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Music Appreciation for Beginners

Music appreciation is an introductory course that teaches students to listen for and understand different elements in music such as melody, rhythm, harmony, and texture. It explores music's various purposes to help students gain a deeper appreciation for all types of music. The document then defines music as vocal or instrumental sounds combined in a way that produces beauty, harmony, and emotional expression. It proceeds to explain some core elements of music - rhythm, melody, timbre, dynamics, and texture.

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Munashe Makono
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129 views2 pages

Music Appreciation for Beginners

Music appreciation is an introductory course that teaches students to listen for and understand different elements in music such as melody, rhythm, harmony, and texture. It explores music's various purposes to help students gain a deeper appreciation for all types of music. The document then defines music as vocal or instrumental sounds combined in a way that produces beauty, harmony, and emotional expression. It proceeds to explain some core elements of music - rhythm, melody, timbre, dynamics, and texture.

Uploaded by

Munashe Makono
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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WHAT IS MUSIC APPRECIATION

Music Appreciation is an introductory course to music. Students will explore music's various
functionalities in order to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for all types of music.
The course begins by examining basic music literacy and core musical elements such as melody,
rhythm, harmony, form, and texture.

Music appreciation is teaching people what to listen for and how to understand what they are
hearing in different types of music.

WHAT IS MUSIC

vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form,
harmony, and expression of emotion
Music is a collection of coordinated sound or sounds. Making music is the process of putting
sounds and tones in an order, often combining them to create a unified composition.

ELEMENTS OF MUSIC

RHYTHM

Rhythm – the time element of music. A specific rhythm is a specific pattern in time; we usually
hear these in relation to a steady pulse, and mentally organize this pulse or tempo into meter
(sometimes called a "time signature"). Meter organizes beats into groups, usually of two or three;
beats can be divided into small units usually 2, 3 or 4 subdivisions

MELODY

Melody, or musical line, is a combination of pitch and rhythm (some say "duration"). Sometimes a
melody is considered to be the theme of a composition. We might characterize melody by its
contour (rising or falling) and the size of the intervals in it. A melody that uses mostly small
intervals (or scale steps) and is smooth is said to be a conjunct melody. Not surprisingly, a
melody that uses large intervals is called a disjunct melody. A motif (or motive) is either a very
short melody or a distinctive part of a longer melody. I might describe the opening four notes of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a "motific cell

3. TIMBRE
Timbre – sound quality or tone color; timbre is the characteristic that allows us to distinguish
between one instrument and another, and the difference between vowel sounds (for example,
long "a" or "ee"). Terms we might use to describe timbre: bright, dark, brassy, reedy, harsh,
noisy, thin, buzzy, pure, raspy, shrill, mellow, strained. I prefer to avoid describing timbre in
emotional terms (excited, angry, happy, sad, etc.); that is not the sound quality, it is its effect or
interpretation. Rather than describe the timbre of an instrument in other terms, it is often more
clear just to describe the timbre by naming the instrument, once we have learned the names and
sounds of a few instruments

4. DYNAMICS
Dynamics – loud or soft. A composition that has extremely soft passages as well as extremely
loud passages is said to have a large or wide dynamic range. Dynamics can change suddenly or
gradually (crescendo, getting louder, or decrescendo, getting softer.)

5. TEXTURE

Texture – monophonic (one voice or line),


polyphonic (many voices, usually similar, as in Renaissance or Baroque counterpoint),
homophonic (1. a melody with simple accompaniment; 2. chords moving in the same rhythm
(homorhythmic))
heterophony – “mixed” or multiple similar versions of a melody performed simultaneously (rare in
European music; possibly used in Ancient Greece)
collage – juxtaposition & superimposition of extremely different textures or sounds

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