Free course from CalArts. You can watch lesson videos over there.

Glossary

accidentals: Another term for chromatic notes.

antiphon: A musical device in which one group of singers sings a tune and another responds, usually with the same tune or a variant of it.

cadence: A stop or seeming point of arrival in music.

chord: A set of three or more notes played at once.

chromatic notes: Notes that are outside of the mode.

full cadence: A stop that seems final in the context of all other notes in the piece.

half cadence: A stop on a note that does not seem final, or seems to need to go on.

Interval: The distance between two notes.

leap: Any distance between two notes that is greater than a step.

mode: A limited collection of discrete pitches.

neighbor note: Notes that step up or down away from a note and then immediately return.

passing tone: A note that passes (by step) between two other notes which are slightly more structural than itself.

reciting tone: In Gregorian Chant, a single pitch that many words are sung on.

scale: All of the notes of a mode arranged in consecutive order.

step: When a note moves to another note directly next to it on the musical staff.

sequence: When one bit of music is repeated at a different pitch level.

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If we only look in places that are easy to look for musical understanding, we might miss some very important things...

Music is sound framed by time. There's four parameters - musical pitch (frequency of the air of vibrations), timbre (colour of sound having to do with harmonics), time, amplitude (loudness.). They're separable, and all a part of music. We will talk mostly about pitch in this course.

Some lessons learned

Here are some lessons learned:

• Notes can have different functions.

• Notes in and of themselves have no function but what is shaped by context.

• Writing melodies with a limited number of notes or a mode can help clarify music. In other words, it gives the music a clearer orientation that helps us identify its parts.

• Notes can be structural and/or ornamental.

• There are different kinds of structural functions: common notes, intermediary final notes, and more final sounding final notes.

• There are different kinds of ornamental functions: neighbors and passing tones

• Anywhere that music pauses is called a cadence.

• There are different kinds of cadences.

• Almost all kinds of music from oral traditions are in simple, limited modes.

• Some modes have asymmetries that let you know instantly where you are in the mode.

• There are many different ways to notate music and all are imperfect and somewhat frustrating.

Some More Lessons Learned

1. We perceive steps as being very different from leaps and vice versa.

2. This difference in perception is a neutral artifact and can be used to create (and perhaps explain) awkward music or beautiful music

3. We can unconsciously perform a sort of reductive analysis of tunes whereby we divide them into different hierarchical layers. A conscious analysis of this can be useful. Maybe.

4. There are different ways of creating expectations in music, and how you create them and what you do with them can go a long way toward defining your piece of music.

5. Notes outside the mode are called chromatic notes or accidentals. They are very pointed and have tendencies that can be used either by satisfying them or by delaying them.

6. Sequences are repetitions of a smallish piece of music. They can also create their own identity and set of expectations.

7. The shape of a piece, or its form, can be a delicate and complicated thing, even in a very short piece of music.