Chapter 4 How Music Works Pitch I Pitch and Melody a The highness or lowness of musical tones i Pitch is the result of sound waves and vibrations 1 The fast the vibration the higher the frequency the higher 2 The slower the vibration the lower the frequency the the pitch lower the pitch b To track the pitch of a song is to track how the notes go up and down from one to the next c Melody a sequence of pitches that defines the identity of a song or other piece of music as it unfolds a tune i Melodic Range The distance in pitch from the lowest note to the highest note ii Melodic Direction The upward or downward movement of the melody as it progresses from note to note iii Melodic contour The overall shape of the melody d Pitch and Melody in Mary Had a little Lamb i The Eagle Dance song of the Northern Arapaho people 1 signature pattern of melodic contour they usually unfold as a series of descending melodic phrases e names and Pitches in Western Music i The prominence of one pitch over others ii The generation of multiple pitches simultaneously where no single iii pitch dominates in order to distinguish between different pitches the western music systems assigns letter names to them 1 A B C D E F G iv Sharpening a note 1 Making it a little bit higher v Flattening a note 1 Making it a little bit lower vi Determinate pitch 1 When the pitch of a tone can be determined with a letter name 2 Example of instruments with determinate pitch a Piano violin flute trumpet and xylophone vii Indeterminate pitch 1 Tones produced that cannot be identified by single pitch 2 Examples of instruments with indeterminate pitch a Shakers cymbals triangles and most kinds of letter name drums 3 the individual tones they produce generate many different pitches that compete for the ear s attention all at once with no clear winner among them viii Curing and causing illness with melody 1 Research on the music of the Warao demonstrates that 2 The shamanistic curing songs consistently have descending melodies 3 The shamanistic inflicting songs consistently conclude with ascending melodies f The Western Pitch system and the octave i is based on the series of 12 determinate pitches that are laid out as the white and black keys on a piano keyboard ii chromatic scale 1 when you all 12 notes from low to high or high to low iii Scale an ascending or descending series of notes of different pitch iv Octave 1 Pelog Slendro 2 Scales and tuning systems in India 1 Is a musical phenomenon that is nearly universally recognized in the world s music traditions 2 Men and women and their octave range a Its existence explains why a man and a woman can sing the exact same melody together even though the woman s voice produces much higher pitches than the man s g Scale vs Mode i a scale essentially comprises a raw sequence of pitches a mode is something more comprehensive and multidimensional ii The rules of the mode tell the musician not only what pitches can be used in a given piece or performance but also offer instructions on how to use each of those pitches iii Rules pertaining to how certain notes of the mode s scale are to be ornamented how to move from one pitch to another in an appropriate manner and which notes should receive relatively more or less emphasis are built into the melodic system of a mode h Common Scales in Western Music Major Pentatonic minor and blues i Major scale 1 Can be produced using the white keys of the piano only starting on pitch c 2 Tonic scale degree 3 Major scales can be created with any of the 12 chromatic pitches as the tonic but only the C major scale can be produced with the white keys only 4 Songs made in a major scale are described as being in a major KEY a Music in major keys tend to happy connations for western listeners i People in the west have been culturally conditioned to perceive major key music in this way ii Pentatonic scale 1 Only five pitches per octave 2 Many varieties exist in Indonesia China Uganda Japan and elsewhere 3 The most common scale a Is a major scale minus the forth and seventh degree i A tonic of C CDEGA iii Minor scale 1 Employ seven pitches per octave 2 The most important between the major and minor scales has to do with the distance in pitch between the 2nd and 3rd scale degrees of each Interval a The distance between any two notes whether in a 3 scale or a melody 4 The interval between the second and third degrees in a major scale is always a bit larger than that between the second and third degrees of a minor scale a It alone can account for conventional Western distinctions between a melody that sounds happy major key and one that sounds sad minor key iv Blues scale 1 Combines features of major minor pentatonic and traditional African scales 2 Staring on pitch C it essentially includes 6 main pitches a C E F F G B 3 E F B blue notes a They account for the blousy sound of music based on this scale 4 The blues scale is present in many other styles of music around the world that have been influenced by blues and other African American traditions a In bluesman Charles Atkins A Funny Way of Asking the melody sung by Atkins is fully rooted in the blues scale i Pitch and Scales in non Western musical systems i In Indonesian gamelan music there are two main pitch systems one 1 slendro and pelog 2 Both of these scales use five notes per octave that is they are pentatonic a Neither is like the western pentatonic scale ii Middle eastern music is built from microtones 1 Microtones are systems of tiny intervals 2 It has 24 pitches per octave iii Ornamentation 1 decoration of the main notes of the melody 2 is a key feature in many kind of music a Arab Indian celtic West African east Asian 1 The way in which a tone or series of tones is played or sung 2 Example which note staccato versus with sustained notes iv Articulation legato v Staccato 1 Italian term for the type of articulation in which the notes are performed in a short clipped manor vi Legato 1 Italian term for a type of articulation in which the tones are sustained j Modulation Moving from One Scale and Key to Another i In some music different sections of a piece will be in different keys that is they will draw their pitches from different scales and or have a different tonic or home note II Pitch Chords and Harmony a Chord a group of two or more notes of different pitches that are sounded b Harmony a chord that makes sense within the context of the …
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