Listening to Music

HOM 165 Week 1

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How do you listen to music?

🞆 What do you listen for?

🞆 Passive vs. active listening
🞆 Different perspectives from composers or performers?

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 Questions for thought
How does music communicate meaning?
How might a composer portray heartbreak? Joy? Fear?
Surprise?
How might a composer maintain coherence in a long
piece?

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🞆 Music is found in every human society.

🞆 Each music culture has its own particular grammar.

🞆 As infants, we learn to identify
(and make use of) relevant
sounds.
🞆 We learn to disregard others.
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 Engaged Listening
🞆 Hearing happens automatically.
🞆 Engaged listening requires mental focus.
🞆 Engaged listening is a four-part process that involves:
🞆 attentiveness
🞆 analysis
🞆 interpretation
🞆 inner awareness
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 To follow a conversation in a noisy room
you will:

🞆 Focus your attention on speaker’s location.

🞆 Single out the unique quality of the speaker’s voice, tune out
others.
🞆 Use context to fill in what you missed.
🞆 Follow facial expression and gestures for additional
information.
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The Elements of Music

🞆 Melody
🞆 Rhythm
🞆 Harmony
🞆 Timbre
🞆 Texture
🞆 Form
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🞆 What is emphasized? Melody,
rhythm, harmony, timbre, or
texture?

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Performers rely on sonic road maps to navigate
their way through a composition.

Listeners also use road maps.

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Melody

A unit of pitches (or tones) sounded in succession.

The tune, the part of the composition you can sing.

A sentence in tones.

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 Melodies portray emotions

Movement between adjacent tones (conjunct motion) might represent

calmness.

Leaps between pitches (disjunct motion) might represent vigor or anxiety.

Melodies that progress slowly downward often suggest relaxation or

melancholy.

Melodies that move upward often represent resolve or optimism. 11

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 Components of Melody: Intervals
The space between two consecutive tones is an interval.
• Step intervals
• Two consecutive tones close in pitch.
• In scale order, such as do – re
• Leap intervals
• Two consecutive tones significantly different in pitch.
• Not in scale order, such as do – sol

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Conjunct motion
• Occurs in melodies with step intervals.
• Narrow range (distance between highest and lowest pitches).
• May convey calm emotion.

Disjunct motion
• Occurs in melodies with leap intervals.
• Wide range
• May convey anxiety or excitement.
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 Melodic structure
• A phrase is “a sentence in tones.”
• Each phrase has a point of arrival or cadence.
• A singer might breathe at the cadence.
• Phrases ending on the tonic harmony sound finished.
• Phrases not ending on the tonic harmony sound unfinished.

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 Major Scale:
Ascending Descending
do—re—mi-fa—sol—la—ti-do do-ti—la—sol—fa-mi—
re—do
W W H W W W H H W W W H
W W

Natural Minor Scale:

Ascending Descending
do—re-me—fa—sol-le—te—do do—te—le-sol—fa—me-re16
—do
 MAJOR SCALE—
do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti (do)
🞆 Each tone has an emotional tendency/personality.

🞆 “Do” (the home tone or tonic) and “sol” (the dominant)

represent stability and rootedness.

🞆 Other scale degrees, particularly “ti” and “re,” have action

tendencies.
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They generally long to return to “do.”
 CHROMATIC SCALE

The Western scale is divided into twelve equidistant

steps called half-steps (or semitones).

A scale that contains all twelve pitches is called a

chromatic scale.

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Name the tune

Create your own notation for a familiar tune, what music

elements should you consider?
Share your notation with the class or your neighbor.

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 Western Musical Notation I
🞆 Pitch is indicated by placing symbols (called notes) on a five-
line staff.
🞆 Clefs—treble and bass are most common—indicate range.

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 Western Musical Notation II
🞆 Notes of longer duration have empty note heads, shorter
ones are black. Very short notes add “flags.”
🞆 A time signature shows the meter and which type of note gets
the beat.

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 Melody in the non-Western World: North India

🞆 Melodies are based on ragas.

🞆 A raga is a collection of tones. Each tone has a name: sa–re–
ga–ma–pa–dha–ni–sa.
🞆 Ragas are associated with specific emotions or spiritual states.
🞆 The distance between the tones, except for the interval
between sa and pa, may be slightly larger or smaller from one
raga to the next.
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 North Indian Melody

🞆 Rules govern the way melodies are formed:

🞆 Ragas may be characterized by the movement between tones.
🞆 Melodic sequences may require that tones be altered, skipped over,
repeated, or left out.
🞆 The ascending melodic form of a raga may be different from its
descending form.
🞆 Ragas can be distinguished by melodic emphasis or characteristic
melodic combinations 23
 Chatuttal Mauj-Khatmlaj raga
Ravi Shankar (sitar) & Ali Akbar Khan (sarod)
The music begins with
an improvised and
rhythmically free
section known as
alapana (or simply, alap).

