Elements Rryahm and harmony find their way into the inward places of thesoul Puro Sound: Pitch, Dynamics, 6 Harmony and Tone Color ce 2 Performing: Media: Voices and Instruments 3 Rhythm Musical Form Musical Texture ALE. 10 Performance Melody U1 Musical Style‘Muse plas aval ein human Society. pronides entertainment fd maton release, anit 2c ompanis aetit angng fom ances t religous coremorics. ‘Musi ished everyuher:n au tou, homes, lenses, sports arenas places of worhin and on the sree. Recorded peforance isa sen ‘ations! anovton of he twentieth century. Thanks to moder technol: 0 vine roms, crs, or ain sats funtion as nw kinds of con Cert all hare we can hs what tne want, often 38 we wat. Live petemances prove 2 spe a eetement Inve efor tena muse matings tance, ates put themeies on paula pines aa listens the ln: training and magntirn ‘ust overcome techrica ices {2 Involve the listener's emotions, evoning—=ll his eis fora feet ‘What fs performed, now it sounds, ing moment and can never be haw heats fois about that repeated. An aulence responds 0 the excitement of such a moment and feslings are exchanged between stage and al Our response toa musical perfor ‘mance or an ats s subjective and root in aepfelng. Even pos: * shnal ents ean citer tangy n thei evaluations at a perfomance. we her end fel. Doe the per former projet concep, an overall idea, ran emotion? Do sare se tins ofa pie, bt not thes, cmmuiicate something tou? Can you gure out wy? Is upto 2 eons to ealate perfor: rmaness of msi. Alert nd ested listening wil enhance ou bility to compare performances and juage music se that we can fully ie. People listen to music in many iter ways. Musi can bea betel preened baclayound ar 8Sound: Pitch, Dynamics, and Tone Color Sounds bombard our ears every day-the squeaks ancl honks of traffic, ‘hik’s laugh, the bark of a dog, the patter of rain. Through them we lear what's going on; we need them to camimuncate. By listening to speech, eres, and laughter, we learn what other think and how they feel. But silence, an ab. sence of sound, also communicates, When we hear no sound in the stele assure no carsare passing. When someone doesnt answer a question or breaks off in the middle ofa sentence, we quickly notice, and we draw conclusions from the silence ‘Sounds may be perceived as pleasant ar unpleasant. Fortunately we can i rect ouratentionto specific sounds, shutting out those that don’t interest us. At «party, for instance, we can choose to ignore the people near us and focus it stead on a conversation acrss the mom. Ackialy, we shut Out most sounds, paying attention only to those of interest. The composer John Cage (1812-1992) may have meant to show this with his “composition” entitled 4 in which a musician sts ata piano for 4 minutes and 38 sconds-—an does nothing, The silence forces the people inthe audience to direct their attention to whatever noises, or sounds, they themselves are’making, In a sense, the audience ‘composes this pcce. To get the effec, listen tothe sounds tha ill the silence around you right naw ‘What ae these sounds that we hear? What is “sour”? What causes i and howy do we ear it? Sound begins with the vibration of an object sach asa table thats pounded ora string that is plucked. The vibrations ae transmitted to our ears by a melum, Which is usualy ar Asa result ofthe vibrations, our eardrums start vibrating ‘oo, and impulses, or signals, are wansmitted tothe brain. Theve the impulses ae selected, organized, and interpret Music is part ofthis world of sound, an art based on the organization of sounds in time. We distinguish msc from other sounds by recognizing the four main properties of musical sounds: pitch, damanies (loudness Osos), fone enor, and duration. We'll ook now at the fist three of these properties ‘of musical sound. Duration —the length of time a musical sound laste-is di cussed in Section 3, “Rhy, Pitch: Highness or Lowness of Sound Pitch i the relative highness or lowness that we hearin a sound. No doubt you've noticed that most men speak and sing ina lower range of pitches than women or children do. And when you sing the beginning of The Sta-Spargted+ Sounds Ph, Dynamics, 38d Tove Cal 7 ne, he pitch on seis higher than the one on say: on vou Without difernces of pitch, speech sould be boring, and—worse—there woul be no musi as we know it "The pitch ofa sound is determined by the Frequency ofits vibrations. The faster the vibrations, the higher the pitch; the slower the vibrations, the lower the pitch, Vibraton frequency is measured in eyles per second. On a pian the highest frequency toe is 4,186 cycles per second, and the lowest is about Beye per second. general the smaller the vibrating object the faster is vibrations and the higher is pitch All other things being equa, plucking a shor string produces 2 Figher pitch than plucking a long steing, The relatively short strings ofa vilin produce higher pitches than do the longer strings of couble bas. Tnmusie, sound thathasa definite pitch s called atone thas a specific re quency such as 440 cycles per second The vibrations ofa tone are regular and sete the ear at equal time intervals, On the other hand, novselike sounds {Eucaking brakes or clashing cymbals) have an indefinite pitch because they fre produced by iregular vibrations Tro tones. will sound different when they have diferent pitches. The stance” in pitch betwen any tivo tones is called an inter, When tones ae ‘Sparated by the interval called an octave, they sound very much alike Sing Tee pening ot The Str Spangled Burner again, Notice that the tone you produce Snece sound he your fone on any even though it’s higher. Sing the say and se aes ceveral ince) An octave lies between them. The vibration frequency of resi tane ic exactly half that ofthe sr tone IF the ay tone was 440 cycles per re pathe ser fone—an aclave higher would be 880 cycles per second. Atone serena lower than the ay fone would be half of 40, or 20 cycles per second ‘When sounded afte same de, two tones an past blend! 0 well that they almost sem to merge into one te The interval of an octave is important in music Is the inter fist and ast tones ofthe familiar scale Sing this scale slowly ao between the1 Blemen ‘You wil notice that you il he octave with seven diffrent pitches before arti ing atthe high de, which “duplicates” the low do you start on. You do not slide Up as a sien does: you fil dhe octave with a specific aumber of pitches. If you Sart from the higher do and continue the scale upward, each of your originl seven tones will be “duplicated” an octave higher This group of seven tones ‘vas the basis of music in westem civilization for centuries The seven tones are produced by the white keys ofthe piano’ keyboard, as shown in the lustration tthe let 'As time passed, five pitches were added to the orginal seven. These five ae produced by the black keys ofthe keytoard. All twelve tones, like the original oven, ase “duplicated” in higher and lower octaves. Every tone has “close rel: atives" 1,2, 3, ormore octaves away. (In nonwvesteen music the octave may be “vided int ferent number of tones, say, seventeen or twenty) ‘The distance between the lowest and highest fones that a voice oF instr ment can produce is called its pifek range, or simply its range, The range of the average untrained voice fs between 1and 2 octaves; a piano’s range is over octaves, When men nd women sing the same melody, they usvaly sing tan ‘octave apart ‘Organization of pitch is @ composer's fist resource. In Sections $ and 6, where melody and harmony’ are explored, we will look at how pitch is orga nized. For now, we'll simply observe that composers can create a special mood by using very low or very high pitches. For example, low pitches can intensify the sadness ofa funeral march high pitches can make a dance sound lighter And a stmady rise in pitch often increases musical tension. ‘Though ost music we know is bred on definite pitches, indefinite pitcheesuch as those made by a bass drum or by cymbals—are important 5s well Some percussion instruments, such as gongs, cowbells, and wood blocks, come in liferent sizes and therefore produce higher of lower inde inite pitches, Contrasts between higher and lower indefinite pitches play a vital roe in contemporary westemn music and in musical cultures around the world Dynamics Degrees of loudness or softness in music are called dynamics —our second property of sound, Loudness is related tothe amplitde ofthe vibration that produces the sound, The harder a guitar string is plucked (the farther moves Flom the fingerboard, the louder it sound, When instrament are played more Toul or more sof, or when there a change in how many instruments are beard, a dynamic change results; such a change may be made either suddenly ‘or gradually. A gradual increase in loudness often creates excitement, particu lanly who the pitch rises too, On the other hand, a gradual decrease in loud- ness ean convey a sense of eal. [A perfoemer can emphasize a tone by playing it more loudly chan the tones around it We call an emphasis ofthis kin! an aeceat. Skillful, subtle changes of “dynamics add spirit and mood to performances. Sometimes these changes are written in the muse often, though, they are not written but are inspited by the performer's felings about the music.