Musical Elements and Concepts: Basics

MUSICAL ELEMENTS AND CONCEPTS: BASICS  

A BRIEF EXPLANATION         

Music is simply just organised sound. The melody of a birdsong is as close to music as cars honking and chattering on a busy highway. Anything can be used as an instrument to create sound. For example, the human voice. The human voice can be manipulated and woven the same way any 'typical' orchestral instrument can. We make music with the tools and objects provided. Go bang some rocks together, go compose a sick bassline with your school waterbottle and mathbook, click your thumbs and crack your knuckles. Good job, youve made music! Music is anything you want it to be. 

So we have established what music is, how its created and how you can create it - awesome, we are off the a great start.  

Like any subject there is always opportunity to gain deeper understanding into the vast journey that is the subject itself. There is a way to understand the banging of rocks, waterbottles and mathbooks the same way you understand the colours on a canvas or the structure of a particular plant cell. 

Musical concepts are used to communicate and gain an analytical understanding when it comes to responding to musical excerpts.  Its also highly valuable general knowledge and is crucial for those interested in musical composition and working with other musicians. 

For reference, i will be going by the Australian NSW school 7-10 Music syllabus when discussing musical concepts and elements as it is what i have been taught. Im also using my general knowledge and information that i have been taught through my own personal classical musical training. In the syllabus it speaks of six main element of music,

Duration, Tone Colour, Pitch, Dynamics and Expressive techniques, Texture, and Structure.

In stage 6 ( years 11 - 12, which is when Australian students prepare to sit their HSC Exams ) Conceptual links are taught and a deeper understanding of musical knowledge is expected. However, i will be speaking only of the main six elements and breaking them down in a six part series of the musical concepts, this being the first part will be on basic musical terms and super awesome fancy Italian words to help you better understand whatever it is im going off about alongside a brief explanation of the six key elements. 

PITCH     

pitch refers to Highness and lowness of sound. When listening to a song, you will hear loud and soft segments and parts. This is the pitch. Pitch can be organised into patterns which is done through the melody. Melodies are just sequences of notes that carry the song. To put it simply, hum any song right now. The bit that your humming is the melody.  Alongside the melody is the harmony which accompanies the melody. Its essentially the backing track. In your standard Pop or Rock song, bass, keyboard or backing vocals would play the harmony, and the leading vocals or lead guitar would play the main melody. 

The progression of the melody is pitch direction. notes can fluctuate or stay consistent. It can include leaps or steps from notes to notes, e.g B flat to B, or G to A. It can also include leaps of larger intervals, or a combination of steps and leaps. 

Pitch controls the highness and lowness of sound, melodies and harmonies, and overall tonalities. 

DURATION     

Duration speaks of the length of any segment of a piece of music, it can refer to a whole song, or a single note value. Elements of duration include tempo, rhythm, beat and metre (time signature). 

Tempo is the speed at which a piece is played, and can be indicated using scores through Italian words which can indicate the desired overall tempo which the composer intends to achieve or sudden or gradual change in tempo. Metre is simply the division of beats in a bar and is your time signatures. For example, 4/4 4/6 6/8. Can be referred to as duple, triple, or quadruple metre. The beat is very often described as the 'pulse' of a song. When listening to music you often find yourself tapping your feet or dancing along to the beat of the music. We arrange beats into groups of two three or four beats a bar. This is a division of music. 

TONE COLOUR 

Tone colour refers to the way music is identified through expression of sound and how it sounds (mostly how it sounds) 

We use words like dull, mellow, bright, cold, distorted, choppy to describe the sound of the music when speaking of tone colour. We identify instruments through the way they sound. If you where to identify all the instrument's in Paramores 'All i Wanted' you would also be identifying the tone colour. You can describe the timbre, the instruments family, what the instrument is made of and it affects its sound and the way it is played. 

Tone colour often overlaps with expressive techniques, as we often describe how the instrument is making that sound with the techniques ( e.g, pizzicato, arco) being used. 

TEXTURE

Texture refers to a pieces 'layers'.  We use the term layers to describe the different combination of instruments and their role in a piece of music.  Textures can be thick or thin. 

Thick texture - lots of layers and multiple instruments, e.g rhythm guitar 1, rhythm guitar 2, bass, drums, voila, lead guitar all in the one piece

thin - very few to one single instrument, e.g violin, and vocals in one piece 

STRUCTURE

The structure of a song is how it is put together. The structure/form of a piece is how smaller segments are played and arranged together to create a bigger picture, the composition itself. Structure holds your verses, chorus', interludes and other structural components.

DYNAMICS AND EXPRESSIVE TECHNIQUES 

Dynamics describes the volume of the sound in music. Dynamics normally refer to a specific volume in a piece and is able to identify whether a piece of music is very soft, soft, medium soft, medium loud, loud, or very loud (and a few other in between). Dynamic expressions can also change, they can gradually get louder, or softer, or fluctuate and become louder very loud and soft in the same bar.

Expressive techniques refer to additions made to a piece by almost stylistic components. For example, in a classical piece on the guitar vibrato would be common, same as distortion in a rock piece. Certain affects can be associated with certain genres of music to help develop the sound that makes that genre that genre.