Parsons Code
   HOME
*





Parsons Code
The Parsons code, formally named the Parsons code for melodic contours, is a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion — movements of the pitch up and down. Denys Parsons developed this system for his 1975 book '' The Directory of Tunes and Musical Themes''. Representing a melody in this manner makes it easier to index or search for pieces, particularly when the notes' values are unknown. Parsons covered around 15,000 classical, popular and folk pieces in his dictionary. In the process he found out that *UU is the most popular opening contour, used in 23% of all the themes, something that applies to all the genres. The book was also published in Germany in 2002 and reissued by Piatkus in 2008 as the ''Directory of Classical Themes''. An earlier method of classifying and indexing melody was devised by Harold Barlow and Sam Morgenstern in ''A Dictionary of Musical Themes'' (1950). The code The first note of a melody is denoted with an asterisk ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Melodic Motion
Melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise, skipwise or no movement, respectively. See also contrapuntal motion. In a conjunct melodic motion, the melodic phrase moves in a stepwise fashion; that is the subsequent notes move up or down a semitone or tone, but no greater. In a disjunct melodic motion, the melodic phrase leaps upwards or downwards; this movement is greater than a whole tone. In popular Western music, a melodic leap of disjunct motion is often present in the chorus of a song, to distinguish it from the verses and captivate the audience. Bruno Nettl describes various types of melodic movement or contour (Nettl 1956, 51–53): *Ascending: Upwards melodic movement *Descending: Downwards melodic movement (prevalent in the New World and Australian music) *Undulating: Equal movement in both directions, using approximately the same ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Silent Night (song)
"Silent Night" (german: "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", links=no, italic=no) is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011. The song was first recorded in 1905 and has remained a popular success, appearing in films and multiple successful recordings, as well as being quoted in other musical compositions. History "" was first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, a village in the Austrian Empire on the Salzach river in present-day Austria. A young Catholic priest, Father Joseph Mohr, had come to Oberndorf the year before. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, he had written the poem "" in 1816 at Mariapfarr, the hometown of his father in the Salzburg Lungau region, where Joseph had worked as an assistant priest. The melody was composed by Franz Xaver Gruber, schoolmaster ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


List Of Music Software
This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora, Prime Music, and Spotify, see Comparison of on-demand streaming music services. For storage, uploading, downloading and streaming of music via the cloud, see Comparison of online music lockers. This list does not include discontinued historic or legacy software, with the exception of trackers that are still supported. For example, the company Ars Nova produces music education software, and its software program Practica Musica has remnants of the historic Palestrina software. Practica will be listed here, but not Palestrina. If a program fits several categories, such as a comprehensive digital audio workstation or a foundation programming language (e.g. Pure Data), listing is limited to its top three categories. Types of music software CD ripping software * B ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Like A Virgin (song)
"Like a Virgin" is a song recorded by American singer Madonna from her second studio album of the same name (1984). It was written and composed by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg. After a demo recording sung by Kelly, it was played to Warner Bros. Records' Michael Ostin, who suggested Madonna record it. Recording took place at New York's Power Station, while production was in charge of Chic's Nile Rodgers. Rodgers initially did not want to record the song, as he felt it did not have a strong hook, but subsequently changed his mind. It was released as the album's lead single on November 6, 1984. A dance song with two hooks, Madonna sings in a high register while a continuous arrangement of synths are heard along the bassline. The song's lyrics are ambiguous, consisting of hidden innuendos and open to various interpretations. Upon release, "Like a Virgin" received positive reviews from music critics, who frequently singled out Madonna's vocals. It became her first number-one in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, and visual presentation. She has pushed the boundaries of artistic expression in mainstream music, while continuing to maintain control over every aspect of her career. Her works, which incorporate social, political, sexual, and religious Religion is usually defined as a social system, social-cultural system of designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morality, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sacred site, sanctified places, prophecy, prophecie ... themes, have generated both controversy and critical acclaim. A prominent Cultural impact of Madonna, cultural figure crossing both the 20th and 21st centuries, Madonna remains one of the most "well-documented figures of the modern age", with a broad amount ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

