M100: Music AppreciationDiscussion Group

Ben Tibbetts, T.A.

Welcome! Please sign the attendance at the front of the room.

Tuesday January 29, 2013

Lost?

There are four discussion group sections in this course. If you’ve signed up for the section with “Ben Tibbetts” you’re in the right place.

Christie Cho’s section is in room 102.

Kristen Wallentinsen’s section is in room 114.

Meghan Bowen’s section is in room 110.

Need forms signed? See Kristen after class.

Heads up!

• Advice #1: Read the syllabus. Especially the schedule--It contains essential information about what this course will cover, when homework is due, concert dates, etc.

• Advice #2: Do the reading assignments. Tests and assignments cover material from the lectures/discussions and the assigned reading. Discussions and lectures may not always cover everything perfectly.

Heads up!

• Get the book if you haven’t already:

Listen to This by Mark Evan Bonds (Second Edition).

Optional: “MyMusicLab”

Heads up!

• Stay on top of things. We’ll be going over music elements and history—a lot of information for one semester. (This class is not easy.)

• Remember: terms and their definitions are in the back of the book from pages 515-519.

Email

• My email is benjamintibbetts@yahoo.com • Please send me an email with your full

name and a link to some of your favorite music (I’ll try to incorporate it into discussion if possible). This is so I have your email address and can send you updates, class info, etc.

• I do not accept any emailed assignments/papers. Please print out your work and give it to me by hand.

Please put away your cell phones.

Today’s Agenda

• Pages 1-15 and reviewing some essential parts of last Thursday’s lecture to help you do the Elements Packet (due in class next Thursday).

• Musical notation (how to read music).

• Musical elements (vocabulary that can be used to describe music).

• Collect the Genealogy assignment.

Music Notation in Action

• Reading music notation is like reading another language. There’s a lot to learn. It takes practice.

• Here is a short piece for piano. It uses both treble and bass clef. Notice: as the music ascends the written notes ascend, and as it descends the written notes descend. (This melody uses entirely conjunct motion.)

This is Mikrokosmos volume 1, number 1 by the Romanian composer Béla Bartók.

Review: The Musical Staff

A musical staff is made up of five lines, which create four spaces.

The Musical Staff

• The lines are numbered #1-5 from bottom to top. Same with the spaces #1-4.

Treble Clef

• In music, the letters A through G refer to notes which can be played or represented on paper.

• The treble clef can be used to write notes in a high register.

• The placement of these notes is as follows:

Bass Clef

• The bass clef may be used to write notes in a low register.

• The placement of these notes is as follows:

Melody

• The melody or the “tune” can be defined as “a single line of notes heard in succession as a coherent unit”. (pg. 517)

• In many cases the melody is the most memorable aspect of a piece of music.

(Excerpt from Some Nights by “Fun”. This is a short, catchy melody—so short it may also be described as a phrase, or a “brief musical statement”.)

Notice: although lots of other musical events are happening (drums, harmony parts, bass line, etc.) the melody still sounds like it’s the most important.

Two Types of Melodic Motion

• Two notes are conjunct if they’re right next to each other. Any farther apart, and they are disjunct.

( Conjunct vs. Disjunct )

Disjunct Motion

• Here is an example of a melody line which utilizes a lot of disjunct motion.

Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz (music by Harold Arlen)

What Clefs Tell Us…And What They Don’t

• At any given time, the clef determines which note is to be played.

• But, it doesn’t tell us anything about when that note should be played, or for how long it should be held.

All we know from this figure is that the note shown is a C—because we’re in the bass clef and the note head is on space #2.

Introducing the Beat

• The beat is a phenomenon which occurs in most music—it is a regular, recurring pulse around which musical events are temporally organized (i.e. organized with regards to time).

• Sometimes the beat is obvious and/or loudly represented by a percussive instrument. Other times, it’s very quiet, or even only implied. Listen to Some Nights again and try to clap the beat.

Meter

• By accenting one beat over the others (make it unusually loud or emphatic), beats can be generally grouped together in clumps of two or three.

• When beats are regularly grouped together in this fashion, a meter has been established. Meter is an “underlying pattern of beats that maintains itself consistently throughout a work.” (page 517)

Duple versus Triple Meter• If it sounds like beats have been grouped together in

two-beat (or four-beat) patterns, then the music is said to be in duple meter (alternatively “quadruple meter”—for the purposes of this course quadruple meter will be treated as equal to duple meter).

• If it sounds like the beats have been grouped in three-beat patterns, then the music is in triple meter.

• Sometimes, the difference between them can be difficult to notice. Other times, the music is clearly in one meter or the other. Listen one more time to Some Nights—is this song in duple or triple meter?

Duple Meter

• Some Nights is in duple meter—it sounds like the beats have been organized in two-beat or four-beat groups.

• Triple meter is not quite as common as duple, and can be a little harder to spot…

Video: Quadruple Meter versus Triple Meter

Measures

• In music notation, every group of beats is shown through the use of measures, or musical divisions shown by vertical barlines.

• Each of these is one complete measure:

Time Signatures• A time signature is made up of two numbers,

one on top of each other. (Although it’s not a fraction.)

• The top number indicates how many beats there are in every measure. In the example below, there are four.

• The bottom number indicates which note value “gets” the beat. In order to understand what this means, we need to talk about note values.

Note Values from Long to Short• The “value” of a note (black or white note head, whether or not it has a

stem and a flag) determines how long that note is to be held. Note values are proportional: a “whole note”, the longest note value, always is twice as long as a half note. A half note in turn is twice as long as a quarter note, etc.

The Time Signature Revisited• The bottom number in a time signature indicates

which note value will represent the length of a single beat. If it’s a 4 (as it often is), then the quarter note is worth one beat (see the chart below).

Note Values Revisited• In the time signature where a quarter note is equal to one beat

(again, this is the most common situation), then the beat-measurements of all the other note values may be calculated arithmetically:

Rhythms• Measures are filled with endless

combinations of note values—these are called rhythms.

• For example: If a measure contains three beats, and the quarter note “gets” the beat, then that measure could be filled with three quarter notes. Notice: rhythms are totally unaffected by clefs.

Rhythms• Here’s another rhythm: Since a half note is

twice as long as a quarter note, the same measure could be filled with one half note and one quarter note (2+1=3).

There are endless other combinations.

The Keyboard• Notes on the page correspond to notes on

the keyboard as follows:

Intervals: Half Steps and Whole Steps

• An interval is the distance between two notes on the keyboard.

• If—counting the black keys—two notes are right next to each other, then they are said to be a half step apart.

• If there’s a note between them, then they’re a whole step apart.

Half Steps and Whole Steps

• The distance between C and D is a whole step.• The distance between E and F is a half step.

The Black Keys• Black keys are described in relation to white

keys. Two words and symbols are used to accomplish this: sharp (#) and flat ( ).

• Sharp indicates that the note has moved upwards by a half-step. C#, for instance, is the black note one half-step above C.

• Flat indicates that the note has moved downwards by a half-step. B , for instance, is the black note one half-step below B.

The Keyboard Revisited

Final Reminders / Homework

• Don’t forget to pass in your Genealogy Assignment

• Elements packets are due next class

• Send emails tobenjamintibbetts@yahoo.com