Download music theory for dummies pdf

Download music theory for dummies pdf

Music Theory For Dummies, 4th Edition,Music Theory For Dummies 2nd Edition Pdf

Music Theory For Dummies® Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. River St. Hoboken, NJ blogger.com Copyright © by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Music Theory For Dummies®, 4th Edition Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., River Street, Hoboken, NJ , blogger.com Copyright © by John Wiley & Sons, 5/11/ · [DOWNLOAD] Music Theory For Dummies PDF eBook Description Tune in to how music really works Whether you’re a student, a performer, or simply a fan, this book makes 22/04/ · {DOWNLOAD} Music Theory For Dummies Free Download Description Tune in to how music really works Whether you’re a student, a performer, or simply a fan, this book Music theory for dummies: Pilhofer, Michael: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive Upload Sign up | Log in About Blog Projects Help Donate Contact Jobs ... read more

The teacher repeatedly tells you to keep your eyes on the road ahead of you, because the rest of your body and car will be drawn to the space your eyes are focused on. Four requirements are necessary to make a time signature a simple time signature: 1. Each beat is divided into two equal components. This is most obvious when it is applied to eighth and smaller notes. In simple time, two eighth notes are always connected together with a bar called a beam, as are four sixteenth notes, or eight thirty-second notes.

If you have two sixteenth notes and one eighth note, those three notes, which equal one beat, are also beamed together. Put another way, if there is more than one note in one single beat, they are always grouped together to equal one beat. Figure shows the progression of how notes are beamed together in simple time. The note that gets one beat has to be an undotted note. Usually this means quarter notes, but it can also mean half notes, whole notes, or, sometimes, eighth notes. In simple time, multiple notes within a beat are always grouped together to equal one beat. The top number is not divisible by 3 except when it is 3. The number of beats is the same in every measure. Every measure, or bar, of music in a simple time signature has the same number of beats per measure throughout the song.

Measures and counting in simple time Measures or bars were implemented specifically to help performers keep track of where they are in a piece of music and to help them play the appropriate beat. In simple time, a slightly stronger accent is placed on the first beat of each measure. And because the top number determines that there are two beats in the measure, there are two half notes in each measure, as seen in Figure Music from this period used a rhythm structure, called a minim that was based on the rhythm pattern of a human heartbeat. Practicing counting beats in simple time Using the information from this section, practice counting out the beats not the notes in Figures through When counting these beats out aloud, remember to give the first beat a slight stress.

Figure ONE two three four ONE two three four ONE two three four. j œ œ Chapter 4: Time Signatures Figure ONE two three ONE two three ONE two three. Figure ONE two ONE two ONE two. The top number is evenly divisible by 3, with the exception of time signatures where the top number actually is 3. Any time signature with a 6, 9, 12, 15, and so on is a compound time signature. See Figure for an example. The beat is a dotted quarter note or three eighth notes. Each beat is subdivided into three components. Again, this is most obvious when it is applied to eighth notes and beyond.

In simple time, two eighth notes are always beamed together, as are even numbers of sixteenth notes. In compound time, three eighth notes are beamed together, as are six sixteenth notes. Figure Compound time divides notes into groups of three, not two. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Measures and counting in compound time One big difference between music in a simple time signature and music in compound time signature is that they feel different, both to listen to and to play. In compound time, an accent is not only placed on the first beat of each measure, as in simple time, but a slightly softer accent is also placed on each successive beat. In compound time signatures, the beat is broken down into three-part segments. Practicing counting in compound time Using the information from this section, practice counting out the beats in Figures through The ands in the captions are meant to capture the lilt of the some of the notes within the beat.

We admit this is not a very scientific method, but it should give you a general idea of how to count out beats in different time signatures. Figure ONE two three FOURand five six ONE two three FOUR five six ONE two three FOUR five six. Figure ONE two three FOURand-fiveand-six-and ONE two three FOUR five six ONE two three FOURand-fiveand-six-and. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ Chapter 4: Time Signatures Figure ONE two three FOUR five six SEVEN eight nine ONE two three FOUR-andfive-and six-and SEVEN eight nine. Asymmetrical time signatures are very common in traditional music from around the world, both in European folk music and in Eastern particularly Indian popular and folk music. When a piece of music with an asymmetrical time signature is played, the pulse, or beat, of the song feels and sounds quite a bit different than music written under simple or compound time signatures.

