Transcript M100: Music Appreciation Discussion Group Tuesday January 29

M100: Music Appreciation
Discussion 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 [email protected]
• 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 threebeat 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 twobeat 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 beatmeasurements 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 to
[email protected]