Music Vocabulary

• Crescendo - gradually getting louder
• Decrescendo - gradually get softer
• Dynamics - volume in music
• Choral Music - music for voice
• Soprano - framing high voice part in choral music and highest female voice part
• Alto - lowest female voice part
• Bass - lowest male voice part
• Tenor - the highest male voice part
• Conductor - leader of the orchestra
• Orchestral music - music for orchestra, with a full range of instruments, including woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion
• Wind instruments - instrument that makes a sound because of the vibration of air (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, tuba)
• Brass instrument - A musical instrument made from brass, such as a trumpet or trombone.
• Percussion instrument - A musical instrument that produces sound by striking the body of the instrument.
• String instrument - A musical instrument that produces sound by vibrating strings.
• Orchestral score - A score that is used to guide the performance of an orchestra.
• Orchestra - A large collection of instruments
• Chamber music - A musical work for a small group of musicians, typically consisting of strings, woodwinds, and/or brass.
• Forte - Strong/loud
• Motive - a small collection of notes that frequently repeat themselves
• Symphony - a piece of music made for an orchestra
• Piano - soft
• Rhythm - the organization of sound in time
• Beat - a regularly recurring sound in a piece of music, usually a rhythmic pattern
• Tempo - the speed at which music progresses
• Accelerando - increasing speed, tempo, or volume of a piece of music.
• Decelerando - gradually decreasing in tempo
• Meter - the number of beats in a measure of music (duple, truple, quadruple)
• Downbeat - The first beat of a bar.
• Measure - a single unit of time featuring a specific number of beats per minute (bpm)
• Bar - a segment of music bounded by vertical lines, known as bar lines
• Accent - an emphasis placed on a specific note
• Time signature - the indication of the number of beats in a measure of music.
• Pickup - a note which precedes the first downbeat of a phrase or section of music
• Compound meters - A meter that has two or more beats per bar.
• Subdivision - to divide the beat, into two or more parts, each having a different rhythm
• Timbre (tone color) - The quality of sound produced by the instrument or voice.
• Pitch - position of a single sound in the complete range of sound frequencies.
• Scale - the basic structure of a piece of music.
• Major scale - a diatonic scale which sounds positive and happy.
• Minor scale - a heptatonic in scale that sounds negative and sad