For example, in Figure , the pulse is defined by the placements of the half notes in each grouping making the stresses fall on the third beat in the first measure and on the fourth beat in the second measure. In Figure , the beaming of the eighth notes shows where the stresses are to occur — on the first eighth note of each set of beamed notes. The stress pattern does not have to repeat itself from measure to measure — the only thing constant is that there are still five beats in each measure. Figure ONE two THREE four five ONE two three FOUR five. Figure ONE two three FOUR five six seven ONE two three four FIVE six seven. Irregular time signatures have been used regularly throughout history and around the world, including ancient Greece and Persia, and can still be heard in Bulgarian folk music, for example. Modern Western composers and ensembles as diverse as Steve Albini, Beck, Dave Brubeck, June of 44, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin, and Stereolab have all used asymmetrical time signatures in their music.

If the world itself was a perfectly ordered organism, with every living thing on it moving along in perfect time, music might be similar. However, even the healthiest human heart skips a beat now and then, and so does music. The trick for composers and music theorists alike has been to translate these skipped beats into written notation, making such deviations fit naturally into the score. Stress Patterns and Syncopation The underlying rhythmic pulse of music is called the beat. In some ways, the beat is everything. The beat helps determine whether people feel excited, agitated, mellow, or relaxed by music. As a musician, you can feel this natural pulse when you play music and count off the beats.

There are lots of theories about why the brain seems to demand that music be broken up into units of two and three beats, not the least being that the beat of music tends to be similar to the beat of the human heart. See Chapter 4 for more on time signatures. Syncopation: skipping the beat Syncopation is, very simply, a deliberate disruption of the two- or three-beat stress pattern, most often by stressing an off-beat, or a note that is not on the beat. Another way to say this is that downbeats, or accented beats, such as those at the beginning or halfway through a measure, are strong, and upbeats, or unaccented beats, are generally weak.

So if you had a piece of music that looked like Figure , the quarter rest where the natural downbeat is considered the point of syncopation in the music. Chapter 5: Naturalizing the Rhythm Figure This measure would be counted off as ONEtwo- three FOUR 4 œ œ 4 Œ œ The natural stress of the meter has been disrupted — ONE-two- three -FOUR, which is weird, because we want to keep hearing that nonexistent quarter note that would carry the downbeat in the middle of the measure. If you do anything that disrupts the natural beat with either an accent, or an upbeat with no subsequent downbeat being played, you have created a point of syncopation. Syncopation is really tricky. For example, Figure shows a bunch of eighth notes and then a bunch of sixteenth and thirty-second notes. However, look at the notes in Figure Figure This music shows two places where the note placement forces syncopation to occur.

The natural stresses have been shifted over in both measures, resulting in a purposefully disjointed-sounding beat. So, does syncopation involve a carefully placed rest or an accented note? The answer is both. Pick-Up Notes Readers who have taken a poetry class have probably heard of anacrusis. In poetry, an anacrusis is one or more unstressed syllables at the very beginning of a verse that occurs before whatever metrical pattern being employed takes over. Chapter 5: Naturalizing the Rhythm Dr. Seuss was a great lover of anacrusis and used it in many of his classic books, such as What Was I Scared Of? That long poem begins like this: Well. I was walking in the night And I saw nothing scary. For I have never been afraid Of anything. Not very.

Anacrusis works the same way in music, too, although most people outside the world of classical music refer to it as pick-up notes or a pick-up measure. A pick-up measure occurs when you have what looks like an odd or illegal measure at the beginning of a piece of music, as shown in Figure Figure The quarter note standing alone in the first measure is a pick-up note. But a pick-up measure allows us to break that rule. The measure shown in Figure has only one beat in it where there should be three. Because you only filled the jug up a little bit in the beginning, the last measure finishes up whatever was incomplete in the first measure.

Often a song starts with a pick-up measure, but the last measure is a complete, full measure. This is because a lot of the rules that governed music notation and composition prior to the 20th century have relaxed a whole bunch, and more people are happier about this than not. Irregular Rhythms: Triplets and Duplets Irregular rhythms are one example of the challenges that composers face when trying to get their already-composed music written down for others to play. But what if you want to play an odd number of notes, and you absolutely want that odd number of notes to equal one beat? The answer is to play a triplet, which is what you get when you have a note evenly divisible by two equal parts divided into three equal parts.

