Musical Terminology

Common Musical Terminology

Key. This has to do both with the specific pitch at which everyone agrees to play and with the pattern of notes based on that pitch. This is an important convention of Western music allowing different instruments to play together. Keys generally come in two kinds: major and minor. Most rock and pop songs are in only one key. However, many rock and pop songs use pitches that cloud the major/minor identity of a key and sometimes these songs end in different keys than they began.

Chord. A combination of pitches that are usually three steps away each other. The most simple kinds of chord in rock and pop music consist of three notes ("triad") and are either major and minor in quality. That is, using the notes of the major or minor scale, the middle note of this "triad" is either slightly larger or smaller. For example, using the notes from solfeggio (doh-re-me, etc.) you can build a major triad using the notes "doh," "mi," and "sol." By starting with the next higher note in the scale you can build a minor triad: "re," "fa," and "la." By building triads on each of the notes of the scale, you come up with the principal chords at the foundation of much of Western music. The only exception is the chord built on the seventh step. This special chord quality is called "diminished." Note that major chords are notated with an upper-case, and minor, with lower-case Roman numeral.

Harmonic Vocabulary

I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	vii°
doh	re	mi	fa	sol	la	ti

Of course, most music builds on these chords, often adding a fourth or fifth note on top of or into the triad. Moreover, sometimes these added notes are presumed to be temporary and to be in the process of moving to someplace else. Indeed, part of the syntax of harmonic music is the idea that chords are part of a sentence and that some sequences of chords work, while others do not.

Meter. When you tap your foot to the music, you have found the pulse. When you notice that some beats are stronger than others and that they occur in a pattern, you have discovered the meter. Most of popular music is organized in meters of two or four beats. That is, each measure (or bar) of the music has two or four beats in it. Sometimes, each measure has three beats (as in a waltz). Equally important here, and certainly related, is how each beat might be subdivided. Again, the most common subdivisions are duple (in twos) or triple (in threes). A common metric organization for slow tempo pop tunes is a four-beat measure with each beat subdivided into three sub-beats. Music with a jazz swing feel also generally has this organization. Much fast rock music, on the other hand, has two or four duple beats to a measure.

Phrase. If you think of music as occurring in sentences, and that each sentence has a number of smaller parts, then you are thinking about phrase. On the one hand, in rock and pop, these sentences are of two standard lengths: 12 beats and 16 beats. The former derives from the blues. The latter, is a characteristic length in much pop music. On the other hand, we will discover a number of examples where musicians violate these norms, and often purposefully.

Below are some common examples of musical sentences. The top line is an indication of the time measure, the middle line shows chords, and the bottom line is an approximation of the text.

12-bar, 3-chord blues

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
I	-	-	-	IV	-	I	-	V	IV	I	[V]
a	-	-	-	a	-	-	-	b	-	-	-

16-bar, 3-chord rhythm and blues ("I Got a Woman")

16-bar, 4-chord rhythm and blues ("Body and Soul")

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16
I	vi	IV	V	I	vi	IV	V	I	vi	IV	V	I	vi	IV	V
a				b				c				d


Preface	Schedule	Materials
	21-jan-12