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Elements of Music

This document provides a checklist of aspects to consider when listening to music, including style, instrumentation, voices, accompaniment, melody, tonality, dynamics, articulation, texture, timbre, form, rhythm, tempo, meter, and special effects. It describes various musical elements like genre, instruments, vocal ranges, tempo, time signature, and compositional techniques. The checklist aims to help listeners closely analyze the key components of the music.

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Ruf M
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72 views

Elements of Music

This document provides a checklist of aspects to consider when listening to music, including style, instrumentation, voices, accompaniment, melody, tonality, dynamics, articulation, texture, timbre, form, rhythm, tempo, meter, and special effects. It describes various musical elements like genre, instruments, vocal ranges, tempo, time signature, and compositional techniques. The checklist aims to help listeners closely analyze the key components of the music.

Uploaded by

Ruf M
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Checklist for Listening

When you listen to music, you should ask consider the following aspects:

 Style/Period/Genre
 Instrumentation
o What are the instruments?
 Voices
o Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass. Are the voices singing in unison or harmony?
 Accompaniment
o Is the accompaniment in block chords?
o Is it major or minor?
o Is it discordant or diatonic?
o Does it have sustained chords/pedal bass notes/ ostinato?
 Melody
o Is it repeated?
o Does it have any sequences?
o Do instruments echo each other?
o Does it have an ostinato?
o Are there any counter – melodies?
 Tonality
o Is it major or minor or neither?
o Is it modal?
 Dynamics
o Quiet vs Loud?
o Crescendo vs diminuendo?
 Articulation
o Staccato or legato
 Texture (the way in which melodic, rhythmic and harmonic materials are combined in a
composition)
o Is there homophony/monophony/polyphony/unison?
o Monophony – A single line of music.
o Polyphony – Multiple lines of music.
o Homophony – Multiple lines of music expressing the same musical idea.
o Independent polyphony – Two or more lines of music expressing independent
musical ideas.
o Heterophony - Multiple performers playing simultaneous variations of the same line
of music.
o
 Timbre (tone quality or colour of musical sound, inherently linked to the medium (source of
sound, be it voice or instrument)
o In order to identify specific instruments/voice, become familiar with its characteristic
timbre / colour.
o Terms such as Nasal, dark, mellow, rough, strained, soothing can be used to describe
timbre.
o Vocal Timbre: distinguish between male and female voices, primarily based on
ranges.
o Instrumental Timbre: in case of instruments, timbre is closely related to instrument
construction.
 Form
o How many sections of music are there?
o Different forms exist in different styles/genre
 Rhythm & Tempo & Metre
o What time is it in?
o Is there a strong beat?
o How fast is it?
o Does the tempo change?
o Beat – a regular pulsation.
o Accent – an emphasized beat.
o Tempo – the relative rate of speed of the beat.
o Meter – system of grouping beats into individual units
o Free Rhythm – music with no regular pulsation.
o Rhythmic Density – quantity of notes between periodic accents or over a specific
unit of time.
 Special effects
o Mutes, glissandos, pizzicato, echo, distortion etc
o Any compositional techniques?
o Any special instrument effects?

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