Enjoyment of Music Section 1 Summary

Every melody in a piece of music is different in how it moves up and down. The distance between two pitches is called an interval. The parts that make up a melody are called phrases. The climax in a melody usually represents a high point in the piece of music. In harder pieces of music there can be more than one melody playing at the same time. Melody is the basic piece of the puzzle between the person that wrote the music and listener. Rhythm is what moves music forward in time. A Meter keeps the flow of the rhythm in music organized by using patterns of rhythmic pulses. The first accented beat of each pattern is called a downbeat; measures most of the time begin with a strong downbeat. Compound meters split each beat into three instead of two. Some pieces begin with a downbeat instead of an upbeat. There are times when music has no real beat or meter you can call it non metric. Harmony tells you what is happening in the music, or togetherness of the music. Harmony is also a combination of sounds all at once. Harmony decides the relationship of intervals and chords. Chords are built from a scale, or a connected series of pitches. A scale is a specific collection of pitches put in ascending and descending order. Most music is based on major or minor scales, which is where melody and harmony came from. In most music the first note of the scale is a base which others move around. Dissonance and consonance are the tension and release in a piece of music. An octave is an interval reaching eight notes of scale and is divided into twelve half steps. Made up of the twelve half steps is the chromatic scale, while made up on the seven whole and half steps that make up major and minor scales is a diatonic scale. A sharp raises the tone of the music by a half step, while a flat lowers it by a half step. Microtones are intervals smaller than half steps they are the other scale types that are used around the world. Built on the first scale tone is the