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Created by Camille Bailey
over 10 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| A Cappella | One or more vocalists performing without an accompaniment. |
| Accelerando | A symbol used in music notation indicating to gradually quicken tempo. |
| Adagio | A tempo having a slow movement. E.g. restful or at ease. |
| Allegro | A direction given to play lively or fast. |
| Beat | The unit of musical rhythm. |
| Cadence | A sequence of chords that brings an end to a phrase, either in the middle or at the end of a composition. E.g. Perfect, plagal, imperfect and interrupted are all cadences. |
| Canon (Round) | A musical form where the melody or tune is imitated by individual parts at regular intervals. E.g. Frère Jacques is played often as a canon. |
| Chant | Singing in unison, texts in a free rhythm. Similar to the rhythm of speech. |
| Choir | Group of singers in a chorus. |
| Chord | Two or more notes played simultaneously in harmony. |
| Chord Progression | A string of chords played in succession. |
| Chromatic Scale | Includes all twelve notes of an octave. |
| Clef | In a sheet of music, a symbol at the beginning of a staff defining the pitch of the notes found in that particular staff. |
| Dissonance | Harsh, discordant, and lack of harmony. Also a chord that sounds incomplete. |
| Drone | Dull, monotonous tone as a humming or buzzing sound. Also a bass note held under a melody. |
| Duet | A piece of music written for two vocalists or instrumentalists. |
| Dynamics | The loudness or softness of a musical composition. Also the symbols in a sheet of music indicating volume. |
| Ensemble | The performance of either all instruments of an orchestra or voices in a chorus. |
| Flat | A symbol indicating that the note is to be diminished by one semitone. |
| Form | The structure of a piece of music. |
| Forte | A symbol indicating to play loud. |
| Glissando | Sliding between two notes. |
| Harmony | Pleasing combination of two or three tones played together in the background while a melody is being played. |
| Interval | The distance in pitch between two notes. |
| Legato | Word to indicate the music is to be played smoothly. |
| Major | A tonal system of music that sounds 'happy'. |
| Medley | A composition that uses passages from other movements of the composition in its entirety. |
| Minor | A tonal system of music that makes the music sound 'sad'. |
| Modulation | To shift to another key. |
| Octave | Eight full tones above the key note where they scale begins and ends. |
| Orchestra | A large group of instrumentalists playing together. |
| Ostinato | A repeated phrase throughout the piece. |
| Pedal/tonic pedal | Repeated notes. |
| Pentatonic scale | A musical scale having five notes. E.g. The five black keys of a keyboard make up a pentatonic scale. |
| Phrase | A single line of music played or sung. A musical sentence basically. |
| Piano | An instruction in sheet music to play softly. |
| Pitch | The frequency of a note determining how high or low it sounds. |
| Pizzicato | String instruments that are picked instead of bowed. |
| Polyphony | Combining a number of individual but harmonizing melodies. Also known as a counterpoint. |
| Presto | A direction in a sheet of music indicating the tempo is to be very fast. |
| Rhythm | The element of music pertaining to time, played as a grouping of notes into accented or unaccented beats. |
| Scale | Successive notes of a key or mode either ascending or descending. |
| Sharp | A symbol indicating the note has to be raised by one semitone. |
| Staccato | Short detached notes. |
| Stave | Made up of the five horizontal parallel lines and the spaces between them on which musical notation is written. |
| Tablature | A system of notation for stringed instruments. The notes are indicated by the finger positions. |
| Tempo | Indicating speed. |
| Timbre | Tone, colour, quality of sound that distinguishes instrument to another. It is determined by the harmonies of sound. |
| Time signature | A numeric symbol in sheet music determining the number of beats in a measure (beats per bar). |
| Tonality | The tonal characteristics determined by the relationship of the notes to the tone. |
| Tonic | The keynote, the first tone of a scale. |
| Tremolo | Quick repetition of the same note or rapid alternation between two notes. |
| Trill | Rapid alternation between two notes that are a half tone or whole tone apart. |
| Triplet | Three notes played in the same amount of time as one or two beats. |
| Tune | A rhythmic succession of musical tones, a melody for instruments and voices. |
| Unison | Two or more voices or instruments playing the same note simultaneously. |
| Vibrato | Creating variation pitch in a note by quickly alternating between notes. |
| Vivace | Direction in sheet music to play lively and spirited manner. |
| Whole-tone scale | A scale consisting of only whole-tone notes. Such as a scale that consists of only six notes. |
| Whole tone | A whole tone is equal to two half notes, four quarter notes, eight eighth notes, etc. |
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