"piano. Sostenuto In music, sostenuto (, ; Italian 'sustained') is usually a very legato style in which the notes are performed in a sustained manner beyond their normal values. It may imply a slowing of tempo. On a modern grand piano with three pedals, the middle pedal is usually a sostenuto pedal. It sustains ""only"" those notes that are being held down when the pedal is depressed, allowing future notes played to be unaffected. It is commonly abbreviated ""S.P."", ""Sost. Ped."", or ""ThP."" (from the German equivalent ""Tonhalte-Pedal""). On some upright pianos and lower-quality grand pianos, the middle pedal sustains"
"to mean ""sustained chord""), is a chord in which the ""third"" is replaced by either the ""second"" or the ""fourth"". This produces two main chord types: the ""suspended second"" (sus2) and the ""suspended fourth"" (sus4). The chords, C and C, for example, consist of the notes ""C D G"" and ""C F G"", respectively. There is also a third type of suspended chord, in which both the second and fourth are present, for example the chord with the notes ""C D F G."" The name ""suspended"" derives from an early polyphonic technique developed during the common practice period, in which"
"a stepwise melodic progress to a harmonically stable note in any particular part was often momentarily delayed or ""suspended"" by extending the duration of the previous note. The resulting unexpected dissonance could then be all the more satisfyingly resolved by the eventual appearance of the displaced note. In traditional music theory the inclusion of the ""third"" in either chord would negate the suspension, so such chords would be called ""added ninth"" and ""added eleventh"" chords instead. In modern layman usage the term is restricted to the displacement of the ""third"" only and the dissonant ""second"" or ""fourth"" no longer needs"
"Cadence (music) In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin ""cadentia"", ""a falling"") is ""a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of resolution [finality or pause]."" A harmonic cadence is a progression of (at least) two chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music. A rhythmic cadence is a characteristic rhythmic pattern that indicates the end of a phrase. A cadence is labeled more or less ""weak"" or ""strong"" depending on its sense of finality. While cadences are usually classified by specific chord or melodic progressions, the use of such progressions does not necessarily constitute a cadence—there"
"However, they may also be described using terms borrowed from the metrical feet of poetry: iamb (weak-strong), anapest (weak-weak-strong), trochee (strong-weak), dactyl (strong-weak-weak), and amphibrach (weak-strong-weak), which may overlap to explain ambiguity. Duration (music) In music, duration is an amount of time or a particular time interval: how long or short a note, phrase, section, or composition lasts. """"Duration"" is the length of time a pitch, or tone, is sounded."" A note may last less than a second, while a symphony may last more than an hour. One of the fundamental features of rhythm, or encompassing rhythm, duration is also"
"Staccato Staccato (; Italian for ""detached"") is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration, separated from the note that may follow by silence. It has been described by theorists and has appeared in music since at least 1676. In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic staccatissimo. However, before 1850, dots, dashes, and wedges were all likely to have the same meaning, even though some theorists from as early as the 1750s distinguished"
"Slow jam A slow jam is an umbrella term for music with rhythm and blues and soul influences. Slow jams are commonly R&B ballads or downtempo songs. The term is most commonly reserved for soft-sounding songs with heavily emotional or romantic lyrical content. This definition has led to intense debate over whether particular songs should be classified as a ""slow jam"", e.g. Ginuwine's 1996 hit single ""Pony"". The common use and possible origin of this term traces back to 1983 when Solar Records group Midnight Star recorded the song ""Slow Jam"" on their album ""No Parking on the Dance Floor""."
"Slow jam A slow jam is an umbrella term for music with rhythm and blues and soul influences. Slow jams are commonly R&B ballads or downtempo songs. The term is most commonly reserved for soft-sounding songs with heavily emotional or romantic lyrical content. This definition has led to intense debate over whether particular songs should be classified as a ""slow jam"", e.g. Ginuwine's 1996 hit single ""Pony"". The common use and possible origin of this term traces back to 1983 when Solar Records group Midnight Star recorded the song ""Slow Jam"" on their album ""No Parking on the Dance Floor""."