A quarter note divided into triplets looks like Figure Duplets are used when a composer wants to put two notes in a space where there should be three. An example would be dividing a dotted quarter note into two eighth notes instead of three eighth notes, as you would in a measure of music under a compound time signature. A good way to count duplets is to count the second note in each pair as and instead of assigning it a number value as you would any other beat in compound meter. For example, the measures shown in Figure would be counted out like this: ONE two THREE FOUR-and ONE-and FOUR FIVE SIX Figure Make sure that each duplet is given the same time value as the dotted note it replaced. Music is just as much about communication as it is about making sounds, and in order to really communicate to your audience, you need to grab their attention, inspire them, and wring some sort of emotional response out of them.

The point of tempo is not necessarily how fast or slowly you can play a musical piece, however. What tempo really does is set the basic mood of a piece of music. Music that is played very, very slowly, or grave, can impart a feeling of extreme somberness, whereas music played very, very quickly, or prestissimo, can seem maniacally happy and bright. Prior to the 17th century, though, composers had no real control over how their transcribed music would be performed by others, especially by those who had never heard the pieces performed by their creator. It was only in the s that the concept of using tempo and dynamic markings in sheet music began to be employed. A brief history of time The first person to write a serious book about tempo and timing in music was the French philosopher and mathematician Marin Mersenne. From an early age, Mersenne was obsessed with the mathematics and rhythms that governed our daily life — such as the heartbeats of mammals, the hoofbeats of horses, the wing flaps of various species of birds.

This obsession led to his interest in the still-new field of music theory. In , Mersenne introduced the concept of a universal music tempo, called the minim, which was equal to the beat of the human heart. Since the introduction of written music nearly years before, composers had been trying to find some way to accurately reproduce the timing needed to properly perform their written works. Musicians loved the concept because having a common beat unit to practice with made it easier for individual musicians to play the growing canon of musical standards with complete strangers. Of course, not all hearts beat at the same rate, but most adult hearts beat at around 70 to 75 beats per minute bpm which was close enough to make the minim concept useful.

Chapter 6: Tempo and Dynamics The metronome was first invented in by the French inventor Étienne Loulié. The problem with his invention, though, was that in order to work with beats as slow as 40 to 60 beats per minute bpm , the device had to be at least six feet tall. Like the concept of the minim, the metronome was warmly received by musicians and composers alike. From then on, when composers wrote a piece of music, they could give musicians an exact number of beats per minute to be played. The metronomic markings were written over the staff so that musicians would know what to calibrate their metronomes to.

These markings are still used today for setting mostly electronic metronomes, particularly for classical and avant-garde compositions that require precise timing. Tempo notation Although the metronome was the perfect invention for control freaks such as Beethoven and Mozart, most composers were happy instead to use the growing vocabulary of tempo notation to generally describe the pace of a song. Even today, the same words used to describe tempo and pace in music are used. They are Italian words, simply because when these phrases came into use — , the bulk of European music came from Italian composers. Table lists some of the most standard tempo notations in Western music, usually found written above the time signature at the beginning of a piece of music. Table Common Tempo Notation Notation Description Grave The slowest pace. Very formal and very, very slow. Largo Funeral march slow. Very serious and somber. continued 67 68 Part I: Rhythm: Keeping the Beat Table continued Larghetto Slow, but not as slow as largo.

Lento Slow. Adagio Leisurely. Think graduation and wedding marches. Andante Walking pace. Close to the original minim. Andantino Slightly faster than andante. Moderato Right smack in the middle. Not fast or slow, just moderate. Allegretto Moderately fast. Allegro Quick, brisk, galloping along. Vivace Lively, fast. Presto Very fast. Allegro Figure Allegro means the music would be played at a brisk pace. Play Track 1 on the CD to hear examples of 80 slow , moderate , and fast beats per minute. Just to make things a little more confusing, modifying adverbs such as molto very , meno less , poco a little , and non troppo not too much are sometimes used in conjunction with the tempo notation terms listed in Table Dynamics: Loud and Soft Dynamic markings have to do with how loudly or softly a piece of music is played.

Dynamic marking can be placed at the beginning or anywhere else within a piece of music. For example, in the music shown in Figure , pianissimo pp means that the piece is to be played very softly until you reach the next dynamic marking. The fortissimo ff means that the rest of the selection is to be played very loudly. Figure The dynamic markings here mean you would play the first bar very softly and the second very loudly. or decrescendo decr. In Figure , the long Chapter 6: Tempo and Dynamics Figure The crescendo here means play gradually louder and louder until the end of the hairpin. œ cresc. Figure The diminuendo, or decrescendo, here means play gradually softer and softer until the end of the hairpin. œ One more common marking you will probably come across is a slur.

