Music Vocab

What is timbre?

• The tone and height of sound

• The theoretical analysis of music

• The color and resonance of sound

• Something you yell when a tree falls

What is an attribute of the study of music?

• It is multidisciplinary

• It is primarily subjective in nature

• It is very narrow in scope

• It is only for the elite

What is pitch?

• To throw a baseball

• How high or low a note sounds, determined by the sound wave's frequency.

• The direction music goes, and direction drives structure

• How high or low an instrument can play sounds

What are dynamics?

• The call and response between musicians in orchestras and ensembles

• Stylistic choices musicians make that depend on the context & genre

• The texture of all on stage or in a recording

• The volume level in music, and how it connects to the overall mood of the piece

What does architectonic analysis refer to?

• The structure and form of a musical work

• The buildings and chapels where 18th century music was compose in Italy

• The way sounds fluctuate the way stairs in a building go up and down

• The levels of music and rounds in a song

What are the two basic directions of dynamic change?

• Crescendo

• Rubato

• Portamento

• Decrescendo

What is register?

• Something you put money into

• The range in pitch of an instrument, voice, or musical passage

• The highest pitch reached in a musical passage

• The way music transitions between sections

What is a motif?

• A red herring

• A recurring figure or phrase in music that is meaningful to the overall piece's structure

• A random group of notes that a composer really likes to use repeatedly

What is a cadence?

• a musical arrival that punctuates a phrase, sometimes is climactic in nature

• a musical destination that uses color and tempo to end a song

• akin to a sentence of music in the context of a full story

• a change in volume level

What is a phrase?

• a single note that leads to other sections of music

• a complete musical idea that serves as a building block for an entire piece of music

• something you say in English

• some lyrics that are part of a stanza