#music

Topics tagged "music".

• Pitch

  How high or low a tone sounds, set by its frequency, and why the twelve-tone octave repeats all the way up and down the keyboard.

• Interval

  The distance between two pitches, measured in semitones, and the reason some gaps sound sweet and consonant while others sound tense.

• Scale

  An ordered ladder of pitches within an octave — like the major scale's W-W-H-W-W-W-H pattern — that supplies the palette of notes a piece draws from.

• Chord

  Three or more pitches sounded together, most often built by stacking thirds into a triad — and whether that triad sounds major (bright) or minor (dark).

• Harmony

  Chords moving in sequence, building and releasing tension, with the I–IV–V–I progression as the textbook arc from home to away to home.

• Rhythm

  The organization of music in time — beats grouped into measures by a time signature, ticking past at a tempo set in beats per minute.

• Circle of Fifths

  The twelve keys arranged in a ring by ascending fifths, so that neighbors share almost all their notes and sharps or flats accumulate one step at a time.

• Key Signature

  The set of sharps or flats a piece carries, declared once at the start, that pins the music to a particular key and its home note.

• Mode

  The seven scales you get by starting the major-scale pattern on each of its different notes, each rotation carrying its own distinct mood.

• Music Theory

  The grammar of pitch and time — how a handful of tones and beats combine into scales, chords, keys, and the feeling of motion we call music.