Music Fundamentals By Benjamin DuPriest The purpose of this essay is to impart a basic vocabulary that you and your fellow students can draw on when discussing the sonic qualities of music. Excursions in World Music does not assume any prior exposure to music theory and this essay fills the gaps for anyone who lacks formal musical experience. What follows is an explanation of a range of terms and ideas, working towards what are often acknowledged as the three core musical elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm. Also included is an explanation of two terms that are less-prevalent in most cursory discussions of music theory, but that will be extremely helpful in thinking about the musics of different cultures as discussed here: texture and timbre. The musical ideas discussed below are all present throughout Excursions; you should use this document both as an introductory exercise and as an ongoing reference source as you make your way through the text. Pitch Pitch is the most basic element of melodic material. When we refer to pitch, we are usually referring to the particular quality of a single note as either high or low, but we can also refer to specific pitches, which is not unlike referring to notes (that relationship will be discussed below). For example, when a piano key on the far right side of a keyboard is pressed, a higher pitched note is produced, relative to those produced by the keys on the left. Or, the bass section of a choir sings the lowest pitches in an arrangement, whereas the soprano section almost always sings
the highest pitches. Understanding exactly how pitch works is one of the more scientific undertakings in music studies. A sound is a vibration. We produce sounds (musical or otherwise) through an act of forced vibration a plucked guitar string, for example. When we acknowledge the pitch that a sound produces, we are judging, or indexing, the rate or frequency at which vibration is occurring; faster vibrations produce higher pitches, while slower vibrations produce lower pitches. That judgment depends on certain standards for pitch; other pitches against which to compare a pitch. In the West, we often use a standard of A440, which is to say that the note A is produced at a frequency of 440 hertz, and we tune all of the other pitches on an instrument based on that one pitch. Another level of comparison, which we will discuss below, is a scale, a simple organization of pitches from low to high, and back down. For our purposes, we can employ pitch as a word that identifies and indexes the quality of a note on a scale of other pitches, higher or lower, relative to each other. Tonality We might think of tonality as a set of rules or parameters in which a piece of music dwells. When we talk about tonality, we are talking about the sonic character of a piece of music as distinguished by the collection of pitches that it employs. Tonality is a way of organizing pitches or pitched material into a system, such that it can be differentiated from other tonalities, allowing us to better understanding the specificities of a piece of music. As such, a given tonality basically comprises a group of pitches that are related to one another and that are compatible in such a way that
is relative to the type of music being played, often defined by the culture to which it belongs. Perhaps most importantly, tonalities dictate the specific relationships between pitches; which notes are strongest and which notes are weakest; which notes imply a particular type of melodic movement and which notes compel a feeling of home, or stasis. When a performer or composer employs a specific tonality, that tonality dictates the melodic and harmonic parameters of the piece of music being played, insomuch as the performer or composer chooses to use the pitches that make up the given tonality. This is to say that while we acknowledge very specific tonalities and all of the rules and regulations that they imply, often, music is actually characterized by the extent to which a composer or performer adheres to or rejects those rules, and steps outside the bounds of tonality. There are many different types of tonal organization, just as there are many different musics in many different cultures. In most Western music cultures, such as in America and Europe, for example, a key or key signature is used to dictate tonality, whereas in Indian classical music, ragas are used to understand and organize melodic elements of a performance. Keys and ragas are types of tonality, they reflect different organizing principles and rules and they produce dramatically different sonic qualities. Scale A scale is a collection of pitches organized in sequence, lowest to highest, used to express the pitches of a tonal structure. A given scale comprises all of the notes in a tonality, and as such is one of the primary ways in which tonalities are identified
and communicated. For example, an A-major scale is all of the pitches that make up the key of A-major: a-b-c#-d-e-f#-g#-a, and then descending, note-by-note, back down to a. We could sit at a piano and play an A-major scale by playing those notes in succession. It's important to note that while the constituent pitches of a scale are certainly definitive, it is actually the spaces between the notes which are of utmost import, and which actually dictate a tonality. For example, the most common scales in Western music comprise whole steps and half steps (if you imagine piano keys, a half step traverses the distance between two adjacent keys, while a whole step skips a key, traversing three pitches). So, an A-major scale can be understood as a sequence of pitches, as it is above, or it can be understood as a sequence of steps and half steps: whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. Understood as such, we can transpose that scale onto other pitches, and create major scales on any given pitch. Just as we can identify specific types of tonal structures in the musics of different cultures, we can identify different types of scales, so that we can express all of the notes of an Indian raga in the same way. Again, it will be the spaces between the constituent pitches of a raga that will be most important, and the spacing of pitches is often dramatically different in the scales of different cultures. Melody Melody is one of our three core elements of music. In a very basic sense, melody is a succession of individual pitches organized in such a way that is meant to construct a cohesive musical idea. A melody can also be thought of as a tune, or a musical line; when you hum or whistle a song, you are performing a melody. It is often the
melody of a song that gets stuck in our head: the hook of a rap song, the head of a jazz composition, or the chorus of a pop song, for example. A given melody may comprise any number of pitches from a given scale, but regardless, it can always be related in some way to the tonality (or tonalities) that the piece of music employs. Melodies are generally based in some way on larger tonal structures, possibly complying with or challenging the tonality employed. These structures will be discussed below, as harmony. The relationship between melody and harmony, the extent to which melody adheres to or transgresses tonality, will constitute a large part of a piece of music s sonic quality. Not unlike scales, the spaces between successive notes give a melody its character and sonic quality as much as the notes themselves do. When we discuss melodic material, we usually refer to these spaces as either steps (described above), or intervals (larger leaps between pitches). Like scales, understanding melodies as stepwise and intervallic allows for the transposition of different melodies onto different starting pitches. As such, a nation s national anthem, for example, can be sung in any key, so long as the steps and intervals of the original composition are more or less adhered to. Harmony Whereas melodies are sequences of individual pitches, harmony, another core musical element, describes the quality of sounds produced when multiple pitches are sounded simultaneously. When two or more pitches are produced at the same time, their frequencies interact in such a way that produces a specific sonic result that is greater than the sum of its parts, creating particular sonic affects, or feelings,
and potentially undergirding larger musical ideas in such a way that single pitches cannot. These results are, again, as much if not more reliant on the spaces between pitches as the pitches themselves; the intervals between pitches dictate the sonic quality of harmony in the same way that they do melody. In the study of harmony, these spaces are theorized or imagined as existing vertically, as pitches stacked on top of each other, in contrast to the horizontal pitch organization of melodies. In much of the world (particularly the west), the most basic unit of harmonic material is a chord : three or more notes sounded simultaneously. As isolated entities, chords themselves convey an identifiable sense of tonality. In the West, we acknowledge major and minor chords, for example. We can also acknowledge the further production or articulation of tonality through a succession of chords, or a harmonic progression. A harmonic progression provides the structure on which melodic material is based. Much like the relationships between individual pitches that are implicit in tonal systems, the practice and study of harmony and harmonic progressions are often predicated on a system of tendencies, rules, and principles that govern relationships between notes when sounded together. Certain specific combinations of notes and the affects and subsequent movements that they compel can be understood using the rules and principles of tonal structures. These proscriptions and the resulting sonic qualities contribute mightily to the aural perception and intellectual understanding of tonality.
