Jonathan Shaw
  • Music Appreciation Spring 2020 (Blackwood)
    • Homework
    • Syllabus & Defining Music Appreciation >
      • Activity : Judging Music
    • 1/30 Instrumentation Class 1 >
      • Instrumentation Follow-Up
    • 2/11 >
      • Texture
    • 2/13
    • 2/18
    • Melody >
      • Evolution of a Genre : Example Assignment >
        • Week 5 Assignment : Evolution of a Genre Assignment
    • 2/25
    • Quiz
    • Rhythm
    • 3/10
    • Virtual Week 1: Harmony >
      • Extra Harmony Material
    • Film Music
    • Sampling
    • Sampling Follow Up
    • The Blues
  • ONLINE Music Appreciation Fall 2020
    • Week 1
    • Week 2
    • Week 3
    • Week 4
    • Week 5 >
      • Evolution of a Genre : Example Assignment
      • Week 5 Assignment : Evolution of a Genre Assignment
    • Week 6 >
      • Film Music
      • Sampling
    • Week 7 >
      • Sampling Follow Up
      • Survey
  • Brass Methods
    • Fingering/Position Test
  • Fall 2019 Honors Appreciation
    • Day 1 >
      • Syllabus & Defining Music Appreciation >
        • Activity : Judging Music
    • Day 2
    • Characteristics of Music - Part 1
    • Instrumentation
    • Texture
    • Melody >
      • Isn't She Lovely
    • Harmony
    • Rhythm
    • Song Meaning / Analysis
    • Artistic Intention
    • Evolution of a Genre : Example Assignment >
      • Assignment : Evolution of a Genre Assignment
    • Song Form
    • Genre Thoughts
    • Sampling
    • Film Music
    • Movie Projects (Examples)
    • Early Blues
    • New Page
  • Biography
    • Resume/C.V.
  • Aural Theory II
    • Page 2
    • Practice Test
    • Final Days
  • Aural Theory I
    • Reading Material
    • Tuesday 9/4
    • Class 2 : 9/11
    • Class 3 : 9/13
    • 9/18
    • 9/20 >
      • Matching the Pitch Homework
    • Quiz Listening
    • Class 10/2 & 10/4
    • 10/9
    • 10/11
    • 10/18
    • Dictation Practice
    • 6/8 Piece
    • BassLine Singing
    • FINAL MATERIALS
  • Music Fundamentals
    • Homework
    • Class 2 : 9/11 >
      • Melody
      • Harmony
      • Intro to Rhythm
      • Instrumentation
      • Instrumentation Chart / Song Map
    • Class 3 : 9/18 >
      • Quiz
      • Matching Pitches
      • Matching the Pitch Homework
    • Class #4 : 9/25 >
      • Rhythm
      • More Rhythm....
      • Song Form
    • Class #5 : 10/2
    • Class #6 : 10/9
    • Class #7 : 10/17
    • Class #8 : 10/23 >
      • ID'ing Basslines
    • Class 9 : 10/30
    • Class #10 11/6
    • Mid Term Project
    • Mid Term Project Due Dates
    • Class 12 : 11/13
    • Class #13 : 11/20
    • Class 14 - 11/26
    • Class 15 : 12/4
    • Class 16 : FINAL
  • Music Fundamentals for Sound Engineers
    • Week 1
    • Week 2
    • Week 3
    • Week 4
    • Week 5
    • Week 6
    • Week 7
    • Week 8 >
      • Notation Practice - Test
    • Week 9
    • Week 10
    • Week 12
    • Week 13
    • Week 14
    • Week 15
  • Materials
  • Recordings/Links
  • Education
  • Contact

Tuesday 2/21

Objectives:

1. Timbre Listening Exercise
2. Instrumentation VS. Texture
3. Harmony
4. Timeline of Harmony
5. Scales & Chords
​

​
Assignments:
​
DUE:  Texture HW

Timbre Listening Exercise ​

For the Song List, Try to decipher how many Timbres you are hearing in the song.  We will Listen to the first 1-2 minutes of each selection. 
​
  • The ultimate point is to come up with a number, so you don't necessarily have to name the instruments (although this is good...) , but tally every time you are hear a new timbre​
  • Count Every different Timbre you hear ! Even if it is not present the entire time.  ​
  • Be specific when you are tallying.... For example, you might hear an electric guitar, and an acoustic guitar, even though these are both guitars they are different timbres. (also for male vs. female vocals etc.) ​
  • Name the instruments if you can! 

