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DU 1. Repeat, please!

Remembering

What do you remember about what you did last year in Music lessons?


 (Work in group of 3 with your classmates and brainstorm).

The qualities of the sound

When an object vibrates, your body has a reaction: your eardrum receives that vibration and carries it to your brain.

That is a soundThe world, as you can see, is full of them

       


Each of these sounds has some qualities that make them unique. Let’s learn them:

  • Duration: a sound can last a second or a minute: short or long.
  • Intensity: a sound can scare you or be almost imperceptible: strong or weak.
  • Timbre: it depends on what produces the sound: animal, person, instrument, etc.
  • Pitch: it depends on the number of vibrations of the resounding object: deep and high.

All of these qualities will help us understand how music is done.

In order to check that you have understood it, you can do the following exercise.

Activity about the qualities of the sound.

Read and complete:

The of the objects is the one that becomes sound. These sounds are different according to their

 

These sounds, , are different in terms of .

According to ,, the first sound is longer than the second one.


  This sound is deep (in relation to ), a sound (in relation to duration), a strong sound (in relation to ) and an accordion (in relation to ). 



These sounds    go from to high.

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Notes and rests

To represent sounds in music, we use some signs called notes.

These are the notes we are going to work with:



When there are no sounds, we use the signs called rests.

The scale. Tone and half-tone.

The scale is a group of notes ordered in a rising or descending way.

There are different types of scales, but the most common is the one made up of 7 consecutive sounds.


The one we all know is C major. Why don’t we review it?

 




A tone is the largest distance between two sounds, whereas a half-tone is the smallest distance.


One tone is made up of two half-tones.

In C major scale the distance between the sounds are the following:




We will listen to these audios so as to distinguish a tone and a half-tone:



Tone           

Half-tone   

Dynamics. Tempo. Accent.

Let´s remember the terms referred to dynamics, tempo and accent, because they will be used in the new scores. 



There is a group of terms to refer to the speed to play a song:




Not all the songs are played in the same way: some are more cheerful, some are for dancing, some others are for sleeping, etc.

We use different terms that help us mark that character:


Review

Decide whether these statements are true or false:

Question 1

Dolce means lively.

Question 2

Allegro is an indication of tempo.

Question 3

A half-tone is made up of two tones.

Question 4

A quarter note is made up of two sixteenth notes.

Question 5

The language used for the terms of dynamics is French.

Question 6

mp means half soft

Question 7

Vivo denotes quiet.

Question 8

Giocosso is a term of character.

The voice

Human beings have the voice to produce sounds.

This is the result of our vocal tract where the respiratory system, vocal cords and resonators (mouth and nose) take part.

How it works: the air we take with our respiratory system makes the vocal cords vibrate and these produce the sound that will be amplified in the resonators.




Voices can be classified according to the pitch they cover:

  • Female voices: they can be soprano (the higher ones), mezzosoprano and contralto (the deeper ones).
  • Male voices: they can be tenor (the higher ones), baritone and bass (the deeper ones).
  • Treble voices: these are the voices of boys and girl, that is, your voices.

 

Voices group in a formation called choir. There can be different types: mixed, only for men, only for women, for treble

voices, etc.

Families of instruments

Instruments can be classified in different ways.

Today we are going to classify them according to their resounding principle (that is, how the sound is produced in each of them):

  • Chordophones: the sound is produced when a cord vibrates. In this group we find the violin, cello, piano, guitar, harpsichord, lute, koto, large guitar, Jew’s harp, hurdy-gurdy, banjo, among others.


  •    Aerophones: the sound is produced by the action of the air in a elements that vibrates. Here we have the accordion, clarinet, flute, trumpet, harmonica, tuba, among others.

     
  • Idiophones: the sound is produced by the own vibration of the instrument. Like for example the reco-reco, harpsichords, rattle, castanets, etc.


  •   Membranophones: the sound is produced by the vibration of a membrane when it is struck, like the tambourine, tabor, taiko, kettledrum, bass drum, etc.


  • Electrophones: they need electricity to produce the sound, like synthesizers or computers. 

Instrumental groups

In previous years we learnt the different families of instruments, types of voices and voice groupings.

Now we will work with instrumental groups.


Throughout history instruments were used as soloists or in groups. Among the different groups we can distinguish:

  • Small groups: formations with less than 10 instrumentalists. The name of the groups depend on the number of components, like for example: duet, trio, quartet, quintet, octet, etc. One of the most popular ones is the string quartet (2 violins, viola and cello).

 

  • Big groups:

* Chamber orchestra: it is mainly made up of string instruments, with 20 musicians.

* Band: it is made up of wind and percussion instruments, between 50-70 musicians, but this number is higher nowadays.

* Symphony orchestra: it is made up of string, wind and percussion. It can have between 70-100 musicians and it can sometimes include choirs.

All the groups are directed by an orchestra conductor who uses his/her baton.   
   


The voice, the instruments and their groups

Read and complete:

The voice is the instrument which always goes with us. There are different types of voices (from higher to deeper):

- Women: , mezzosoprano,

- Men: Tenor,  , bajo

- Children: voices.


They all sing together in the .

The instruments are also divided into different families, depending on how the sound is produced:

- : the sound is produced by vibrating a string in different ways, such as the violin, the guitar or the piano.

- : the sound is produced when the air moves, like the clarinet or the horn.

- : the sound comes from vibrating the instrument itself, like the keys.

- Membranophones: the sound is produced by a when struck, like the drum.

- : use electricity to be able to sound, like the .

They all play together in or orchestras, directed by the conductor with his/her great instrument, the .

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