Revisiting Music Theory

Basic Principles

Alfred Blatter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138915886
• eBook ISBN: 9781317425748
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Revisiting Music Theory: Basic Principles, Second Edition, surveys the basics of music theory and explains the terms used in harmonic and formal analysis in a clear and concise manner. Students will find Revisiting Music Theory to be an essential resource for review or reference, while instructors of introductory theory courses will find in these pages a solid foundation for cultivating musical thinking. Musicians of all kinds—amateur and professional alike—will find great value in augmenting and informing their knowledge of the art of music theory.

The text covers the basic principles of music theory, including:
• Musical notation
• Key signatures and scales
• Intervals, chords, and progressions
• Melodic and harmonic analysis
• Counterpoint and voice leading techniques
• Musical forms and structures

This second edition has been revised and reorganized to promote learning. Each section now includes an all-new selection of exercises, allowing readers to practice key skills and improve understanding.

For students, instructors, and practicing musicians, Revisiting Music Theory offers an indispensable guide to the foundations of musical analysis.

part 1
Notation

The Symbols of Music

1. The Components of Sound and Music

Music is the art of sound and as such possesses the same properties as sound. In musical terms, these are pitch, duration, and loudness.

Pitch is our perception of the relative highness or lowness of a sound.

Duration is the relative length of a sound.

Loudness is the relative strength of a sound.

All of these properties have a common dimension: time. Thus, music is characterized as a temporal art.

From a scientific perspective, pitch is directly related to frequency, which is measured in vibrations per second or hertz (Hz). Likewise, duration or length is measured in seconds while loudness is measured in watts (i.e. joules per second).

Sound also has another property called tone color, tone quality, or timbre, which, for music, is very important. Although not a fundamental component of sound, it is in fact the result of complex interactions between various pitches (harmonics), durations, and loudnesses over time. Scientists describe the timbres of musical instruments as complex waves and understand them to be the sum of many different simple (sine) waves. They know, too, that the distributions of these simple waves and their behavior over time give rise to the many different instrumental and vocal colors and effects found in the music of the world.

Notating the Auditory Experience

In the evolution of notation for Western music, the symbols for pitch came first (about the tenth century). Later, notation was developed for durations (about the thirteenth century) and their relationships in time. Newer additions to our set of musical symbols were indicators for loudness and changes in loudness (seventeenth century) and for tone color (eighteenth century). Changes and modifications to these symbols continue to appear as the content and nature of music continue to evolve.

Review

• The fundamental components of sound and music are pitch, duration, and loudness.

• Another important quality of sound and music is timbre or tone quality.

• Earliest symbols were for the notation of pitch. The notation of durations is newer.

• Notations of loudness and tone color are the more recent additions to our system.

Related Exercises

§ For each sound event listed below, select one or two words (such as high, low, loud, or soft) that you associate with the sound.

Whistling	Bird songs	Truck rumbling by	Fire siren
Cold wind	Thunder	Door closing	Ringtone
Electric guitar	Kittens	Dish washer	Electric razor
Door bell	Cars crashing	Children playing	Traffic jam
Walking on dry leaves	People talking	Helicopter	At the shore
Fans at basketball game	Airplane taking off	Orchestra tuning	Auction
Making espresso	Weather broadcast	Band marching by	In a restaurant

§ What are some everyday words that you use to describe sounds and/or the changes in sound?

2. The Notation of Pitch

Early notated European music was at first associated with (Latin) words, and therefore the symbols for the pitches (notes) were placed on the page along with the text to be sung. The order of the symbols from left to right, like the language, indicated the order in which the sounds were to be produced. The positioning of the notes up or down the page indicated the highness or lowness of the sound to be sung.

The Pitches

Western music uses the first seven letters of the alphabet to name the different pitches. In our system, A is lower than B, and B is lower than C, etc. (In German-speaking societies, the pitch name H is also used.) The fact that all of our music can be represented by using only seven letter names is due to the historical evolution of our Western notation system and the nature of the human ear.

The Special Properties of the Octave

If you play a pitch near the middle of the piano’s range and ask a group of people to sing what has been played, the women (and children) will sing the pitch that was sounded. But most men will sing a pitch that sounds lower because it has half as many vibrations per second as the sounded pitch. In spite of this obvious difference, almost all listeners will agree that both groups sang “the same pitch.” For this reason, we are comfortable with using only one letter for both pitches. We accept two pitches as being (octave) equivalents if one has twice as many vibrations as the other.

Early Western music notation and terminology divided the space between these two similar pitches into seven steps. In order to identify each of these steps, one of the letter names—A through G—was assigned in ascending order to each pitch. When the musical sound that possessed twice as many vibrations as the initial pitch was reached, it proved to be the eighth note. Since it sounded like the first note, it was called by the same letter name as the first note. Because it was the eighth note, its distance from the first note was labeled an octave (from the Greek base okta or the Latin base octo, both meaning “eight”).

Though our modern keyboard pitch system now includes twelve separate pitches within an octave and our musical vocabulary possesses even more pitch names, the name octave has not been discarded. Usually, this is not a problem. However, as in the study of acoustics or music from other cultures, it can at times become a source of confusion, or even an impediment to accurate communications.

In an effort at clarity in his writings on tunings, Harry Partch (1901–1974) referred to the octave as “the two to one” (2/1).

EXAMPLE 1.01 The layout of a modern keyboard, with its characteristic grouping of three black keys alternating with a group of two black keys. (Lower pitches are to the left of higher pitches.) Note the repetition of the pitch names in each octave. The white keys all have letter names, and each letter name has a unique position in the pattern.

The earliest pitch notations dealt only with what we would identify as (typically) the white keys on the keyboard. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on the Use of This Book
• part 1: Notation: The Symbols of Music
• part 2: Melody: Note Following Note
• part 3: Harmony: Note(s) with Note(s)
• part 4: Melodies in Harmony
• part 5: Textures, Structures, Techniques, and Forms
• part 6: Appendices
• Index