Music Glossary Part 4

A. General Music Terms
B. Genres
C. Rhythmic Definitions
D. Melodic Definitions
E. Harmonic Definitions
F. Miscellaneous (coming soon!)

D. Melodies

This blogpost is about Melodies and common terms discussing the most singable part of a song: it's melody.

You know what a melody is, even if you haven't heard of that word before. A melody is the tune that makes the song easily identifiable, usually in the highest pitched instrument (soprano, flute, violin, guitar, etc). A melody you probably know is Ode To Joy or the incredibly famous riff of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple.

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Melodic Terms:

Phrasing: For something to be musical, it must move the listener. This is done by what is called phrasing. A phrase is much like a sentence in language; it has a beginning, an end, some necessary components and it's fairly obvious where a phrase moves. This phrasing is accomplished by the joint efforts of musicians and the composer of a song. A melody tends to lead throughout a phrase. When a melody is patterning and repeating, it probably marks the start of a new phrase. Listen to songs and try to feel when the song is about to relax and reach an endpoint (~period/exclamation point/question mark in a sentence), and notice how it starts again.

The most common phrasing technique is to start a phrase low in pitch, and a low volume. This phrase will generally grow to a climax slightly past halfway (highest point in pitch and volume) and then it will fall down to lead the next phrase in. A great phrase will lead directly into the next, or it will be a true "cadence" or endpoint for a song. I'll explain cadences more in Part 5 of the glossary about Harmonies.

Here are a few songs that phrase extremely well:
Blue Man Group - Rods and Cones : count 1 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 2 3 4 4 2 3 4. Here you're counting the measures, and the most common phrase in all music: 4 measures/phrase. Do you notice that things in this song seem to reset and yet add a new sound on every 1st measure of the phrase?
Francis Scott Key - Star Spangled Banner : again, this has 4 measure phrasing. Sing along with the words, here's where each phrase ends (marked with P): O say, can you see P, by the dawn's early light P,
What so proudly we hail'd P at the twilight's last gleaming? P, etc.

Dynamics
Dynamics are how loud or soft a song gets (I.e. it's ever-changing volumes). No famous song is all loud or all soft; even if the composer didn't write it in, there are some assumed dynamics to follow, using the phrasing of the song, and the natural occurrence that as a pitch gets higher, it gets louder (the same is true for lower/softer).

Dynamics range from:
Pianissimo (very quiet) [pp]
Piano (quiet) [p]
Mezzo Piano (kinda quiet) [mp]
Mezzo Forte (kinda loud) [mf]
Forte (loud) [f]
Fortissimo (very loud) [ff]

Although there are cases of [ppp] "pianississimo" or [fff] "fortississimo", these are rare. Also, of note, these markings are usually relative: in a somber and sweet song, when it says forte, it could be the instrument's mezzo forte volume in a louder march or symphony. Here's a song by Muse that has phenomenal dynamics, and huge contrasts between louds and softs; it starts quiet, and the choruses get to be pretty spirited. Of course, much music today has a huge amount of "compression" on the song, so even though they're playing quietly or loudly, the actual volume varies only slightly. It "squeezes" down the extreme volumes so the listener doesn't have to switch back and forth between reducing and gaining volume when the song switches volume. However, live music tends to lack compression. Here's a Mozart song that has some really obvious dynamic changes.

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Now playing: Aphex Twin - Hy A Scullyas Lyf A Dhagrow
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