For Each Each Song   :  Song Name,  Number of Instruments/Diff. Timbres,  List of Inst. (best you can do), Genre
Song List
1.    The Needle and the Damage Done - Neil Young
2.    Im Through With Love - Chase Sanborn
3.    Between The Bars  - Elliot Smith  
4.    Love Yourself  - Justin  Bieber  
5.     I Could Die For You  -   Red Hot Chili Peppers 
6.    I Was Doin Alright  -   Dexter Gordan
7.    Mrs.   Jackson    -  Outkast
8.   Creep   -   Radiohead
9.   Something About Us    -    Daft Punk
10 .    Just The Two of Us    -   Bill Withers
11.   Fantasy   -  Earth Wind and Fire 
12.  Let it Be    -    Beatles  
13.    Eleanor Rigby  -   Beatles
14.     LandSlide   -    Fleetwood Mack
15.    Kissing My Love    -   Bill Withers  
16.   It aint What Cha' Do   -    Clayton Hamilton Orchestra
?'s To Think About 
  • What factors make it harder to decipher a # of Timbres
​
  • Are there Specific Timbres you prefer to others?   
  • How Many Timbres is too Many? ----->
    •  What do WE (general) like?, is there a standard ? Different For everybody?
    • what do you think is the 'average' number of Timbres we would typically hear on the radio? 
​
  • Can we relate anything about Instrumentation /  the Textures created to Genre? 
​
  • Generally speaking, are we thinking about Instrumentation / the individual instruments when listening to a song? ​

Instrumentation VS Texture ​

deals with dissecting what a song is made of  -  What physical Instruments / Timbres are contained within the musical Example

Whereas ....

Texture
Is the the final product of that combination of Timbres - The byproduct of mixing together many unique timbres
Example 

This shirt has a "soft" texture,  but is is not made up of "soft"   -    It is made of Cotton  /  Polyester threads

​

A Song may have a " Folky"  or "Country" Texture, but it Doesn't contain   " folk,"    -    It contains Violin,  Guitar,  Upright Bass, Vocals etc.   ​
Example

A cookie might taste "Sweet,"  But not everything in it is sweet -   it chocolate/ sugar, but it also has flour, salt, butter ETC. 

BUT

​The final product comes out sweet 
​Pop-Folk  Texture

We wouldn't necessesarliy listen to any of these particular instruments individually  - or even in pairs   -   
......
put together in the proper combination, and played in the right style, they Compliment each other 

SO....

The Texture,   is a result, or byproduct,  of the combination of individual Timbres (aka Instrumentation)

This is leads us to a larger concept in music (and really , all art)  where many different parts come together to create a unique

Texture with 1 Instrument

Thin Texture - Scarlatti

Bach

String Quartet

Thick Texture - Debussy

Functional Harmony

Harmony :  Combination of simultaneous Pitches

This does not specify if the simultaneous pitches sound Good/Right or Bad/Wrong Together -  it simply means multiple notes played/sounded simultaneously

HOWEVER   
many times when we say harmony, it is implied that we mean FUNCTIONAL HARMONY , which is harmony that sounds good/right


RULE OF THUMB:  All Music on the Radio uses Functional Harmony ( The point of the radio is for A LOT of PEOPLE to listen to the station == Good Ratings)

This is the type of Harmony we would learn in school or private lessons

I.E.  :  Major/Minor Scales   ,  Major/Minor Chords   etc.

The difference between FUNCTION HARMONY   and   NON FUNCTIONAL HARMONY is drastic and can be heard IMMEDIATELY
(Generally we would not even hear this unless we seek them out...)
Functional Harmony 
Non - Functional 
Classical Vocal Music
 Classical Piano Music
Jazz 
Pop??
There are very few examples of this type of    Harmony/Music   in Popular Music    Genres ( i.e.  R&B  /  Rock  /  Hip Hop  / Country Pop etc.)     -
We see it much more in Classical / Jazz music Where there is more experimentation
​
This is for obvious reasons as most people would not like listening to these examples (myself included!!)
 It is a very small group of people who enjoy this type of music that is
lacking  in conventional functional harmony!  

