  elements that we've been discussing this chapter so again pause the video and watch that example  please let's continue the first Aria is in the major mode which we often hear as communicating  passive emotions well the second is in the minor mode which can sound sad or serious the vocal line  in the first Arya jumps around skipping notes in the scale well that in a second generally does  not the articulations in the first are bouncy and accented while those in the second are smooth and  connected the first Aria features bright timbered instruments wind instruments oboe and bassoon  well the second relies on the mellower strings so already to make some connections here this  idea that the the happy Aria we'll call it that the cheerful person's Arya uses fats Tempo  it has lots of jumping around the scale of notes we would call that disjunct motion while the  second one has um much more smooth and connected um passages of music the Timbre also makes a  big difference when you listen back or when you listen back here did you hear the oboe and  the bassoon these wind instruments they give us a very bright and um light sounding texture  whereas the string instruments are always sound a little bit mellower or maybe pensive in this  case however let's continue reading however we still haven't answered the question after all what  do oboes have to do with cheerfulness why does a Melody that moves stepwise suggest sobriety  why does the minor mode signify a somber mode there are two ways that we can begin to answer  these questions the first has to do with the web of relationships between music a purely acoustic  Phenomenon with no required visual component in the real world our brains easily map high  pitches onto elevated physical locations rapid rhythmic activity onto friend frenetic physical  activity and melodic leaps onto physical leaps the other has to do with cultural signification  there is nothing objectively sad or serious about the minor mode for example but in the western  tradition we have developed an association between minor mode music and profound emotional  expression this is largely due to the complex inner workings of Western Harmony which are  beyond the scope of this book we'll get to that a little bit other cultures have not made this  Association and listeners in those Traditions might respond to minor mode music differently  than those acculturated to Western music so the big idea here is that we all probably  can tell when a piece of music is sounding happy or sad but just always remember that this comes  from our place within our own culture that we've come to learn these associations through our  relationship with our culture our ancestors the media that we experience the songs all songs have  built off of the same musical history that came out of Western Europe so it makes sense that we  have these associations but remember that we're still talking about the elements of Music we're  still talking about Pitch we're still talking about all these minute details that makes us  feel these um emotions but while listening continuing here with emotional expression  in cultural context so this is what we were just talking about we tend to agree on the  emotional effect of Music within a given culture emotional expression is for many the  main reason to interact with music this is true of listeners as well as musicians  who convey emotion with their performances I personally find Indian classical music to be one  of the purest expressions of emotion through its masterful combination of Rhythm and pitch so this  is to say that across cultures we usually feel um we will agree that a certain piece  of music might have a certain sound or is able to convey a certain amount of emotion  through its art okay this might change across cultures in my new ways but there are a lot  of human characteristics that have in common this is a great example of some Indian classical  music if you've never heard music like this I would encourage you to check it out it might  be something different from what you expect but this is a great example it is a just two  musicians we see one person here on the right playing an instrument called the sarode it's a  string instrument and on the left side we see here a pair of Tabla drums these are two drums  that are played by one person and can produce a tremendous variety of different sounds so together  we see very clearly the tablet really playing the role of supplying the Rhythm and the background  rhythms and accompanying but also taking some Liberties and improvising or elaborating  on compositions that he might already know while this road player is dealing mostly with you  know pitch expression articulation we also can say that he's employing Rhythm as well and he's  also sharing um traditional compositions that he would have learned but also structuring them in  different ways to make it more of a conversation with the two instrumentalists so check this out  it's a very good introduction into that kind of music which I personally find extremely beautiful  and very interesting you could also do this video or one one similar to it for your discussion  posts we'll get to that in a moment so just to review here's your  week two writing assignment um the the task here is to choose a piece of music  from any genre of your choice and write towards these prompts with it so tell me what genre and  sub-genre would you use to describe your song describe all five elements of music that the book  mentioned as they relate to your song so please go back make sure that you're using the proper  terminology and use as much vocabulary terms from the size and chapter as you can inappropriate  we're talking about the rhythm of your song the tempo the speed the meter the  organization of the Beats you have the pitch what range is it taking up what's the testaterra  these are equivalent melodic range and tessitura but what ranges of instruments are overhearing  what range is the voice taking up within the scope of the piece we had the dynamic and the  volumes of within the piece what would be the appropriate volume for this song if you were  going to listen to this on your stereo how loud would you want to put it are there any  variations in musical dynamics I should say during the song So during your song is there a  really loud section followed by a more piano or softer section uh use those terms so instead  of saying loud you can say Forte continuing with articulation is it more smooth and connected  Legato we would use or is it pointed in staccato are there any variations in the articulation  Timbre what instruments or vocal combinations do we hear are the sounds electronic  acoustic or a combination