Idiot's Guides - Music Theory

by Michael Miller

  If you’d rather gradually speed up or slow down the tempo, it’s time to learn a new set of Italian markings. There are several you can use, but the most common are ritardando (to gradually slow down the tempo) and accelerando (to gradually speed up the tempo). The following table presents the tempo-changing markings you’re likely to encounter.

  Indicating Tempo Changes

  Indicator

  Means …

  ritardando (rit., retard.)

  Gradually slow down

  rallentando (rall.)

  Gradually slow down

  ritenuto (riten.)

  Hold back the tempo

  accelerando (accel.)

  Gradually speed up

  doppio movimento

  Twice as fast

  a tempo

  Return to the previous tempo

  tempo primo

  Return to the tempo at the beginning of the piece

  Decreasing the tempo using a ritardando marking.

  Hold That Note!

  Sometimes you don’t just want to slow down, you actually want to stop. When you want to ignore the beat and hold a specific note, you use what’s called a fermata, which looks like a little bird’s eye placed on top of a note (or a rest) and indicates a pause in the music. This means you hold that note (or rest) indefinitely or until the conductor cuts you off; then you start up with the next note after the fermata, at normal tempo.

  When you see a fermata, hold the note.

  Getting Loud—and Getting Soft

  You now know how to indicate how fast or how slow a song should be played. How do you indicate how loud or how soft you should play it?

  Dynamic Markings

  A song’s dynamics indicate how loud or soft you should play. In the world of music notation, there is a set range of volume levels, from very soft to very loud, that you use to indicate the dynamic level of a piece of music. These dynamic markings are shown in the following table.

  Dynamic Markings

  Marking

  Dynamic

  Means …

  ppp

  pianississimo

  Very, very soft

  pp

  pianissimo

  Very soft

  p

  piano

  Soft

  mp

  mezzo piano

  Medium soft

  mf

  mezzo forte

  Medium loud

  f

  forte

  Loud

  ff

  fortissimo

  Very loud

  fff

  fortississimo

  Very, very loud

  The dynamic marking, just like the tempo marking, typically appears at the beginning of the song. If you don’t see a dynamic marking, that means the song should be played at a medium volume.

  Use dynamic markings to indicate how loud a song should be played.

  Changing Dynamics

  Dynamics can—and do—change throughout the course of a piece of music.

  To abruptly change the volume level at a specific point, insert a new dynamic marking. It’s okay to indicate dramatic changes in volume; you can go from pp in one measure to ff in the next, if you want.

  To gradually change the volume of a song, you have to use what we call crescendo and decrescendo marks. The crescendo mark (which looks like a giant hairpin, closed at the left and widening to the right) indicates that you gradually increase the volume from your current level to the new level indicated at the end of the crescendo. The decrescendo mark (which looks like a hairpin, open at the left and closed at the right) indicates that you gradually decrease the volume from your current level to the new level indicated at the end of the decrescendo.

  Crescendos and decrescendos indicate gradual increases or decreases in volume.

  Crescendos and decrescendos can be relatively short (just a beat or two) or extend over multiple measures. Obviously, the longer the crescendo or decrescendo, the more gradual is the change in volume.

  TIP

  The way you can remember whether the marking means to get louder or softer is that the wider the “mouth” of the hairpin, the louder the music. When the mouth is at the left and then narrows, that means you start loud and get softer. When the mouth is at the right, that means you start soft and get louder.

  Play It Harder

  If you want a specific note to be played louder than the other notes around it, you’ll want to place an accent mark (>) over that note. When a note is accented, you simply play it louder than a normal note.

  To indicate that a note is to be played very loud (or hit very hard, if you’re writing a percussion part), you place a marcato (^) over the note. This means you play or hit that extra hard—with a good solid punch!

  Two accent marks and a marcato.

  NOTE

  Technically, the marcato is not an accent. The formal definition means to play the note “well marked,” or distinct from the surrounding notes. In practice, however, this typically translates into a loud, long accent.

  You can use three other markings to indicate a sudden accent. These markings, like all Italian notation, are placed under the note in question, as detailed in the following table.

  Italian Accent Markings

  Marking

  Means …

  fz

  Sudden accent (forzando)

  sf

  Forced (sforzando)

  sfz

  Even more forced (sforzando)

  Finding Your Way

  Reading a long piece of music is a little like reading a roadmap. You’ll see various indications in a score that provide direction, to repeat a section or to jump to another section within the song.

