2481567
| Question | Answer |
| Musical Terms | Good luck! |
| Metre | Time signature |
| Tonality | Major or Minor |
| Texture | The layers of music and how they are related |
| Timbre | The use and combination of instruments/voices |
| Dynamics | Louds and softs |
| Modulation | Changing key |
| Drone | Sustained notes, common in Indian music or for bagpipes |
| Pedal | Repeated or sustained note, usually in the bass |
| Tonic | Chord I |
| Subdominant | Chord IV |
| Dominant | Chord V |
| Diatonic | Using notes only from that key |
| Dissonance/Discords | Clashing harmonies |
| Perfect Cadence | V-I Sounds finished |
| Imperfect Cadence | I, II, or IV-V Sounds unfinished |
| Plagal Cadence | IV-I 'Amen' cadence |
| Interrupted Cadence | V-IV The 'surprise cadence' |
| Pizzicato | Plucking a stringed instrument, e.g. violin |
| Double Stopping | Two strings bowed of plucked simultaniously while holding them down |
| Distortion | A change in the sound of usually a guitar making it sound fuzzy, raspy or harsh |
| String Bending | Moving a held-down string, often on a guitar to create a different sound |
| Power Chords | Chords that consist of the root note and the fifth |
| Vocoder | Used for speech synthesis |
| Delay | An audio effect which records an input and then plays it back after a period of time, creating an echo-type effect |
| Multitracking | Separate recorded audio tracks mixed into one single track |
| Strophic Form | Having the same music for each stanza, e.g. Silent Night |
| Call and Response | Aa succession of two phrases usually by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a response to the first e.g. Oh Happy Day |
| Binary Form | AB |
| Ternary Form | ABA |
| Arch | ABCBA |
| Ground Bass | A repeated bass line |
| Rondo | ABACABA |
| Antiphonal/Contrapuntal | Where a musical phrase is passed from one group of performers to the other |
| Pitch Bend | Sliding between two notes |
| Canonic | Similar to a round, where the imitating part repeats the melody, but comes to an end |
| Acciaccatura | A crushed note |
| Appoggiatura | A grace note that steals half the value from the note it is attached to |
| Pentatonic | A scale including only the notes C,D,F,G and A |
| Mordent | A single rapid alternation between the note and the one above or below it (three notes total) |
| Trill | A rapid alternation between the note and the one above or below it |
| Octaves | Playing together eight notes apart |
| Scalic | Movement by step |
| Unison | Two or more instruments/voices playing the same note at the same time |
| Single Melody Line | One instrument/voice only |
| Melody with Accompaniment | Most pop songs use this (basic song form) |
| Polyphonic | Two or more melodies interweave, commonly in classical music |
| Sequence | Melodic phrase repeated a step higher or lower |
| Interval | The distance between two notes |
| Homophonic | Playing harmonies with the same rhythm |
| Disjunct | Lots of leaps in the melody |
| Conjunct | Movement mainly by step |
| Diatonic | Using notes only from that key |
| Syncopation | Rhythm off the beat, commonly used in pop vocals |
| Drum fills | Short drum solos |
| Swing | Placing unequal emphasis on quavers, used in blues |
| Dotted Rhythms | A rhythm in which the beat is unequally divided into a longer (dotted) note and a shorter note |
| BPM | Beats per minute |
| Accelerando | Gradually getting faster |
| Adagio/Lento/Largo | Slow |
| Andante | At a walking pace |
| Presto | Very fast |
| Moderato | Moderate |
| Rallentando | Gradually getting slower |
| Allegro | Fast |
| Rubato | Literally meaning 'robbed time' - the piece may speed up and slow down at the performer's discretion |
| Vivace | Lively |
| Triplets | A group of three notes having the time value of two notes of the same kind |
| Dimunution | Halving note values |
| Augmentation | Doubling note values |
| Polyrhythms | A rhythm which makes use of two or more different rhythms simultaneously, common in African music |
| Cross-Rhythms | Two notes being played against three (e.g. groups of two quavers in the right hand of a piano and groups of triplets in the left) |
| Time Signature | Examples include 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 and 6/8 |
| Hemiola | Typically where two groups of three beats are replaced by three groups of two beats, giving the effect of a shift between triple and duple metre |
| Chromatic | Using notes not belonging to the key in which the piece is written in |
| Consonance | A pleasing, agreeable harmony |
| Alberti Bass | A broken chord pattern of lowest, highest, middle, highest |
| Triadic/Broken Chords/Arpeggio | Playing the notes of a chord separately one after the other |
| Imitation | One instrument/voice plays a melody which is immediately copied by another, though not necessarily at the same pitch |
| Inversion | Where a tune is turned 'upside down' so the intervals between notes which rise in the original now fall (and vice versa) |
| Slide/Glissando/Portamento | Sliding from one note to another, playing all the ones in between |
| Ostinato/Riff/Loop | A short rhythmic or melodic phrase or pattern that is repeated a number of times. Ostinato for classical, riff for pop music, loop for dance tracks |
| Con arco | Playing a string instrument with a bow |
| Tremolo | Literally meaning 'quivering', it is a string effect to add tension or agitation |
| Falsetto | A technique to allow male singers to sing higher than their normal range |
| Vibrato | An effect caused by small and rapid changes to the pitch of a note, used by string players and singers to add warmth |
| Crescendo | Getting louder |
| Diminuendo | Getting quieter |
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