Timeline of Harmony

Functional Harmony   -  how do we know what notes sound good together?


AND...

HOW did we arrive standard for what sound's Right (i.e. 'right' is the mostly the same for everyone)

There are a couple answers for this question.....


All pitches are made by a frequency or sound wave

The Range of the pitch  (high vs. low) is dependent on the speed of the sound wave

FAST =  HIGH             SLOW  =    LOW

Unit of Measurement 
Hertz    or  Hz

Hertz gives us a numerical value for how many cycles per second a sound wave completes 
 MORE CYCLES = FASTER SOUNDWAVE


Tone Generator
​
​So if we think of 2 tones together ,  or ,  2 Frequencies / sound waves together  


SOME Frequencies  sound better together because of how their sound waves actually line up  
Picture
Picture
The other is simpler...


We (all of us, others before us)  have been hearing the same notes put together for our whole lives , and those notes have been the same for along time before us

Pentatonic Scale
(****remember from the movie howard Goodall Talks about the Pentatonic Scale - a group of 5 notes that all civilizations have in common 

These notes have been drilled into us for our entire lives....   Marry had a Little Lamb,  Twinkle Twinkle... Alphabet...

Bobby Macferran Pentatonic Scale

The Pentatonic scale is a small example of how our ears have been trained to be partial to certain groups of notes when they are put together
(Some people say it is actually genetic  -  it is in our DNA that certain notes sound better together than other)


We have all been exposed to music that abides by all the same basic rules , and have trained our ears to know what
notes sound good together and what sounds bad according to those rules 


When talking specifically about what notes/pitches sound good when played together, we break it down into 2 categories:


Scales and Chords

Scale

  • Musical Scale:   In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch.

OR

A group of notes played in succession that sound Good/Right together 

This is another concept that we take from the greeks

  • The greeks had specific groups of notes that they believed when played together represented and would even inspire certain emotions when humans heard them 

They called these MODES
  • They believed in this so much that they would use these groups of notes to compose songs 
Depending on the USE for the song (celebration, mourning, sporting, war)
they would choose notes only from the appropriate mode


This is also something that we take from the Greeks, as even until this day we associate Major Scales/Chords with Happy and Minor Scales/Chords with Sad
Picture

Chords

Where scales deal with groups of notes played in succession, Chords refer to notes that are played/ sounded simultaneously

 A Chord is  :   3 or more notes simultaneously 

Think of the timeline of Harmony - We started out with just one melody line of Gregorian chant,  Then they added a Drone, then a second line of Melody, giving us 3 separate notes sounding at one time. this gives us a chord!

Many of the examples of innovation in that timeline were attempts to figure out how to successfully (in a way that sounds good) put scales with chords.  


If we think of 2 components of a song :    Melody and Harmony  
in a Given Pop song  these will be represented by a vocal melody, and a chordal instrument (such as piano or guitar)
Picture

Familiarity VS. Contrast

 Familiarity in Harmony

Harmony is one big way artists and composers provide familiarity in music....

The reason some notes sound good together is because we are familiar with the sound  .. WE are used to it and we are comfortable with how it sounds

Think of how many Major/Minor Chords the average person has heard over the course of their lifetime
(Every song you or I have ever heard contains these - wit the exception of song with non functional harmony)

 When we hear major and minor chords in the song, this is not the first time we are hearing that chord.   we have heard it many times before!

Therefore we are already familiar with the song ( even if it is a small aspect! )

One Important Device in Music for creating Familiarity is the Chord Progression
​


Chord Progression:   A Series of Chords played in Specific Order


Examples:

All of Me

Hello

Both songs repeat the Chord Progression right from the start of the song 

This gives us a musical home and some familiarity before the vocals come in - now that we have that home established we can focus on the melody and lyrics

​Further Repitition  : Both songs are actually written with the same chord progression! 
(The sound a little different because they are in different ranges as adele sings higher)

So we have 2 aspects of 
repetition:  (1)   The progression repeating within the song,  (2) and the progression repeating from Other Songs

This happens a lot in popular music...
Proudly powered by Weebly