  NOTE

  A long piece of music (especially in the orchestral environment) is often called a score. More precisely, the score is the piece of music the conductor uses, which contains all the parts for all the instruments and voices. The music for each individual instrument is not technically a score, although sometimes people refer to it as such.

  When you’re playing a long piece of music, various parts of the song might be indicated by numbers or by letters. For example, you might see the letter A at the beginning of the first verse, and the letter B at the beginning of the second verse, and the letter C at the start of the chorus. This way other musicians can tell you to start at a specific point in the song by saying, “Start at letter B.”

  Alternatively, the measures of a song might be numbered. If this is the case, you can say “Start at measure 16”; everyone will know what you mean.

  In any case, you need some way to determine just where you are in a piece of music; otherwise you’ll always have to start at the beginning—even if all you need to practice is the very end!

  Learn more about the various sections of a song in Chapter 11.

  Repeating Sections

  You can use various shorthand methods when writing or arranging a piece of music. Especially useful are various ways to indicate repeating sections, which saves you the trouble of writing out the exact same music two (or more) times.

  When you have a section of music that should be repeated, you border that section by a pair of repeat marks. One repeat mark indicates the start of the section to be repeated; the other one indicates the end of that section. Unless noted otherwise, you repeat a section only once (that is, you play it twice), and then you move on to the next section.

  Use repeat marks to indicate a range of measures to play twice.

  Sometimes you’ll need to repeat a section but play a slightly different ending the second time through. When you see this in the score—called a first ending and a second ending—you play the first ending the first time through, and then when you repeat the section you skip the first ending and play the second ending.

  Use first and second endings to end a repeated section two different ways.

  You also can repeat a section of a song by returning to a section designated with a sign (c
alled a segno, which is Italian for “sign”). For example, when you see the notation “D.S. al Fine,” you jump back to the segno and play through to the end of the song.

  Another navigation technique uses a separate section of music called the coda. When you insert a coda sign in your music, that indicates that you should jump to the section marked coda. A common navigation technique is notated “D.C. al Coda” or “D.C. al Fine,” where you jump to the beginning of the song and then follow through to the coda or the end (fine). The following table details these and other common Italian navigation markings.

  DEFINITION

  “D.S.” is short for dal segno, which means “from the sign.” “D.C.” is short for dal capo, which means “from the head” or “from the start.” (Capo is Italian for “head”—literally, the top of the chart.)

  Italian Navigation Markings

  Marking

  Means …

  D.C. al Fine

  Go back to the beginning and play through to the end.

  D.C. al Coda

  Go back to the beginning and play to the coda sign; then skip to the coda section.

  D.S. al Fine

  Go back to the segno sign and play through to the end.

  D.S. al Coda

  Go back to the segno sign and play to the coda sign; then skip to the coda section.

  Use the segno (left) and coda (right) signs to navigate a piece of music.

  Repeating Measures

  If you have only a single measure to repeat, you can use a measure repeat sign. Just insert this sign between the bar lines after the measure you want to repeat; musicians will know to repeat the previous measure.

  Use the measure repeat sign to repeat the contents of the previous measure.

  You can use the measure repeat sign in multiple measures. For example, if you have three measures worth of repeat signs, you play the original measure four times (the original time plus three repeats).

  Repeating Notes

  If you’re really lazy, you’ll like the fact that you don’t always have to write each individual note in a piece of music. If you’re repeating notes of the same rhythmic value and pitch, you can use note repeat notation to spare yourself the trouble of writing down all those eighth or sixteenth notes in a row.

  TIP

  You can also use note repeats on dotted notes. When you put a single slash on a dotted note, you play three of the shorter notes. When you put a double slash on a dotted note, you play six of the shorter notes.

  Note repeats (sometimes called reiterated notes) are indicated by drawing slash marks through the main note. One slash mark is shorthand that indicates you add one flag or beam to the original note. So, for example, a slash on a whole or half or quarter note indicates you play eighth notes. A slash on an eighth note indicates you play sixteenth notes. And a slash on a sixteenth note means you play thirty-second notes.

  This shorthand also indicates that you play as many of the shorter notes as necessary to fill the metric space of the original note. For example, if you draw a single slash through a quarter note, you play two eighth notes. (Two eighth notes equal one quarter note.) Two slashes through a quarter note means you play four sixteenth notes.