Slurs look like curves that tie the notes together. Because the hammers have less distance to travel to reach the string, the speed at which they hit the strings is reduced, and the volume of the resulting notes is therefore much quieter and has less sustain. Some pianos have a bass sustain pedal as their middle pedal that works like a sustain pedal but for only the bass half of the piano keyboard. Still other pianos — specifically many concert pianos — have a sostenuto pedal for their middle pedal, which works to sustain one or more notes indefinitely, while allowing successive notes to be played without sustain. The damper pedal can also make for a really muddled sound if too long of a musical phrase is played with the pedal held down. Chapter 6: Tempo and Dynamics Why all the Italian? Since its inception, the piano has been the universal tool of choice for composing music, because almost every note you would ever want to work with is present on the keyboard, right there in front of you.

Most pianos have at least 7 octaves to work with, and concert pianos can have more than 12 octaves. You want to compose music for an oboe? The lower registers of the piano work quite nicely. Pieces written for strings can be easily hammered out in the middle and upper registers. You can blame the fact that the piano was invented by an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori, for the bulk of tempo and dynamic markings being Italian words. In sheet music notation, the entire musical phrase to be altered by use of pedals is horizontally bracketed, with the name of the pedal to be used listed beside or beneath it. If no pedal number is given, then the soft pedal is to be automatically used for the selection. Figure Pedal dynamics show you which pedal to use and how long to hold it down. Table lists some of these. Before the invention of the piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori in , most composers were confined to writing most of their pieces for either the harpsichord or the clavichord; neither instrument had the capability to play both soft and loud sounds easily.

The reason for this is that the basic internal design of both the harpsichord and the clavichord follows the design of a stringed instrument. When a certain key is pressed, the corresponding internal string is plucked by the mechanism. No matter how hard or soft you press the keys of either instrument, the result- Table Notation ing volume is pretty much the same. Therefore, clavichords were used for quiet pieces of music that required lots of vibrato quavering quality to notes that usually comes from a stringed instrument , whereas harpsichords were used for louder, brighter-sounding pieces. The piano incorporates a hammer-and-lever mechanism that strikes each string with the same force as the human finger on the piano key did; this is why the piano is considered a percussive instrument. The piano made both quiet and loud sounds possible on the same instrument, and, therefore, in the same musical piece.

Dynamic Markings for Specific Instruments What It Means Stringed instruments Martellato A short, hammered stroke played with very short bow strokes Pizzicato To pluck the string or strings with your fingers Spiccato With a light, bouncing motion of the bow Tremolo Quickly playing the same sequence of notes on a stringed instrument, as in a piano-violin duet Vibrato Slight change of pitch on the same note, producing a vibrating, trembling sound Chapter 6: Tempo and Dynamics Notation What It Means Horns Chiuso With the horn bell stopped up to produce a flatter, muted effect Vocals A capella Without any musical accompaniment Choro The chorus of the song Parlando or parlante Singing in a speaking, oratory style Tessitura The average range used in a piece of vocal music 75 76 Part I: Rhythm: Keeping the Beat Part II Melody: The Part You Hum I In this part.

n this part you begin to read music. You are presented with the grand staff, with the treble and bass clefs and all the note names. You find out more about how and why different instruments sound like they do. And you take the plunge into half steps and whole steps, the first steps of musical intervals. Eventually, his invention would make it possible for ordinary people to own books, and along the way, sheet music also began being printed for ordinary musicians to own. Soon, people with a little musical know-how could teach themselves all the principles of music theory previously unavailable to those outside the institutions of religion or higher learning.