"all contributing to the overall texture. While the ability to hold a steady tempo is a vital skill for a musical performer, tempo is changeable. Depending on the genre of a piece of music and the performers' interpretation, a piece may be played with slight tempo rubato or drastic accelerando. In ensembles, the tempo is often indicated by a conductor or by one of the instrumentalists, for instance the drummer. While tempo is described or indicated in many different ways, including with a range of words (e.g., ""Slowly"", ""Adagio"" and so on), it is typically measured in beats per minute"
"Slow movement (music) A slow movement is a form in a multi-movement musical piece. Generally, the second movement of a piece will be written as a slow movement, although composers occasionally write other movements as a slow movement as well. The tempo of a slow movement can vary from largo to andante. It is usually in the dominant, subdominant, parallel, or relative key of the musical work's main key. The general layout of a four-movement piece is as follows: However, composers sometimes remove, add or re-arrange movements, such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which begins with the slow movement. When a"
"Pesante Pesante () is a musical term, meaning ""heavy and ponderous."" It is often used in Romance languages, such as Spanish or Portuguese, with the word ""pesado"" meaning ""heavy"" in both of these languages. The French equivalent is ""pesant"". In performance, ""pesante"" is often interpreted as a tempo term. It usually is applied as an immediate pulling back of a previous tempo. While this is not the textbook application of this term, it has gained widespread use among performing musicians. Pesante tempo is usually in between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm) as it is supposed to create a"
"Tempo In musical terminology, tempo (""time"" in Italian) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often using conventional Italian terms) and is usually measured in beats per minute (or bpm). In modern classical compositions, a ""metronome mark"" in beats per minute may supplement or replace the normal tempo marking, while in modern genres like electronic dance music, tempo will typically simply be stated in bpm. Tempo may be separated from articulation and meter, or these aspects may be indicated along with tempo,"
"term is in John Cage's 1952 composition 4′33″. A tacet is indicated for all three movements, for all instruments. The piece lasts a total of 4 minutes and 33 seconds, without a note being played. Tacet Tacet is Latin which translates literally into English as ""(it) is silent"" (pronounced: , ; or ). It is a musical term to indicate that an instrument or voice does not sound, also known as a rest. In vocal polyphony and in orchestral scores, it usually indicates a long period of time, typically an entire movement. In more modern music such as jazz, tacet"
"Music dictionaries: Examples of musical scores: Tempo In musical terminology, tempo (""time"" in Italian) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often using conventional Italian terms) and is usually measured in beats per minute (or bpm). In modern classical compositions, a ""metronome mark"" in beats per minute may supplement or replace the normal tempo marking, while in modern genres like electronic dance music, tempo will typically simply be stated in bpm. Tempo may be separated from articulation and meter, or these aspects"
"Tacet Tacet is Latin which translates literally into English as ""(it) is silent"" (pronounced: , ; or ). It is a musical term to indicate that an instrument or voice does not sound, also known as a rest. In vocal polyphony and in orchestral scores, it usually indicates a long period of time, typically an entire movement. In more modern music such as jazz, tacet tends to mark considerably shorter breaks. Multirests, or multiple-measure rests, are rests which last multiple measures (or multiple rests, each of which lasts an entire measure). It was common for early symphonies to leave out"
"sonatas. As a sign of this the word ""sonata"" is sometimes prepended to the name of the form, in particular in the case of the ""sonata-rondo"" form. Slow movements, in particular, are seen as being similar to sonata-allegro form, with differences in phrasing and less emphasis on the development. However, Schoenberg and other theorists who used his ideas as a point of departure see the theme and variations as having an underlying role in the construction of formal music, calling the process ""continuing variation"", and argue from this idea that the sonata-allegro form is a means of structuring the continuing"
"includes pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind. It includes pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D. It includes pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute. Already in 1965 the art historian Barbara Rose had named La Monte Young's ""Dream Music"", Morton Feldman's characteristically soft dynamics, and various unnamed composers ""all, to a greater or lesser degree, indebted to John Cage"" as examples of ""minimal art"", but did not specifically use the expression ""minimal music""."