White Christmas (song)
"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. The song was written by Berlin for the 1942 musical film ''Holiday Inn''. The composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards. Since its release, "White Christmas" has been covered by many artists, the version sung by Bing Crosby being the world's best-selling single (in terms of sales of physical media) with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Crosby's, sales of the song exceed 100 million. History Origin Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing. One ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Love Me Tender (song)
"Love Me Tender" is a 1956 ballad song recorded by Elvis Presley and published by "Elvis Presley Music" from the 20th Century Fox film of the same name. Lyrics are credited to "Vera Matson" (though the actual lyricist was her husband, Ken Darby) and Elvis Presley himself. The melody is identical to the sentimental Civil War ballad "Aura Lea" and therefore credited to Aura Lea's composer, the Englishman George R. Poulton. The RCA Victor recording by Elvis Presley was No. 1 on both the ''Billboard'' and ''Cashbox'' charts in 1956. The song is also featured in many other films and television shows, including '' FM, Touched By Love, This is Elvis, Porky's Revenge, Wild at Heart, Die Hard 2, Honeymoon in Vegas, Backbeat, Gaudi Afternoon, Machine Gun Molly, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, William Eggleston in the Real World, California Dreamin', Love in Space, Masters of Sex, Devil's Due, Just Before I Go,'' ''90 Minutes in Heaven'', and '' Ready or Not''. History ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Aura Lea
"Aura Lea" (sometimes spelled "Aura Lee") is an American Civil War song about a maiden. It was written by W. W. Fosdick (lyrics) and George R. Poulton (music). The melody was used in Elvis Presley's 1956 hit song " Love Me Tender". History \new Staff Aura Lea was published by Poulton, an Englishman who had come to America with his family as a boy in 1838, and Fosdick in 1861. It was a sentimental ballad at a time when upbeat and cheerful songs were more popular in the music halls. It became popular as a minstrel song, and the tune was also taken up by the U.S. Military Academy as a graduating class song, called "Army Blue"; new lyrics by L. W. Becklaw were sung to the original melody. The Civil War began shortly after the song's release, "Aura Lea" was adopted by soldiers on both sides, and was often sung around campfires. The tune is familiar to modern audiences from the 1956 Elvis Presley #1 hit " Love Me Tender" with new lyrics by Ken Darby, a derivative adaptation of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English lullaby. The lyrics are from an early-19th-century English poem written by Jane Taylor, "The Star". The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in '' Rhymes for the Nursery'', a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is sung to the tune of the French melody " Ah! vous dirai-je, maman", which was published in 1761 and later arranged by several composers, including Mozart with Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman". The English lyrics have five stanzas, although only the first is widely known. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7666. The song is in the public domain, and has many adaptations around the world, including the "Alphabet song" and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep". Lyrics The English lyrics were written as a poem by Jane Taylor (1783–1824)M. Cryer, ''Love Me Tender: The Stories Behind the World's Best-loved Songs'' (Frances Lincoln, 2009), pp. 83–5. and published with th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pitch (music)
Pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies. Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre. Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system. Perception Pitch and frequency Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their perception of the frequency of vibration. Pitch is closely related to frequency, but ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Asterisk
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in ''the A* search algorithm'' or ''C*-algebra''). In English, an asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces, and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words. In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication. History The asterisk has already been used as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the , , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is know ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ode To Joy
"Ode to Joy" (German language, German: , literally "To [the] Joy") is an ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian Friedrich Schiller and published the following year in ''Thalia (magazine), Thalia''. A slightly revised version appeared in 1808, changing two lines of the first and omitting the last stanza. "Ode to Joy" is best known for its use by Ludwig van Beethoven in the final (fourth) movement of his Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven), Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824. Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)#Text of the fourth movement, Beethoven's text is not based entirely on Schiller's poem, and it introduces a few new sections. His tune (but not Schiller's words) was adopted as the "Anthem of Europe" by the Council of Europe in 1972 and subsequently by the European Union. Rhodesia's national anthem from 1974 until 1979, "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia", used the tune of "Ode to Joy". The poem Schiller wrote the first version of the poem in German when he w ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]