The Cycle of Pop Music

Kodály Method ... Beginning in 1935, along with his colleague Jenő Ádám, he embarked on a long term project to reform music teaching in the lower and middle schools by actively creating a new curriculum and new teaching methods, as well as writing new musical compositions for children... The school was so successful that over one hundred music primary schools opened within the next decade (Eösze 1962:79)... After about fifteen years approximately 50% of the schools in Hungary were music schools (Russell-Smith 1967:44)...

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)...

Pitch (music) ... Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system...

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...

Napster ... Its ease of use led to massive copyright violations of music and film media, as well as other intellectual property... History Although there were already networks that facilitated the distribution of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface... The result was a robust system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download – at its peak there were 25 million users and 80 million songs, and the system never once crashed...

Musical Analysis ... The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèse's claim that, “to explain by means of is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work” (quoted in Bernard 1981, 1). Analyses Some analysts, such as Donald Francis Tovey (whose Essays in Musical Analysis are among the most accessible musical analyses) have presented their analyses in prose...

Musical Notation ... Byzantine music uses the eight natural, non-tempered scales called Ēkhoi, "sounds", exclusively, and therefore the absolute pitch of each note may slightly vary each time, depending on the particular Ēkhos used... Early Europe Scholar and music theorist Isidore of Seville, writing in the early 7th century, remarked in this Etymologiae that it was impossible to notate music... The problem with this notation was that it only showed melodic contours and consequently the music could not be read by someone who did not know the music already...

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...

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...

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"...

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...

Renaissance Music ... Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class... Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals, allowed the training of hundreds of singers and composers... Opera arose at this time in Florence as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece...

Romantic Music ... Romantic music as a movement evolved from the formats, genres and musical ideas established in earlier periods, such as the classical period, and went further in the name of expression and syncretism of different art-forms with music... Romanticism does not necessarily refer to romantic love, though that theme was prevalent in many works composed during this time period, both in literature, painting, or music... Romantic music attempted to increase emotional expression and power to describe deeper truths or human feelings, while preserving but in many cases extending the formal structures from the classical period, in others, creating new forms that were deemed better suited to the new subject matter...

O'Connor Method ... Violin Philosophy: To offer beginning string students training in the basic fundamentals of the many "dialects" of American string music by using a holistic approach to string technique...

Music Of Greece ... Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six... Greek musical literacy created a flowering of development; Greek music theory included the Greek musical modes, eventually became the basis for Western religious music and classical music... Greece in the Roman Empire See also: Music of ancient Rome Due to Rome's reverence for Greek culture, the Romans borrowed the Greek method of 'enchiriadic notation' (marks which indicated the general shape of the tune but not the exact notes or rhythms) to record their music, if they used any notation at all...

Rhythm ... Anthropology In his series How Music Works, Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls the regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat we heard in the womb... London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of a series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time" (London 2004, 4)...

Transformational Theory ... The goal of transformational theory is to change the focus from musical objects—such as the "C major chord" or "G major chord" -- to relations between objects. Thus, instead of saying that a C major chord is followed by G major, a transformational theorist might say that the first chord has been "transformed" into the second by the "Dominant operation." (Symbolically, one might write "Dominant (C major) = G major.") While traditional musical set theory focuses on the makeup of musical objects, transformational theory focuses on the intervals or types of musical motion that can occur...

Progressive Rock ... The Oxford Companion to Music states that progressive rock bands ".explored extended musical structures which involved intricate instrumental patterns and textures and often esoteric subject matter." Additionally, the arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and later world music... Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme." Progressive rock developed from late 1960s psychedelic rock, as part of a wide-ranging tendency in rock music of this era to draw inspiration from ever more diverse influences... The term was initially applied to the music of British bands such as Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, reaching its peak of popularity in the mid 1970s...