"down into those of beat and meter, where beat is seen as (usually, but certainly not always) a 'constant', and rhythm being longer, shorter or the same length as the beat. Pitch may even be considered a part of duration. In serial music the beginning of a note may be considered, or its duration may be (for example, is a 6 the note which begins at the sixth beat, or which lasts six beats?). Durations, and their beginnings and endings, may be described as long, short, or taking a specific amount of time. Often duration is described according to terms"
"(BWV 846) from J. S. Bach's ""The Well-Tempered Clavier"", illustrates a steady harmonic rhythm of one chord change per measure, although the ""melodic"" rhythm is much faster.<score lang=""lilypond"" override_ogg=""Beispiel 1a - Takte 1bis5 mit Wolfsquinte d-a.ogg""> </score> Harmonic rhythm In music theory, harmonic rhythm, also known as harmonic tempo is the rate at which the chords change (or progress) in a musical composition, in relation to the rate of notes. Thus a passage in common time with a stream of sixteenth notes and chord changes every measure has a slow harmonic rhythm and a fast surface or ""musical"" rhythm (16"
"the end of the phrase. The example below shows a characteristic rhythmic cadence at the end of the first phrase of J.S. Bach's ""Brandenburg Concerto"" No. 3 in G major, BMV 1048, mvmt. I, mm. 1–2: } </score> Cadence (music) In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin ""cadentia"", ""a falling"") is ""a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of resolution [finality or pause]."" A harmonic cadence is a progression of (at least) two chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music. A rhythmic cadence is a characteristic rhythmic pattern that indicates the end of a phrase."
"Rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ""rhythmos"", ""any regular recurring motion, symmetry"" ) generally means a ""movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions"" . This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years. In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a"
"heavy dragging feeling. It is usually in loud pieces of music. Pesante Pesante () is a musical term, meaning ""heavy and ponderous."" It is often used in Romance languages, such as Spanish or Portuguese, with the word ""pesado"" meaning ""heavy"" in both of these languages. The French equivalent is ""pesant"". In performance, ""pesante"" is often interpreted as a tempo term. It usually is applied as an immediate pulling back of a previous tempo. While this is not the textbook application of this term, it has gained widespread use among performing musicians. Pesante tempo is usually in between 60 and 100"
"according to Samuel A. Floyd Jr., ""a musical device in which the forward flow of the music stops, or seems to stop, suspended in a rhythmic unison, while in some cases an improvising instrumentalist or singer continues solo with the forward flow of the meter and tempo. Such stop-time moments are sometimes repeated, creating an illusion of starting and stopping, as, for example, in Scott Joplin's 'The Ragtime Dance' and Jelly Roll Morton's 'King Porter Stomp'."" Joplin's ""Stoptime Rag"" (1910) employs stop-time throughout; it even lacks his characteristic four-bar introduction. Stop-time in Joplin's rags is characterized by directions in the"
"Harmonic rhythm In music theory, harmonic rhythm, also known as harmonic tempo is the rate at which the chords change (or progress) in a musical composition, in relation to the rate of notes. Thus a passage in common time with a stream of sixteenth notes and chord changes every measure has a slow harmonic rhythm and a fast surface or ""musical"" rhythm (16 notes per chord change), while a piece with a trickle of half notes and chord changes twice a measure has a fast harmonic rhythm and a slow surface rhythm (1 note per chord change). Harmonic rhythm may"
"Fermata A fermata (; ""from ""fermare"", to stay, or stop""; also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye or cyclops eye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is a symbol of musical notation indicating that the note should be prolonged beyond the normal duration its note value would indicate. Exactly how much longer it is held is up to the discretion of the performer or conductor, but twice as long is common. It is usually printed above but can be occasionally below (when it is upside down) the note to be extended."
