Aspect Of Music ... Universal aspect Often a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music under that definition... In classical music of the common practice period, for instance, melody and harmony are often considered to be given more importance at the expense of rhythm and timbre... John Cage considers duration the primary aspect of music as, being the temporal aspect of music, it is the only aspect common to both "sound" and "silence"...
Blues ... World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners... Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition... Form The blues form is a cyclic musical form in which repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music...
20th-century Music ... Electronic music For centuries, instrumental music had either been created by singing, drawing a bow across or plucking taught gut or metal strings (string instruments), constricting vibrating air (woodwinds and brass) or hitting or stroking something (percussion)...
Suzuki Method ... The essential components of his method spring from the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music (he believed that this positive environment would also help to foster excellent character in every student)... These components include: Saturation in the musical community, including attendance at local concerts of classical music, exposure to and friendship with other music students, and listening to music performed by "artists" (professional classical musicians of high caliber) in the home every day (starting before birth if possible)... Suzuki firmly believed that teachers who test for musical aptitude before taking students, or teachers who look only for "talented" students, are limiting themselves to people who have already started their music education...
Dynamics (music) ... In music for marching band, passages louder than ƒƒƒ are sometimes colloquially referred to by descriptive terms such as "blastissimo"...
Texture (music) ... Common types In musical terms, particularly in the fields of music history and music analysis, some common terms for different types of texture are: Type Description Visual Audio Monophonic Monophonic texture includes a single melodic line with no accompaniment... Characteristic texture of the Classical period and continued to predominate in Romantic music while in the 20th century, "popular music is nearly all homophonic," and, "much of jazz is also" though, "the simultaneous improvisations of some jazz musicians creates a true polyphony" (Benward & Saker 2003, 136)... Additive A texture most commonly found in rock music that starts off mono or homophonic, and gradually changes and builds up to polyphonic...
Music Of China ... According to Mencius, a powerful ruler once asked him whether it was moral if he preferred popular music to the classics... The Imperial Music Bureau, first established in the Qin Dynasty (221–07 BC), was greatly expanded under the Emperor Han Wu Di (140–87 BC) and charged with supervising court music and military music and determining what folk music would be officially recognized... In subsequent dynasties, the development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by foreign music, especially Central Asia...
Classical Music ... European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century... Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music... This leaves less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music and popular music...
Timbre ... In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. For instance, it is the difference between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same loudness...
Orff Schulwerk ... A child participating in an Orff classroom does not feel the pressure of performing that is often in tandem with music because every student in an Orff classroom is treated as an equal, even when performing a solo... The Orff Approach is used by teachers to encourage their students to enjoy making music as individuals as well as in groups... Students of the Orff Approach learn music by experiencing and participating in the different musical lessons and activities...
MMCP – Manhattanville Music Curriculum Project ... Fostering the continued relevance of music to a student in school and contemporary society is a key purpose for MMCP in the areas of: Artistic Relevance – How can students recognize the aesthetic value of music? Personal Relevance – How can music satisfy the personal needs of students? Social Relevance – How can the changing nature of music in our society stay relevant to students as they grow older? MMCP believes presenting music as changing and evolving rather than “static” like western art music increases the interest in new creation... Rather, learning and acquisition of musical information are the byproduct of the “doing” in performing and creating the music... Attitudinal – Students excited about their own creative musical potential and their aesthetic sensitivity to music...
Musical Scale ... Western music See also: Musical mode Scales in traditional Western music generally consist of seven notes and repeat at the octave...
Ear Training ... Many musicians use functional pitch recognition in order to identify, understand, and appreciate the roles and meanings of pitches within a key. To this end, scale-degree numbers or movable-do solmization (do, re, mi, etc.) can be quite helpful...
Consonance And Dissonance ... These may be summarized as simplicity. "A stable tone combination is a consonance; consonances are points of arrival, rest, and resolution." —Roger Kamien (2008), p.41 Dissonance "An unstable tone combination is a dissonance; its tension demands an onward motion to a stable chord...
Early Music ... However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence." Revival Performance practice According to Margaret Bent, "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness...