Duration

• The element of time.

Duration

• Beat - the steady pulse that flows through a piece of music.

• Fast or slow

• May be easy to hear (or feel), or it may not be.

• Nonmetric - If the beat is not evident.

Duration

• Meter - how the beats are grouped.

• Most often in either in 2, 3 or 4 (most common)

• Usually first beat is accented.

• Occasionally, meter is in another grouping.

Duration

• Tempo - the speed of the beats.

• Fast or slow.

• Remember, the beat usually remains steady

Duration

• Rhythm - a pattern of beats and accents, shorts and longs.

• Often the rhythm is a pattern that repeats.

Measure

• Measure or "Bar" - when we break up the beats into patterns of two or three, a measure is one complete time through the patterns. Ex. 1 - 2, 1 - 2, 1 - 2 is three measures.

Find the Meter

• To determine the meter, find the beat first, then try to locate the downbeat (beat 1 of the pattern). How many beats until the next downbeat

• 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4, etc.

Examples of Meter4 beats is most common - really almost the same as 2 beats

• 3 beats is triple meter. Not nearly as common. • Happy Birthday, The Star-Spangled Banner, Break

Away by Kelly Clarkson is in 6/8, End Of The Road by Boyz II Men, Louis Armstrong´s Wonderful World, Seal - Kiss From a Rose, Beatles, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and Norwegian Wood. Raining In Baltimore Counting Crows, the verses of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", Hallelujah used in Shrek, George Michael One More Try

Duration

• Syncopation - when the emphasis falls on a beat that is normally not accented.

• An exception in “classical” music, but a feature of “popular” music.

Groove

• The energy present in a piece of music.

• Makes you want to tap your foot or nod your head in time.

Rhythm

• An organized and repeating pattern of beats and syncopations (or “shorts and longs”) forming a musical idea.

Dynamics

• Volume. Loud or soft

• The relative loudness or softness.

• Relative - loud to a flute is not the same as loud to a trumpet!

Dynamics

• p = piano - soft

• f = forte - strong (or loud)

• Mezzo- = medium or half

• -issimo = very

Dynamics

• pp = pianissimo

• p = piano

• mp = mezzo-piano

• mf = mezzo-forte

• f = forte

• ff = fortissimo

Dynamics

• pp - p - mp - - mf - f - ff

• -3 -2 -1 (0) 1 2 3

Dynamics

• Crescendo - gradual increase in volume

• Decrescendo - gradual decrease in volume

• Subito - sudden change in volume

Decibels

• Decibels - Amount of air (or water) pressure caused by a sound wave

Sound Pressure Level

• What would be the Sound Pressure Level (decibel range) of an acoustic classical guitar? 20-60 dB

Compression

• a technique of "squeezing" the dynamic range of audio by making the soft parts louder, and the loud parts softer, to arrive at a more consistent dynamic level.

Normalize

• a digital technique of anayzing a waveform to identify the loudest sound, and calculating the ratio that may be modified to arrive at the point just below distortion (clipping). It then processes the entire selected audio sample that amount, making the file louder.

The Loudness Wars

• a modern production technique to obtain more density from recorded audio. The selected audio is compressed and normalized several times to even out the dynamic range, but enable the entire sample to be louder. Each track is processed this way, and the resulting mix is very dense, and loud.

Timbre

Timbre

• Timbre can be a list of the instruments or voices that you hear.

• Timbre can also refer to the variations in tone color of a specific instrument (a bright guitar or dark voice).