Mus 337

Front 1

Accelerando

Back 1

Musical term for a smooth and usually gradual speeding up of tempo.

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Accent

Back 2

Sharp or sudden loud sounds in any sound track component

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Acousmêtre

Back 3

A special kind of character who exists in the diegetic space but is placed consistently offscreen

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Added value

Back 4

The additional information or aesthetic shaping that the sound track brings to the image track (and vice versa)

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Ambient sound

Back 5

(environmental sound; environmental noise); background sounds appropriate to the physical space being depicted, such as crickets, water, or birds

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Anempathetic

Back 6

Sounds or music that are emotionally distanced, or not in empathy with the image track

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Audio dissolve

Back 7

By analogy to image dissolve, a transition to song and dance in which diegetic accompaniment becomes nondiegetic or is sweetened by nondiegetic elements

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Background music

Back 8

Term often used for nondiegetic music: see Underscore

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Clarity

Back 9

Aesthetic priority favoring the film’s construction of a world that makes sense to us rather one that is faithful as possible to the real world

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Counterpoint

Back 10

Sound that plays “against” a scene

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Crescendo

Back 11

Gradual increase in the volume of sound.

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Dialogue replacement

Back 12

(looping) (automated dialogue replacement, or ADR) The rerecording of dialogue to an existing segment of film

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Diegetic/nondiegetic sound

Back 13

Diegetic was borrowed from literary theory to refer to the world of the narrative, the screen world or world of the film. Nondiegetic, then, refers to the level of narration: voice-over narration is nondiegetic—and so is underscoring

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Distortion

Back 14

Manipulation of directly recorded sound through filters and other devices

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Empathetic

Back 15

Empathy or emotional engagement is the default for synchronization of sound and image

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Foley

Back 16

Sound effects created artificially and added to the sound track.

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Foreground/Background

Back 17

A distinction of visual staging carried over to film and affecting the sound track as well

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Generic sound

Back 18

(generic noise) Partially grasped speech of people in groups, such as guests at a party or persons in a crowd

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Hard cut

Back 19

A simple, direct cut from one shot or scene to the next in which the change in the sound track is as abrupt as it is in the image track

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Homophony

Back 20

Texture consisting of more than one line, but each line moves with more or less the same rhythm

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Link

Back 21

(sound link) The use of sound to bridge a series of cuts

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Melody and accompaniment

Back 22

A tune is supported by its accompaniment, making for a strong functional separation of foreground and background.

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Meter

Back 23

In music, a regular, recurring unit of time corresponding to groups of beats

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Mickey-mousing

Back 24

Close synchronization within a shot or short series of shots, where music closely mimics screen action, cartoon style, blurring the boundary between music and sound effects

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Mixing

Back 25

The combination (and usually manipulation) of directly recorded sounds

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Monophony

Back 26

The simplest musical texture; strictly speaking it consists of a single melodic line; the “background” is absent, consisting only of silence.

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Neutral music

Back 27

Music indifferent to the scene, neither significant to its narrative nor emotionally engaged—in other words, music that functions much like ambient or environmental noise

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Onscreen/offscreen

Back 28

“Onscreen” refers to the part of the film world that is within the camera’s frame at any particular moment. “Offscreen” is whatever part of that filmic world we cannot see in the frame but may already have seen or may imaginatively project from the part that we can see.

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Orchestration

Back 29

Term musicians use to designate the art of choosing and combining instruments to produce a particular sound.

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Pitch

Back 30

Musical measure of frequency; pitches are individual musical notes

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Point of view sound

Back 31

Sound rendered from the perspective of a character in the film.

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Polyphony

Back 32

In music, characterized by an independence of musical lines

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Rhythm

Back 33

Closely connected with the term meter, but it usually refers to distinctive groupings of notes rather than to the regular groups of meter

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Sound advance

Back 34

A type of sound bridge where we hear a sound before we see its associated image

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Sound bridge

Back 35

A smooth transition between shots (or scenes) by means of different kinds of overlaps

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Sound effects

Back 36

all sounds other than music or speech

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Sound lag

Back 37

Sound from one scene lingers over as we see images from the next

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Sound match

Back 38

Sound belonging to one scene followed by a similar or identical sound belonging to the next scene

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Sound track

Back 39

The audio component of a sound film

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Sound-off

Back 40

Short for “sound offscreen.”

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Speech

Back 41

human speech in language; also called “dialogue

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Stinger

Back 42

A sudden and sharp accent

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Sweetening

Back 43

the alteration of sound (or music) through the use of overdubbing.

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Sync point

Back 44

The temporal coordination of sound and image.

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Synchronization

Back 45

Appropriate temporal linking of sound to image

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Tempo

Back 46

Perceived rate (beat or pulse) of sound or musical events.

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Texture

Back 47

The functional relation of musical lines to one another

Front 48

Timbre

Back 48

Distinct coloring of sound.

Front 49

Underscore

Back 49

Nondiegetic music. Synonym for “background music”

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Voice-over narration

Back 50

(voice-over) A person not seen (and who may not belong to the physical world shown in the film) talks directly to the viewer

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Volume

Back 51

Physical strength of the sound we perceive, its loudness.