  The following table indicates some common note repeat values.

  Note Repeat Markings

  Marking

  Equals …

  Repeating Rests

  There’s one last bit of repeat notation you need to know, and it concerns resting, not playing. In much orchestral music, each individual instrument spends a lot of time not playing. Although the composer could indicate all this inactivity by writing lots of individual measures full of whole rests, it is more common (and a lot easier) to indicate the total number of measures the instrument will rest.

  This is done by using a multiple-measure rest sign in a single measure, with a number written above the rest. The number indicates how many measures of rest there are. For example, a multiple-measure rest with the number 6 written above indicates that that instrument is supposed to rest for six measures.

  Use a multiple-measure rest sign to indicate multiple measures of rest—in this example, six measures.

  Exercises

  Exercise 7-1

  Play or sing the following piece of music, paying strict attention to the tempo markings.

  Exercise 7-2

  Play or sing the following piece of music, paying strict attention to the dynamic markings.

  Exercise 7-3

  Play or sing the following piece of music, paying strict attention to the repeat signs and navigation markings.

  The Least You Need to Know

  The tempo of a piece of music can be indicated by traditional Italian markings or by a specific “beats per minute” instruction.

  You indicate changes in tempo by using Italian markings such as ritardando (slow down) and accelerando (speed up).

  The volume level of a piece of music is typically indicated by the use of traditional Italian dynamic markings.

  You indicate changes in dynamics by using crescendo (get louder) and decrescendo (get softer) markings.

  When you want a single note played louder than normal, use an accent mark.

  You navigate an entire piece of music using repeat signs and various Italian markings. (For example, D.C. al Coda means to go back to the beginning, play to the coda sign; then jump to the coda section.)

  PART

  3

  Tunes

  In this part, you discover how to put tones and rhythms together to create a melody and then learn how to add chords to your tunes. You also read about chord progressions and song forms—everything you need to know to create your own songs and pieces of music.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Melodies

  In This Chapter

  Creating a melody from tones and rhythms

  Analyzing existing melodies

  Learning the building blocks of melodic form

  Composing your first melody

  Lesson 5, Track 36

  In the first part of this book (Chapters 1 through 4), you learned all about notes and pitches. In the second part (Chapters 5 through 7), you learned all about note values and rhythms. By themselves, pitches and rhythms don’t amount to much. But when you combine them, they create something wonderful—a melody.

  Melody is defined as a logical progression of tones and rhythms—a tune set to a beat. But pay close attention to that word “logical.” A melody isn’t a random conglomeration of notes; the notes have to relate to and follow from each other. In other words, a melody has to make sense, or else it’s just a bunch of noise.

  All that said, this textbook definition of melody, however precise, doesn’t go far enough for my tastes. To me, a melody is the most memorable part of a piece of music. It’s the song you sing, the notes you hum, the musical line that stays in your mind long after the record is over or the band has stopped playing. The best melodies pack an emotional punch; they make us jump with joy or weep with sadness. When done right, melodies can tell a story without words, or reinforce the meaning of a song’s lyrics.

  Combining Tones and Rhythms

  If you think back to Chapter 1, you’ll remember how we discussed various ways to describe the tones in the song “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” We finally settled on the traditional labeling of tones using the letters A through G. Each tone in the song is assigned a letter corresponding to its precise pitch; anyone reading the letters knows which tone to sing or play.

  Assigning tones, of course, is only half the story. When you sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” you give each tone a specific rhythmic value; each tone takes up a specific place in time. The rhythm of the song is described by using different note values, the half notes and quarter notes that we call music notation.

  By combining the pitch values with the rhythmic values, we can now notate the entire melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The notes on the staff tell us what pitches to sing; the note values tell u
s how long to sing each pitch.

  The result looks like this:

  The complete melody for “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

  All melodies are described using similar notation. You set the key signature and the time signature up front, and then fill in the notes of the melody from there. Naturally, you have to arrange the notes within measures, with each measure holding the appropriate number of beats. When you’re done writing down the notes, you’ve written your melody.

  Common Melodic Techniques

  Every song—every piece of music—has a melody. Some longer pieces (such as much orchestral music pieces) have multiple melodies. Some melodies consist of multiple parts, with different parts repeated in different parts of the song. No matter how the music is constructed, the melody is the heart of the song—the part you should be able to sing or hum or whistle all by itself, with no other instruments needed.