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Music Terminology ABAGANON MATERIAL MUSIC THEORY OF DODECAPHONIC EQUAL TEMPERAMENT MUSIC INTRODUCTION PG.3 RHYTHM PG.4 PITCH PG.14 MELODY PG.35 COMPOSITION PG.42 PHYSICS PG.52 PHILOSOPHY PG.67 CLASSICAL PG.76 JAZZ PG.92 BOOK DESIGN This book was designed with a few things in mind. Primarily, it was written to adapt to the way musicians and composers learn and think. Usually, they learn in hierarchies, or in other words, they put everything into groups. This form of learning and thinking comes from the tasks that musicians typically have to perform. They memorize groups of rhythms, pitches, motor skills, sounds, and more. This allows them to learn larger amounts of information. An example of this type of learning and thinking can be found in the way that most people memorize a phone number. Usually they will memorize it in groups of 3 + 3 + 4 (this is typical in the United States, although some people from other nationalities will group the numbers differently). You can see this grouping in the way phone numbers are written: (123) 456-7890. By learning in this way, a person is essentially memorizing three bits of information, instead of ten individual pieces. This allows the brain to memorize far more material. To fit with this style of learning, the book’s chapters have been set to cover distinctly separate areas of music, which makes it easier to locate certain topics, as well as keep related ideas close together. This style is different from other textbooks, which often use chapters as guides that separate different musical topics by difficulty of comprehension. Although each chapter lists its information starting with basic topics and then moves towards more difficult ones, the book as a whole does not follow that type of easy to difficult sequence. Thus, this book is not designed to be read and learned in the order presented. Because of this, it is highly recommended that a student be guided through this book by a music teacher. This follows with another principle used in the unique design of this book, which is that each teacher has their own opinion on the order in which musical topics should be taught. These different opinions are usually chosen depending on different teaching methods, the age of the student, and the method in which the student learns most efficiently. With that in mind, the book is organized to allow the teacher to more easily find the topics needed for their lessons. In addition, there may be musical topics that do not concern the current music class, in which case, separating the book by musical topics makes it far easier for the teacher to decide which sections to use or avoid. This book, for the most part, presents its information by defining a key term followed by a brief example or explanation. Usually, this is not sufficient in teaching the material, but instead works best as a study guide to recall previously learned information. This is because most topics are best learned through the study of multiple examples as well as through the practice and use of new knowledge. In addition, music is sensory experience, which makes music theory best understood by listening to examples while viewing the notation at the same time. These forms of learning cannot be expressed well in a book, which usually expresses information using verbal explanations. With that in mind, this book is meant to be used in conjuction with online resources that can be found at www.abaganon.com. There are audio and video examples that can be found to help further explain all of the key topics covered in this book. While there are recommended examples specifically chosen for use with this book, users are welcome to submit their own examples. The reason for this, is to allow the inclusion of more styles of music while teaching music theory. Therefore, if a student wishes to see an example of a music theory topic using a song in the Rock genre, they might find one that has been submitted by a user. All examples are reviewed before being published to the site to ensure that they demonstrate an instance of the musical topic being discussed. Finally, most examples are usually in the form of a piano reduction (music that has been arranged to be played on a piano as opposed to multiple instruments). This is done because it is very difficult for the music novice to hear individual lines of music when listening to a full orchestra, ensemble, or band. Simplifying the music to a piano reduction makes it far easier for a student to understand concepts of music theory. 3 MATERIAL THEORY Although this textbook on material theory is an expansion of many of the concepts discovered in classical theory, jazz theory, and other forms of theory, it is distinctly separate in one of its core principles. Whereas classical theory and jazz theory attempt to define music in the way that it functions, material theory focuses on providing straight-foward definitions. In other words, a C - E - G - B flat chord could be interpreted in multiple ways depending on what notes came before and after it, if using classical theory, but in material theory, the chord would always be classified as a C dominant seventh chord. In addition, genre- specific theory usually spends a lot of time educating students on what common progressions are used in their style of music, as well as teaching rules and guidelines that develop aesthetically pleasing music within their genre. Material theory does not do this. The point of this textbook is to provide all styles of music with a method of easily expressing what is happening in the music, and it should be considered a foundation to dodecaphonic equal temperament music studies. (“Dodecaphonic equal temperament” refers to the tuning system that this textbook covers, which is the most widely used tuning system. This textbook cannot be applied to music that does not use this tuning system.) The goal of material theory is not replace the classical, jazz, or atonal theories, that are often taught in schools, but instead to make those areas of studies special concentrations and that this book be the foundational core to a musician’s education. It is recommended that a student study material theory first, and then study the music style of their choice, whether it be classical, jazz, rock, or any other form of music. This textbook includes introductions to both classical theory and jazz theory as its final two chapters, but it by no means goes into advanced details on either subject. Recommended books for other more complete theory studies can be found at www.abaganon.com 4 RHYTHM THEORY This chapter discusses the property of music known as rhythm, which is the time relationships between points of sound and silence. Key topics that are discussed include: tempo, rhythms divisible by 2, rhythms that are not divisible by two (tuplets), rhythmic groupings (meters and time signatures), down beat and syncopated rhythmic relationships, mixture of different rhythmic groupings and tempos, and the modulation of rhythmic note values. 5 TEMPO Tempo refers to the speed of a song. This is expressed by the following symbol: = 120 qThis symbol expresses that this kind of note will be played 120 times in 1 minute. Thus, every time this note is played it will last for half of one second. Accelerando is the term used to express the gradual increase of tempo in a passage of music. Ritardando is used to express the gradual decrease of tempo. They are normally indicated in music with the following abbreviations: Accel. Rit. Usually a tempo marking will be notated sometime after an accelerando or ritardando to indicate the speed that should be reached, although sometimes this is left to the performer to interpret freely. If the tempo is to return to the original or the most previously used tempo, then the words “a tempo” will be marked. 6 RHYTHM Rhythm refers to the relationships between the durations of different notes. Once a tempo has been established, the other notes will either be a multiple of or a fraction of the tempo. Below is a list of the different rhythmic notes and their respected values. ppj,pp BreveW Wholew Half Quarter Eighth Sixteenth Thirty-Second, 2 p 1 ph1/2 q1/4 e1/8 x1/16 q1/32 Each note is half the value of the note to the left. Most instruments will only see the notes above, though notes can continue on to values smaller than the thirty-second note. Sixty-fourth notes are common in music for percussion. One-hundred and twenty-eight notes have been used in music for computer synthe- sizers. Rests are rhythmic values that indicate lengths of silence. They share the same name as the notes above. They are listed below. Breve Whole Half Quarter Eighth Sixteenth Thirty-Second 7 TIME SIGNATURE A Measure is comprised of all the notes in between two bar lines. Below is an example of four measures. ppppp . ppp ppppp . eppp eppp ppp eppp E e ppp eppp E eppp e eppp e Equal rhythmic durations are put in each measure. Time Signatures are the two notes at the beginning which define what rhythmic duration will be placed in each measure. The top number defines how many notes will be in each measure. The bottom number defines what kind of note. (The number refers to a note’s denominator) So, a 3 - 4 time signature means that three quarter notes or something equal to it, will be put in each measure.
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