"Stop-time In tap dancing, jazz, and blues, stop-time is an accompaniment pattern interrupting, or stopping, the normal time and featuring regular accented attacks on the first beat of each or every other measure, alternating with silence or instrumental solos. Stop-time occasionally appears in ragtime music. The characteristics of stop-time are heavy accents, frequent rests, and a stereotyped cadential pattern. Stop-timing may create the impression that the tempo has changed, though it has not, as the soloist continues without accompaniment. Stop-time is common in African-American popular music including R&B, soul music, and led to the break of hip hop. Stop-time is,"
"one ""minore"" variation. This variation will have a contrasting tonality, and may be different in form from the theme. Theme and variations may also have a coda to finalize the piece. It may bring back the original theme with few or no changes, in order to create symmetry. Slow movement (music) A slow movement is a form in a multi-movement musical piece. Generally, the second movement of a piece will be written as a slow movement, although composers occasionally write other movements as a slow movement as well. The tempo of a slow movement can vary from largo to andante."
"Strophic form Strophic form, also called verse-repeating or chorus form, is the term applied to songs in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. The opposite of strophic form, with new music written for every stanza, is called through-composed. The term is derived from the Greek word , ""strophē"", meaning ""turn"". It is the simplest and most durable of musical forms, extending a piece of music by repetition of a single formal section. This may be analyzed as ""A A A..."". This additive method is the musical analogue of repeated stanzas in poetry"
"tempo indication, often with a new time signature and/or key signature. It is also possible to indicate a more or less gradual change in tempo, for instance with an ""accelerando"" (speeding up) or ""ritardando"" (""rit""., slowing down) marking. Indeed some compositions chiefly comprise ""accelerando"" passages, for instance Monti's ""Csárdás"", or the Russian Civil War song Echelon Song. On the smaller scale, tempo rubato refers to changes in tempo within a musical phrase, often described as some notes 'borrowing' time from others. Composers may use expressive marks to adjust the tempo: While the base tempo indication (such as ""Allegro"") typically appears"
"Tempo rubato Tempo rubato (; ""free in the presentation"", Italian for ""stolen time"") is a musical term referring to expressive and rhythmic freedom by a slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor. Rubato is an expressive shaping of music that is a part of phrasing. While rubato is often loosely taken to mean playing with expressive and rhythmic freedom, it was traditionally used specifically in the context of expression by speeding up and then slowing down the tempo. In the past, expressive and free playing"
"tempo. Graphic scores show tempo and rhythm in a variety of ways. Polytemporal compositions deliberately utilise performers playing at marginally different speeds. John Cage's compositions approach tempo in diverse ways. For instance ""4′33″"" has a defined duration, but no actual notes, while As Slow as Possible has defined proportions but no defined duration, with one performance intended to last 639 years. More extreme tempos are achievable at the same underlying tempo with very fast drum patterns, often expressed as drum rolls. Such compositions often exhibit a much slower underlying tempo, but may increase the tempo by adding additional percussive beats."
"Cadenza In music, a cadenza (from , meaning cadence; plural, ""cadenze"" ) is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a ""free"" rhythmic style, and often allowing virtuosic display. During this time the accompaniment will rest, or sustain a note or chord. Thus an improvised cadenza is indicated in written notation by a fermata in all parts. A cadenza usually will occur over the final or penultimate note in a piece, or over the final or penultimate note in an important subsection of a piece. It can also be found"
"a steady pulse while the percussionist is improvising or playing difficult compositions in counterpoint. While there may be scores of individually talented instrumentalists, there are very few who are capable of playing the lehra for a Tabla / Pakhawaj solo performance. Ostinato In music, an ostinato (derived from Italian: ""stubborn"", compare English, from Latin: 'obstinate') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include both classical compositions such as Ravel's ""Boléro"" and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's ""I Feel Love"" (1977), Henry Mancini's"