Music Theory

Knowing commonly used musical terms will help you communicate more efficiently and effectively with other musicians. This will create a pleasant atmosphere for the sake of productivity and creativity with fellow musicians. The difference between a common universal understanding of musical terms and definitions and not having a common universal understanding of musical terms and definitions could easily mean the difference between a fluent and productive session or conversation with fellow musicians or a stagnant and unproductive frustrating experience with fellow musicians.

Definitions

1. Sound - sound travels invisibly through the air and is notated, picked up, heard and perceived by the human ear.

2. Pitch - pitch classifies sound according to there frequencies.

3. Rhythm - The arrangement of sound in time, time is divided into intervals to measure beats according to time signatures.

4. Time Signature - A numerical fraction placed on a musical staff. The numerator is the number of beats per measure and the denominator represents the value of a note getting one beat.

5. Measure - Short movement in music, music contained between two bar lines on a musical staff. Measures repeat a pattern of musical beats.

6. Melody - The combination of notes with rhythm forms a melody.

7. Harmony - A Harmony will occur when two or more notes sound simultaneously.

8. Chords - Three or more notes sounding simultaneously.

9. Key - The tonal center of a piece or excerpt designated by the tonic note.

10. Tonic Note - The first note of a musical Scale.

11. Musical Scale - An ascending or descending series of notes. The natural scale consist of 7 notes.

12. Intervals - The difference in pitch between two different notes.

13. Arpeggio - A broken scale, usually the first, third and fifth notes in a scale.

14. Octave - The interval between one musical note and another with half or double the frequency. The musical alphabet has 12 notes. The 13th note is the octave of the first note and then the notes repeat again.

15. Music Notation - A universal standard of writing music to distinguish from audio recordings to a visual representation. Sheet music is a perfect example of Music Notation.

16. Tempo - A rate of Movement in time. 100 Beats per Minute is an example of a Tempo. A Tempo is Precise.