Hello this is Terry Ewell, and I want to give you an overview of music and to present you with a few music terms. It is quite important for you, if you are not a musician, to understand the ways in which musicians look at music and the ways in which they describe music.
Music is thought of in terms of pitch, this is one of the important aspects of music. Music has sounds that are high and low. Sounds are represented in music with what we call music notation. For a moment here think of music as occurring in “musical space”: low notes and high notes. But we also have music arranged through time. Music is temporal, it occurs through time. So musicians have figured out how to represent notes within the space of high to low as well as through time: notes that are earlier and notes that are later.
When we have notes arranged through time, a single line of notes that progresses from one to another, a horizontal arrangement of these notes; we call that a melody. Here is a famous melody that I think you will recognize.
<music: opening melody of “Danny Boy.”>
Yes, that is “Danny Boy” otherwise known as “Londonderry Air.” These are notes that go note by note, they are pitches that are arranged through time.
Another arrangement we have of musical notes is a vertical arrangement. The melody was horizontal, these are vertical. These are notes that are occurring simultaneously. We often call these chords. Here is an example of some chords that are accompanying, or playing at the same time as, that melody in “Danny Boy.”
<music: opening chords in “Danny Boy”>
There you go. Chords are a vertical arrangement occurring at the same time. We call these chords harmony. You might hear musicians talking about harmonies, which are a series of chords throughout the composition or song.
Also it is important to understand that not only do we have pitches arranged horizontally or vertically, but there are also different lengths of notes. So musicians need to have a way to show the different lengths of notes and also to have a way to discuss them. We call that rhythm. It is important to understand that rhythm is very different from what we call tempo. A lot of non-musicians will confuse rhythm with beats, rhythm with pulse, or rhythm with tempo. Let me give you a couple of examples that can clarify the difference.
In “We Will Rock You” we have a rhythm of “stomp, stomp, clap---- stomp, stomp, clap----.” That rhythm is an arrangement of notes. You will notice that all of those notes are not of the same length—they are of different lengths. We have “ stomp, stomp, clap------.” I am going to tap on the table with even beats. Here it is with the beats: “stomp, stomp, clap---- stomp, stomp, clap----.” Could you hear that during the clap it had two beats or two pulses. “Stomp, stomp” each had one pulse. But the clap had two pulses. So the pulse, what I was tapping with my hand, is even throughout the composition. The pulse is not changing. However, the rhythms are changing.
Tempo refers to the speed of that pulse or the speed of the beats through the composition. You can have compositions with different speeds that might have the same rhythm. Or you can change the rhythms within a composition with the same tempo. It is important to try to keep those two concepts separated as you describe and work with music.
Now, music has form. There are different sections in the music. That is another way in which musicians talk about music. “Danny Boy,” for instance, starts with what we would probably call a verse.
<music: Dr. E singing!>
Then it goes on to the chorus, where the singer has the high notes. I am not going to even attempt that! Anyhow, there are different parts of the music, different sections. There are different melodic ideas and sometimes different chords as well that are part of the music.
We also talk about instrumentation in music or the choice of instruments to use or voice (in this case voice is also considered an instrument). Often the choice of instruments is very important for the meaning of the music, for the cultural relevancy of the music. Sousa marches are played by bands. You would not expect to hear a Sousa march to be played on guitars. Neither would you expect “Danny Boy” to be played by a Sousa band. You expect it to be sung mostly by a tenor. There are certain songs that you would expect with certain instrumentation.
I am going to conclude now with a little demonstration of music notation. Not all of the courses that are viewing this video will need to master music notation, but nevertheless it is important for you to understand a little bit about how music is put together.
Here we have a portion of “Danny Boy” or “Londonderry Air” put into music. I have arranged this for you. On this part of the music score we have the names of the instruments that are playing this. I have a recorder, a guitar, a bass (this is an acoustic, upright bass), and a harp. It is typical in music to put the highest parts on top. Often you will have the melody on top and I have the melody on top here. Now we have a great visual representation of what I was talking about: the horizontal nature of the melody. The recorder plays one note at a time. Time is represented from left to right, horizontally, so that this note is before this note. This note is before that note and so on. So you get this line and the shape. As the voice goes up, as the melody goes up, it goes up. As the melody comes down it is lower on what we call the music staff.
Here is an example of representation of chords. We have three notes played all together. I have even written the name of the chord here. Musicians have different ways to discuss chords and how they are arranged in music. This is an E flat major chord. We see within this measure reinforcement of the notes that are members of that chord. In another measure we have another chord here. OK, so anything occurring simultaneously, vertically like this, would be considered a chord.
Let me do the best I can to see if I can keep the music on the screen. I am going to play a little bit of “Danny Boy.” We will scroll through the music as it is going on. You will be able to hear what is happening.
<music: opening to “Danny Boy”>
Well “Danny Boy” here provides a great illustration of what I was talking about concerning rhythm. Here in the melody we see that we have notes placed horizontally in different places. We see that we have notes placed horizontally in different places. They are in different places. Here is a note that is very long, indicating that it occurs during the length of several beats. So the beats stay constant (notice that these notes are even, of even length), but we have other notes with different rhythm here.
Well, I hope that this has been helpful. That is has given you an overview of the ways that musicians talk about music, the ways they represent music. Again it is important for you to differentiate the vocabulary: between pitch and rhythm and tempo and form and instrumentation. So be very careful when you are discussing those different aspects of music that you consider the specialized vocabulary that musicians use.