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0:00 Music begins with the tambura drone on the pitches “sa” and “pa.”
0:05 The sarod player strums his open strings. Sitar follows.
0:09 The sarod introduces the raga tones, which are similar to a major scale. The 4 th
degree (“ma”) may be raised; the 7th (“ni”) may be lowered.
0:18 The sitar follows. Notice the tone color difference between sarod and sitar.
0:33 A conversation between the two instrumentalists.
1:02 Sarod embarks on extended improvisation.
1:40 Sitar takes over. Notice the raised 4th scale degree at 1:48.
2:00 Sitar moves down the scale.
2:17 Sarod enters, sitar answers. Sarod continues. Higher tones are presented. 26
3:33 The two play in unison, introducing a pre-composed melody.
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Ravi Shankar explains Indian classical music

The Kennedy Center

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 Rhythm
• How music is organized in time.
• Patterns of sounds and silences.
• Timing of sounds: long and short,
fast and slow.

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 Components of Rhythm
• Beat
• Meter
• Tempo

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 Beat
• Most basic time unit in music.
• Musical heartbeat, organizes the musical flow.
• The part of the music to which you tap your feet or dance.
• Quantifies the duration of musical sound.

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Meter patterns
• Repeating patterns of strong and weak pulses.
• Recurring strong pulse is the downbeat.
• Each downbeat is followed by one or more upbeats.
• Each group of one downbeat + upbeat(s) is called a measure.

“Amazing Grace”

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Duple meter
• Recurring pattern of one downbeat + one upbeat.
• Marches, most popular songs are in duple meter.

Triple meter
• Recurring pattern of one downbeat + two upbeats.
• Waltzes are in triple meter.

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Tempo
• Speed or pace of the beat pattern.
• May remain constant throughout a composition OR
• May speed up or slow down.
• Italian terms are often used in concert programs, such as:
Adagio (at ease)
Andante (walking tempo)
Allegro (lively)

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Interlocking Kotekan Patterns of Balinese Kecak

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Harmony
Two or more different pitches heard at the same time.
Ex: chords strummed on a guitar or two people singing
different tones.
May be consonant (stable) or dissonant (seeks stability or
resolution).

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Timbre
• Specific tone color of an individual sound.
• Combination of three factors:
• Instrument size
• Instrument material (what it is made of)
• How sound is produced/style of playing
• Orchestration: combination of instruments to create a
soundscape.

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Introduction to Organology

The study and classification of musical instruments

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Musical Texture
• How different musical parts fit together.
• Blend of musical layers heard at the same time.
• Five textures:
• Monophony
• Polyphony
• Homophony
• Heterophony
• Biphony
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Monophony
A single musical line performed by one person or a
group in unison.
Without accompaniment
Without harmony

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 Homophony
A melody with supporting sounds, chordal accompaniment.
In the Western tradition, most hymns, folk tunes, and popular
songs are set in a homophonic texture.

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 Polyphony
Independent musical lines heard at the same time.
Simplest kind of polyphony: round or canon. Ex: “Row, Row,
Row, Your Boat”
More complex polyphony: melodies interweave, may or may
not start together.

Ex.: Palestrina’s Kyrie

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 Heterophony
Single melody performed slightly differently.
Ex: One performer embellishes the melody or changes the
rhythm slightly.
Uncommon in Western art music.
Heard often in Native American or Middle Eastern music.

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 Biphony
Two separate lines: melody and drone

Often found in world music repertories

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 Form
Overall structure in a piece of music
Organization of musical elements into cohesive composition
Composers use
repetition
contrast
development

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Alphabet letters used to identify
Repeated parts (A A)
Contrasting parts (A B C)
Development parts (A A’ A”)

Traditional Western art music forms:

Binary (two parts: AB)
Ternary (three parts: ABA)
Rondo (refrain alternates with new material: ABACA)

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Binary form
Ternary form

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 “Summertime”
from the opera Porgy and Bess (1935)
Texture: Homophonic

Meter: Quadruple

Form: Two verses

Melodic phrases follow
ABAC pattern
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Key Terms

beat harmony raga

binary heterophony range
homophony rhythm
biphony sarod
conjunct motion Kecak (pronounced ke-chak)
scale
consonant kotekan sitar
melody tempo
disjunct motion
meter ternary
dissonant texture
drone monophony timbre
form octave tonic
pitch (tone)
polyphony
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Key Terms for Organology

Organology
Flute, reed, trumpet
Aerophone
Zither, lute, harp
Chordophone
fret, fretted, fretless
Idiophone
Lamellophone
Membranophone

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