Rhythm Our third core element shifts us away from the rhetoric of tonality; a basic understanding of musical rhythm is not directly concerned with the idea of pitch frequencies and their interactions. Rather, it addresses a different set of organizational patterns: patterns of notes as they move through time. As such, when we discuss rhythm, we won t necessarily refer to pitches, we will refer to notes, a word that can encompass rhythmic character in a way that pitch does not. In a basic sense, rhythm is the temporal organization of music; it describes note durations (or, the length of time that a note lasts) and durational patterns (or, sequences of specific note durations). For example, we can imagine a simple rhythm as comprising long notes and short notes, and we can express it purely as a pattern of note lengths: long long short long long short or, long short long short long long short long short long. These patterns can be expressed musically in a range of ways, the alternation and organization of sound and silence (sounded notes and pauses, or rests ), or by the alternation and organization of notes that are emphasized to varying degrees. This is how we understand and identify singular rhythms. Perhaps more importantly, though, we need to approach rhythm as a structural element with rules and principles that dictate its sonic character. To do this, we will need a couple more tools. Beat and Meter Rhythmic understanding on a structural level requires two interwoven components. The first component is a beat or pulse that undergirds music, a succession of
equally spaced units that line up with the constituent rhythms being performed. Imagine tapping your foot to a pop song, or a bandleader counting off the beginning of a performance, these are based on the basic pulse, or beat of the music. The second component is a system of measurement for those beats; an organizing principle that identifies what number of beats or pulses constitutes a cycle. This cycle adheres to and helps to communicate the logic of the music. This idea of logic is, of course, subjective, and is dependent on a range of elements, including the musical culture being studied. In Western music, this system is called meter, and is most commonly communicated via time signatures that tell us quite a bit about the logic at play. To use an earlier example, imagine a bandleader counting off a performance: 1-2-3-4! This generally means that the rhythm of the music is to be understood in cycles of 4, or as four beats to the measure, meaning that a measure constitutes four pulses. This falls under what is commonly known as a regular meter, meaning it can be understood in units of either twos or threes. Meters that cannot be understood as such, particularly those that reflect cycles of five, seven, and nine beats, are thought to be irregular. This raises our point about the rhythmic logics of musics of different cultures, however. In America and Europe, music composed or performed in irregular meters strikes some people as odd or challenging, but in other cultures, it may be perfectly normal, or even regular. Texture and Timbre The terms texture and timbre are employed to discuss some of the less-exact sonic attributes of a musical performance. These are words that can communicate or
describe the way that a musical sound feels, often using metaphors and comparisons to tactile adjectives. We can understand timbre as a way of discussing the tone color of a sound in this way. For example, the timbre of a person s voice may be described as smooth and warm, or tense and harsh. Or, when we discuss some traditional musics of Africa, we will note the addition of metal objects to several instruments that, when the instrument is played, vibrate to produce a buzzy timbre. Whereas timbre is usually used in reference to a single instrument, texture discusses the density of a musical performance involving multiple sounds. We might define texture as the number of voices or instruments being sounded and the ways in which they interact with each other. This can also be described using less-exact signifiers such as complex or simple, muddy or clear. In the study of Western classical music, however, texture has an exacting rhetoric, which can, at times, be helpful for our study here. Western music theory identifies four primary textures: Monophonic a single line or voice without accompaniment Homophonic one or more lines or voices with some accompaniment Heterophonic the same line is sung or played by multiple voices or instruments, but it is varied by one musician, embellished or elaborated, so that the voices are not completely in sync Polyphonic multiple lines of contrasting music sounded simultaneously. Conclusion This essay is obviously not a comprehensive review of music theory, but it should supply you with the vocabulary necessary to begin thinking and talking about music on a sonic level. It is important to note that these discussions are largely (if loosely) based on Western music theory, and that the musics of different cultures can and do
reflect dramatically different systems of understanding which are in no way inferior or superior to the systems discussed and referenced here. Regardless of rhetorical, organizational, and theoretical differences, however, all musics employ some semblance of melody, rhythm and harmony, which, when taken in full, can provide a suitable framework for understanding the sonic information being communicated. We must remain open to the different ways in which people understand their own music, and we must think critically about the ways that we interact with these different ideas.