Once composers learned they could now turn a decent profit by selling multiple, machine-printed copies of their music — instead of one laboriously hand-drawn copy at a time — they began flooding the market with new compositions. All this eventually led to the standardization of sheet music. For years, composers were free to use as many staff lines as they wanted to express notation, but by the s, the 5-line pair of clefs that we use today was gradually becoming universally accepted, at least in Europe. The Clefs Each clef can be thought of as a graph of pitches, or tones, shown as notes plotted over time on five lines and four spaces. Each pitch or tone is named after one of the first 7 letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.

and 80 Part II: Melody: The Part You Hum it keeps on going that way indefinitely, repeating the note names as the pitches repeat in octaves, cycles where the note raises so high that it becomes a higher version of itself. The pitches go up as you go from A to G, with every eighth note — where you return to your starting letter — signifying the beginning of a new octave. The treble clef The treble clef is for higher-pitched notes. It contains the notes above middle C on the piano, which means all the notes you play with your right hand. On the guitar, the treble clef is usually the only clef you ever read. Most woodwind instruments stick solely to the treble clef, as well as high brass instruments and violins. Anything that makes upper-register, or high, sounds is going to have its music written for it in the treble clef. The treble clef is also sometimes called the G clef. Note that the shape of the treble clef itself resembles a stylized G.

The loop on the treble clef also circles the second line on the staff, which is the note G, as shown in Figure Figure The treble clef always tells you where the G is. Figure The notes of the treble clef must be memorized in order for you to read music. There is no way around this. Music written in the bass clef is generally aimed at the lower wind instruments like the bassoon, the lower brass instruments like the tuba, and lower stringed instruments like the bass guitar. Another name for the bass clef is the F clef. It looks a bit like a stylized F, if you use your imagination. The curly top of the clef also partly encircles where the F note is on the staff, and it has two dots that surround the F note, as shown in Figure Figure The bass clef looks a little bit like a cursive F.

w F The notes on the bass clef are also arranged in ascending order, as shown in Figure Figure The notes of the bass clef must also, alas, be memorized. w w w w w w w w w w w w F G A B C D E F G A B C The grand staff and middle C Put the treble and bass clefs together, connected with by something called a bracket, and you get — can we get a drum roll? Ledger lines are lines written above the bass clef and below the treble clef that are necessary in order to connect the two clefs. Middle C is located one line below the treble clef and one line above the bass clef. Put it all together, and the notes flow smoothly from one clef to the other with no interruptions.

Alto and tenor clefs Occasionally, you may come across an animal known as the C clef. The C clef is a moveable clef and can be placed on any line of the staff. The line that runs through the center of the C clef, no matter which line that is, is considered middle C, as seen in Figure C clefs were more commonly used before sheet music was standardized and able to easily accommodate a wide range of tones. Today, the only C clefs in common use are the alto clef, which puts the C on the third staff line, and the tenor clef, which puts middle C on the next-to-the-top line of the staff. The alto clef is most commonly used in writing music for the viola, whereas the tenor clef is used for writing cello music. Chapter 7: The Musical Staff C B }w w w w w w w w w w w E B }w C Figure Notice how changing the position of middle C changes the way the staff looks.

The white keys of the keyboard were assigned the natural letter notes, which turn out to be the notes of the C major scale, beginning with C. The black keys were added much later than the original white keys in order to help build more perfect musical scales on the piano. Robert Moog, inventor, on keyboard alternatives I think sound generation is a mature technology. Between analog and digital technology, you can make just about any sound you can imagine cheaply and easily. The same keyboards that were put into electronic organs 60 years ago, 50 years ago, are being used today, and there is very little difference. They feel the same, and, in fact, the organ keyboards that were developed in feel better than most keyboards that are designed today. I think the field is wide open for developing really sophisticated, really human-oriented control devices. Millions of people know how to play the piano. So new alternate controllers are like that, too.

Designing them is going to be half the job — the other half is going to be musicians developing technique on those new interfaces. The modern piano keyboard is designed with each key, white or black, on the piano separated from the next by one half step or semitone. For example, the difference between the white C key on the keyboard and the black C sharp key is one half step. The difference between the white B key and the white C key is also one half step, because there is no black key between those two notes. This design also corresponds with the layout of frets on a modern guitar, with each fret being separated from the next by one half step. Moving a whole step on the piano or guitar means you move two half steps from your starting position — for example, from the white C key to the white D key, or the black B flat key to the white C key. Half steps and whole steps are intervals Chapter Knowing the difference between whole steps and half steps is very important when working with the patterns used to build scales as you see in Chapter 11 and chords covered in Chapter Chapter 7: The Musical Staff Accidentals are notations used to raise or lower a natural note pitch on the staff by a half step.

