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24 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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pitch
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a purely psychological construct, related both to the actual frequency of a particular tone and to its relative position in the musical scale. It provides the answer to the question what a note is. An example is “middle C”, the “C” roughly in the middle of a piano keyboard. It corresponds both to a frequency of vibration and to a position in the Western scale (between the notes called “B” and “C sharp”, which are a “half-step” below and above middle C, respectively).
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frequency
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the speed of the wavelength of sound that determines pitch
The higher the frequency of vibration, the “higher” the note seems to us psychologically. (Remember the Pythagorean ratios: ½, 2/3, ¾.) |
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fundamental frequency/tone
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When a single note is played on an instrument, there are multiple pitches. The lowest of the pitches is the fundamental frequency, and that is the one we consciously hear.
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Overtone
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When we hear a note being played, we actually hear many different tones. These different tones are the overtones and they have different intensities (due to greater or lesser amplitudes of the sound waves involved) and so we register them (and occasionally consciously hear them) as having different loudnesses
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timbre
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distinguishes one instrument from another when both are playing the same written note. It is a tonal colour that is produced in part by overtones from the instrument’s vibrations. It also describes the way that a single instrument can change sound as it moves across its range: say the warm sound of a trumpet low in its range versus the piercing sound of that same trumpet playing its highest note. Changing the relative intensity of a note’s overtones (e.g., making the first overtone louder, the second softer, eliminating the third, etc.) will change the timbre of the sound we hear.
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rhythm
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refers to the relative durations of a series of notes, and the way that they group into units.
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tempo
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overall speed or pace of the piece; how fast or slow the piece is
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contour
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describes the overall shape of a melody, taking into account only the pattern of “up” and “down” (whether a note goes up or down, not the amount by which it goes up or down).
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meter
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it is created by our brains by extracting information from rhythm and loudness cues, and refers to the way in which tones are grouped with one another across time into regularly recurring (“periodic”) groups such as bars or measures of music
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attack
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the introduction of energy to an instrument, which produces the beginning or “onset” of a note. Attack can be varied to vary expressive qualities and timbre
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flux
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refers to how the sound changes after it has started playing. E.g., a piano sound will gradually diminish; a violin or trumpet sound can get softer or louder or stay the same or alternate among these, since these are subject to the control of the player
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amplitude
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the “height” of a vibration (or “width”, depending how you look at it). This correlates with the subjective loudness of a note.
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key
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has to go with a hierarchy of importance that exists between tones in a musical piece; this hierarchy does not exist in the world, it exists only in our minds, as a function of our experiences with a musical style and musical idioms, and mental schemas that all of us develop for understanding music
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reverberation
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refers to the perception of how distant the source is from us in combination with how large a room or hall the music is in; often referred to as “echo” as laypeople, it is the quality that distinguishes the spaciousness of singing in a large concert hall from the sound of singing in the shower. It has an underappreciated role in communicating emotion and creating an overall pleasing sound.
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tonic
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the starting pitch
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chord
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a group of three or more notes played at the same time. typical chord is built by playing the first, third, and fifth notes of a scale together.
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major/minor scale
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all scales can start on any of the twelve notes. A major scale has a specific pattern or distance relationship between each note and its successive note. In any major scale, the pattern of intervals (pitch distances between successive keys), is: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. In a minor scale, it is whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole.
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melody
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the main theme of a musical piece (the part we usually sing along with), the succession of tones that are most salient in our minds.
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harmony
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has to do with the relationships between pitches of different tones, and with tonal contexts that these pitches set up that ultimately lead to expectations for what will come next in a musical piece. Harmony can mean simply a parallel melody to the primary one (when two singers harmonize) or it can refer to a chord progression: the clusters of notes that form a context and background on which the melody rests.
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interval
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the distance between two tones. melody processing is relational, not absolute, meaning that we define a melody by its intervals, not the actual notes used to create them. For example, we could start singing “Happy Birthday” on any pitch and we would have the same melody, so long as we kept to the same intervals between pitches.
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octave
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When double of halve a frequency, we end up with a note that sounds remarkably similar to the one we started out with. This relationship, a frequency ratio of 2:1 or 1:2 is the octave.
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cochlea
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the spiral cavity of the inner ear, which produces nerve impulses in response to sound vibrations
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basilar membrane
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it is in the inner ear and contains hair cells that are frequency selective, firing only in response to a certain band of frequencies
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tonotopic map
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a map on which spatial locations are related systematically to tones
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