What is MUSIC?
We all love some kind of music – and everyone’s opinion of what is GOOD music differs, but how do we define music? What makes it “music” and not noise?
Let’s make this simple:
Definition of Music
Music is Organized Sound
How Do We “Organize” Sound?
Sound can be organized and become music in the following ways:
- Rhythm (How Long a Pattern Lasts)
- Pitch (How High or Low A Sound Is)
- Dynamics (Volume: How Loud or Soft A Sound Is)
- Timbre (Quality or Type of Sound Created)
- Tempo (How Fast or Slow A Pattern Goes)
- Articulation (The Way A Sound Starts and Ends)
Every piece of music and song incorporates all of these topics, but we are going to start out with the two most important and basic: Pitch & Rhythm.
What is Pitch?
Pitch is how we measure how high or how low a sound is! There are a lot of other words you might hear when someone is talking about pitch: these include “tone” “intonation” “note”.
When someone is singing “in tune” – they are singing the correct pitches!
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[little video about science behind pitch]
THE STAFF
We show PITCH in music on a STAFF.
A staff has four lines and five spaces.
When we put a NOTE on a line or a space on the staff, the staff helps us to know how high or low the pitch is!
What is Rhythm?
Rhythm is made up of patterns of sound – TIME
a BEAT is the constant measurement of time in music, and then we can break a beat into smaller parts (this is called subdividing)
Tools we use: metronome
Measurement of Beat: Beats Per Minute (how many times a beat occurs in one minute)