Figure Just remember that a sharp looks like a pound, or number, sign. A sharp is placed before a note to indicate that the note is raised a half step higher, as shown in Figure This black key, A sharp, is a half step up from A. A sharp A 85 86 Part II: Melody: The Part You Hum A flat looks like Figure Figure Just remember that a flat looks a bit like a lowercase b. b A flat does just the opposite of a sharp. It lowers the note by a half step, as shown in Figure This black key, A flat, is a half step down from A. Chapter 7: The Musical Staff Figure A double sharp looks kind of like an X, whereas a double flat is just two flats in a row. The double sharp raises the natural note two half steps — or one whole step — whereas the double flat lowers the note two half steps, or one whole step. Last but not least is the natural, shown in Figure Figure A natural cancels out an already established sharp or flat.

The corresponding natural notes on the grand staff have been labeled on the keyboard. Figure The piano keyboard, matched up with the notes from the treble and bass clefs, also known as the grand staff. D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B Treble Clef Bass Clef Notes on the Guitar The trouble with laying out the neck of a guitar against musical notation is that notes repeat themselves all along the neck, and it can get confusing with so many options for playing notes in different ways. Figures through show the notes of the first three frets of the guitar, then the next five, and then the next four.

E B G D Figure The notes of A the fourth E through eighth frets. On many guitars, two dots on the twelfth fret signify the octave, meaning that it is the same note as the string played open, except one octave higher. Here are just a few to get you going — feel free to come up with your own mnemonics memory helpers to help keep things straight. They spell the word FACE, starting at the first space note, F, and heading up to the E in the top space on the staff. Notice that it is the higher-pitched range that babies and small children babble in, that birds sing in, and that pretty much all the happy little things make noise in.

This is why lead instruments are also sometimes called talking instruments. Attack The attack is the very first sound you hear when you hear a note and is possibly the most distinguishing aspect of a note. The attack of a piano is completely different. Each time you hit the key of a piano, a tiny hammer strikes three metal strings simultaneously, producing a beautiful, ringing sound. The guitar also has its own distinctive attack, a sharp little twang when the metal strings are first plucked — a sound definitely less pronounced if the guitar has nylon strings. The different types of strings are partly responsible for the variety of guitar-playing styles by musicians. Electric rock guitars, pop acoustic, and country-and-western songs are usually played with metalstrung guitars because of that nice, crisp, aggressive-sounding twang. Classical, flamenco, and much of folk music use nylon-strung guitars because the attack is much softer-sounding, making for mellower music.

Timbre The harmonic content, or timbre, of an instrument is what determines the middle part, or body, of each played note. The timbre and pitch range of a flute and violin are almost identical, but because one is blown and one is bowed, that initial attack of each separate note is completely different and identifies these instrument by that very first split-second sound. However, the harmonics between some instruments is pretty radically different, simply because of their construction. For example, the harmonic content between a note on a guitar and the same note on a piano are completely dissimilar, because one note on a guitar is one string being plucked, but one note on a piano is actually three strings tuned to three slightly different pitches being hit with a hammer this has to do with harmonics, covered later in this chapter.

Eventually, they had to record samples of the instruments themselves into the synthesizers in order to make flute and violin sounds, for example, distinguishable from one another. Not to mention oboes and tubas. Tones are produced and immediately begin to decay until the next note played starts the process again. Common examples of instruments with an impulsive decay are those produced by plucking or striking, such as the guitar, most percussion instruments, and the piano. A sustained decay is one for which the vibrating column of an instrument, such as the body of a flute, clarinet, or other column-shaped instrument, is excited continuously, so that the sound continues in a more or less steady 95 96 Part II: Melody: The Part You Hum state as long as the note is being played. Instruments producing sustained tones are those that are bowed or blown, such as violins and other bowed stringed instruments, woodwinds, free-reed instruments such as the accordion, and brass instruments.

Building the Band: a Little Bit About Acoustics Next time you go out to see an orchestra or a big band play, or even when you watch one of those late-night show bands perform on TV, take a look at where the performers are sitting in relation to each other. You should notice two things. First of all, especially in an orchestral setting, all the performers playing the same instruments are sitting together. Secondly, notice that the lead instruments are in front of all the other instruments, especially in acoustic performances. This is because of volume and perception: the sound waves from the instruments in the front of the orchestra pit will be heard a microsecond before the rest of the orchestra, and will therefore be perceived as being louder because you hear them a split second before the other instruments. This principle applies to a regular four-piece band setting, too.