of the two what musical textures are present in your  selection so this could vary within a certain kind of music you might have changes and textures  with more instruments are added or subtracted from the mix other genres of music you might hear all  the instruments all the time right but try to see if you can always identify who has the melody and  who is supplying more accompaniment to the melody thus oftentimes what we might be encountering  so refer back to the slide on musical textures if you have any questions here and then last  number four what musical structures patterns repetitions and forms can you hear so this might  be the form of your song repetitions of Melody um there's a lot that you can  talk about here with structures and then last for this week is  the unit one discussion post um this is a bit of a chaotic slide but you  don't have to choose all of these videos so let me give you the breakdown here sorry pause  this so let's read the instructions unit one discussion post instructions watch and listen  intently to one of the videos provided here for 20 minutes or more without distraction wear  headphones no cell phones or electronic use Etc while you're listening so I really encourage  you to put your full attention on listening to these pieces right three to four paragraphs  about your listening describe your overall listening experience reference at least five  themes from the unit one with reading lectures and presentations I've given a few themed suggestions  under each video it may be helpful to write notes as you listen so as you're listening to this piece  write maybe a page of notes for yourself as you go as you describe your work remember that  I've intentionally chosen music outside of most people's listening to test your use of  the terminology what is the purpose in intent of these pieces of music and last comment on  another classmate's post with a point they made you thought was interesting a new idea you think  they could have considered related to the piece they chose okay so this is a little bit different  from the writing assignment because I really want you to make a case for your listening experience  in writing in an informed way so you're using the terminology described in unit 1 chapters one and  two of the textbook and talking about how these pieces might relate to them I'll tell you just a  little bit about each video this was referenced in the chapter but this is the cheerful person  the thoughtful person and the moderate person by Handel it deals with all these themes right  here I would encourage you to listen to this it's a great piece it's about an hour long but  again you can just choose about 20 minutes or so some themes here would be that it is classical  music it conveys mood and emotion it has variations in articulation volume and texture and  it is a fixed composition next here we see a duet between two Indian classical Master musicians  Zakir Hussein on the table drums and Rakesh charasia on bansuri flute this is similar Indian  classical music which has its own traditions conveys mood and emotion expression through pitch  and Rhythm and this is a fixed composition with some choice between the performers remember we  talked about when it came to genre and category that the role of fixed versus um improvisational  music as well as um the role of the composer versus the role of the performer so this is  a great example of the role of the performer this is an album called dawn of midi the  name of the album is actually dysnomia from the band Donald midi this is what I  would call minimalist Jazz it's inspired by African polyrhythms has American  minimalist music and it's poor as well and also some elements of trance music it is  meditated in cerebral and it plays with the mental perception of pattern and time I really  enjoy listening to this you can really kind of um you know almost get hypnotized by this music  in a funny way it's very interesting right along the path here music for 18 musicians by Steve  Reich Steve Rice is an American minimalist music composer his music has a lot of repetition with  gradual change over time and lots of attention towards Dynamic texture Melody Harmony and time  and Rhythm and this would be a fixed composition so as you listen to this it's music that has a  lot of activity but changes very slowly over time I think you might enjoy what that one next one is  uh Suna jubarte full concert uh she is a a singer and also instrumentalist she plays an instrument  called the Korra which is like a West African harp uh I would call this folk music with some Modern  elements uh what I like about this is that you'll notice a difference in the audience engagement  how did she connect with the audience throughout the performance there are definitely some elements  of improvisation Rhythm and varied musical texture but they're also playing songs that they um  you know know from their folk tradition too and the last one to consider remember you only  have to choose one but you might enjoy watching several of these and then making your choice about  which one you want to write about but the last one is deep listening this was referenced in chapter  one this is the full album of deep listening Ensemble um which we learned about the main member  uh in our studies was Paulina oliveiros but she also worked with peniotis and Stuart demster they  were the three members of the deep listening band so this is 20th century improvisational music  inspired by a sub training architectural acoustic phenomenon music in the mind deep  listening improvisation Acoustics pitch time and musical texture are all kind of at the core  of this album of music it's very interesting to listen to so I think it's a tough choice but  remember you can choose one to listen to and to do for your assignment and then watch  the other ones later maybe take a little bit to watch all of them or which one seems  most interesting for you and when you write your discussion feedback remember you're going to  give your classmates some pointers too so if you choose music for 18 musicians and they choose  suno giovarte you might want to watch a little bit of this video so that you have an idea  about what they noticed through their writing okay so this is um the end of the lecture I hope  that you have fun doing the writing assignment number two as well as the unit one discussion post  I've always had some really great conversations in these discussion posts so I'm excited  to see um what dialogue you guys get into okay and so that is our lecture for the week  I hope that you have a great time doing this assignment and if you have any questions feel  free to send me an email have a great week