tema 2, sound properties and their perception

Unit 2 SOUND PROPERTIES AND BASIC ELEMENTS OF MUSIC

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UNIT 2

Sound Properties and Their Perception. The basic elements of music

INTRODUCTION: MUSIC IS ORGANIZED IN SOUND WAVES Music is sound that's organized by people to dance, to tell a story, to make other people feel a certain way, or just to sound pretty or be entertaining. Music is organized on many different levels. Sounds can be arranged into melodies, harmonies, rhythms, textures and phrases. But the most basic way that music is organized by arranging the actual sound waves. 1. NOISE AND TONE We’re always accompanied by sounds but not all the sounds we hear are musical. To get the melodic kind of sounds more often associated with music, the sound waves must be organized and regular, not random mixtures. Most of the sounds we hear are brought to our ears through the air. If the movement of the object is a fast, regular vibration, then the sound waves are also very regular. We hear such regular sound waves as tones, sounds with a particular pitch, with a particular tone. It is this kind of sound that we most often associate with music, and that many musical instruments are designed to make.

A random jumble of sound waves is heard as a noise. A regular, evenly-spaced sound wave is heard as a tone. A pleasant sound (musical sound) has a regular wave pattern. The pattern is repeated over and over. But the waves of noise are irregular. They do not have a repeated pattern. Question 1. What is the different between noise and tone? 2. HOW CAN YOU DESCRIBE A SOUND WAVE? Sound wave has 4 basics elements: - Pitch: it is related with tone and the Notes (A, B, C, D, E, F, G). Pitch is drawn in the wave sound by the wavelength - Length: it’s related with note values, note lengths (Whole note, half note…) - Amplitude: it’s related with the dynamics. Dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound)

- Timbre. There’s a difficult related with the wave sound. Timbre refers to the particularly instrumental sound 3. Definition of Pitch: Pitch is the specific quality of a sound that makes it a recognizable tone. Pitch defines the location of a tone in relation to others, thus giving it a sense of being high or low.


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a) Considered A as the reference pitch, classify the next sounds as lower or higher (we’ll say, for example, the first sound is lower than the second sound or this sound is higher than A…)

Intervals are related with pitch. Interval is the distance between two pitches. An interval consisting of semitones, and a semitone is the smallest distance between two sounds in our musical system. Two semitones are the same than one tone The distribution of tones and semitones in the scale is not regular. We have one semitone between E and F and between B and C, but we have two semitones (one tone) between the other notes. You can see in this staff the distribution of tones and semitones in the scale

3.1 Intervals classification For each interval we can determinate:

- The distance between the notes: (we have to count all the notes to determinate the distance)

- If it’s ascending or descending

- If it’s melodic or harmonic (melodic: notes sound successively; harmonic: notes sound simultaneously

Examples: (we’ll say, for example, it’s an ascending, melodic fifth interval…)

b) Indicate all parameters of each interval

4. Dynamics Sounds, including music, can be barely audible, or loud enough to hurt your ears, or anywhere in between. When they want to talk about the loudness of a sound, scientists and engineers talk about amplitude. Musicians talk about dynamics. The amplitude of a sound is a particular number, usually measured in decibels, but dynamics are relative; an orchestra playing fortissimo is going to be much louder than a single violin playing fortissimo. The exact interpretation of each dynamic marking in a piece of music depends on:

• comparison with other dynamics in that piece

• the typical dynamic range for that instrument or ensemble

• the abilities of the performer(s)

• the traditions of the musical genre being performed

• the acoustics of the performance space


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Traditionally, dynamic markings are based on Italian words, although there is nothing wrong with simply writing things like "quietly" or "louder" in the music. Forte means loud and piano means soft. The instrument commonly called the "piano" by the way, was originally called a "pianoforte" because it could play dynamics, unlike earlier popular keyboard instruments like the harpsichord. Figure 1Typical Dynamic Markings

When a composer writes a forte into a part, followed by a piano, the intent is for the music to be quite loud, and then suddenly quite soft. If the composer wants the change from one dynamic level to another to be gradual, different markings are added. A crescendo (pronounced "cresh-EN-doe") means "gradually get louder"; a decrescendo or diminuendo means "gradually get softer". Figure 2: Here are three different ways to write the same thing: start softly (piano), gradually get louder (crescendo) until the music is loud (forte), then gradually get softer (decrescendo or diminuendo) until it is soft (piano) again. Gradual Dynamic Markings


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Questions: 1. Look in your dictionary for the definition of sonometer

2. Look for the dynamics expressions in this score and write its names

5. Timbre We define as the quality of a sound; that component of a tone that causes different instruments (for example a

guitar and a violin) to sound different from each other while they are both playing the same note.

The fourth basic element of music is called color, or timbre. Timbre describes all of the aspects of a musical

sound that do not have anything to do with the sound's pitch, loudness, or length. In other words, if a flute plays

a note, and then an oboe plays the same note, for the same length of time, at the same loudness, you can still easily

distinguish between the two sounds, because a flute sounds different from an oboe. This difference is in the

timbre of the sounds. Timbre is caused by the fact that each note from a musical instrument is a complex wave containing more than one

frequency.


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6. Pitch: sharp, flats and natural notes.

Summary: In standard notation, a sharp symbol raises the pitch of the natural note by a half-step; a flat

symbol lowers it by a half-step.

In Western music there are twelve notes in each octave that are in common use

- A sharp sign means: the note that is one half step higher than the natural note.

- A flat sign means the note that is one half step lower than the natural note. Some of the natural notes are only one half step apart, but most of them are a whole step apart. When they are

a whole step apart, the note in between them can only be named using a flat or a sharp.

Using flats and sharps, any pitch can be given more than one note name. For example, the G sharp and the A flat are

played on the same key on the keyboard; they sound the same. You can also name and write the F natural as

"E sharp"; F natural is the note that is a half step higher than E natural, which is the definition of E sharp.

Sharp and flat signs can be used in two ways: a)

They can be part of a key signature,


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b) They can mark accidentals.

For example, if most of the C's in a piece of music are going to be sharp, then a sharp sign is put in the "C" space

at the beginning of the staff, in the key signature. If only a few of the C's are going to be sharp, then those C's are

marked individually with a sharp sign right in front of them. Pitches that are not in the key signature are called

accidentals.

A note can also be double sharp or double flat. A double sharp is two half steps (one whole step) higher than

the natural note; a double flat is two half steps (a whole step) lower. Triple, quadruple, etc. sharps and flats are

rare, but follow the same pattern: every sharp or flat raises or lowers the pitch one more half step.

Questions:

- Look for the sharps (RED colour), flats (BLUE colour) and natural notes (BLACK colour) in the score of page

number 4

- Look for the sharps (RED colour), flats (BLUE colour) and natural notes (BLACK colour) in the next score:

tema 2, sound properties and their perception

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