If you want your singer to be heard above the guitars, make sure the amplifier carrying his or her voice is placed closer to the audience than the guitar and bass amp. Incidentally, the best place to sit at an orchestral performance is as close to the conductor as possible. Conductors build each orchestra for each performance around where they stand so that they can hear exactly what is being played. This situation makes it pretty easy for a seasoned audio engineer to record an orchestral performance. Chapter 8: Instrument Tone and Color Harmonics Any sound, not matter what the source, is caused by something vibrating.

Without vibration, there can be no sound. These vibrations cause the air particles next to the source to vibrate as well, and those air particles, in turn, cause the particles next to them to vibrate, and so on and so on, creating what we call a sound wave. Just like a wave in water, the further out the sound wave moves, the weaker it gets, until it completely dissipates. If the original vibration creates a strong enough wave, though, it eventually reaches your ears and registers as a sound. These vibrations are analyzed by our brains and registered as music, traffic, birds singing — whatever.

Each complete vibration of a sound wave is called a cycle. The number of cycles completed in one second is called the frequency of the vibration. Frequency is measured in hertz, with one hertz Hz being one cycle per second. One thousand hertz is called a kilohertz and is written as 1 kHz. A high-frequency vibration produces a high-pitched note; a low-frequency vibration gives a low-pitched note. The human hearing range audible range is about 16Hz to 16kHz. The frequencies of notes that can be played on a piano range from The musical note produced by a tuning fork is called a pure tone because it consists of one tone sounding at just one frequency. Instruments get their specific sounds because their sound comes from many different tones all sounding together at different frequencies.

A single note played on a piano, for example, actually consists of several tones all sounding together at slightly different frequencies. But a musical scale contains eight notes, meaning that some of the distance between notes in a scale spans one semitone, and some spans at least two semitones. See Chapter 12 for much more on scales. In other words, some half steps are skipped when building scales. On a piano, the white keys show you the C scale, over and over again. The black keys represent the semitones that are skipped in the C scale. This chapter talks about the difference between half steps and whole steps in music. Half Steps In Western musical notation, the smallest difference between two pitches is the half step, or semitone.

Notice we use the word notation here. Strictly speaking, musical pitch is a continuous spectrum, because it is determined by the frequency of vibration see Chapter 8. Therefore, many other microtonal sounds actually exist between consecutive half steps. In contrast, many Eastern instruments, particularly sitars and fretless stringed instruments, utilize quarter tones. Quarter tones are pitches located halfway between each half step. See Figure for an illustration of this principle. Figure Half steps are identified here to the left and right of the E key on the piano.

Note that every black key on a piano has two names. Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections. Sign up for free Log in. Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search. Music theory for dummies Item Preview. remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. EMBED for wordpress. com hosted blogs and archive. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Publication date Topics Music theory Publisher Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Pub.

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Music theory for dummies: Pilhofer, Michael: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive Upload Sign up | Log in About Blog Projects Help Donate Contact Jobs With Music Theory for Dummies, understanding music has never been easier! Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file. Music Theory For Dummies DOWNLOAD READ ONLINE Author: Michael Pilhofer language: en Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Release Date: Music Theory For Dummies Download Music Theory For Dummies Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle Tune in to how music really works Whether you’re a student, a performer, or simply a fan, this book makes music theory Music Theory For Dummies®, 4th Edition Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., River Street, Hoboken, NJ , blogger.com Copyright © by John Wiley & Sons, 5/11/ · [DOWNLOAD] Music Theory For Dummies PDF eBook Description Tune in to how music really works Whether you’re a student, a performer, or simply a fan, this book makes ... read more

Like the concept of the minim, the metronome was warmly received by musicians and composers alike. These markings are still used today for setting mostly electronic metronomes, particularly for classical and avant-garde compositions that require precise timing. Same with A and A minor. We cover a lot of territory in this book, from discovering the basics of note values and time signatures to dissecting lead lines and adding harmony to a melody to studying the standard forms that much of popular and classical music follow. Improvising with Jazz. Sign up Log in.

So does syncopation involve a carefully placed rest or an accented note? Many people grimace at the sound of music theory. It can conjure up bad memories download music theory for dummies pdf grade school music classes, rattle the brains of college students, and make self-taught musicians feel self-defeated, download music theory for dummies pdf. The name of all the major keys is on the outside of the Circle, while the relative minor keys in lower case letters are all on the inside. The bottom note of a triad is called the root; many beginning music students are taught to think of a triad as being a tree, with the root of a triad being its, well, root. YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.