Motif (music)In music, a motif () or motive is a short musical idea, salient recurring figure, musical fragment, or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition. The motif is the smallest structural unit possessing thematic identity.
Musical compositionMusical composition can refer to an originalpiece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing music. People who create compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist.
Phrase (music)In music theory, a phrase (Greek: φράση) is a unit of musical meter that has a complete musical sense of its own, built from figures, motifs, and cells, and combining to form melodies, periods and larger sections. A phrase is a substantial musical thought, which ends with a musical punctuation called a cadence.
RhythmRhythm (from Greekῥυθμός, 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".
Melodic motionMelodic 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.
Pitch (music)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 perceptual property that allows sounds to be ordered on a frequency-related scale. 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.
TimbreIn music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish instruments in the same category (e.g., an oboe and a clarinet, both woodwind instruments).Interval (music)In music theory, an interval is a difference in pitch between two sounds. An interval may be described as horizontal, linear, or melodic if it refers to successively sounding tones, such as two adjacent pitches in a melody, and vertical or harmonic if it pertains to simultaneously sounding tones, such as in a chord. In Western music, intervals are most commonly differencing between notes of a diatonic scale.
Part (music)A part in music refers to a component of a musical composition. Because there are multiple ways to separate these components, there are several contradictory senses in which the word "part" is used: any individual melody (or voice), whether vocal or instrumental, that can be abstracted as continuous and independent from other notes being performed simultaneously in polyphony.
AccompanimentAccompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles of music. In homophonic music, the main accompaniment approach used in popular music, a clear vocal melody is supported by subordinate chords.
Musical toneTraditionally in Western music, a musical tone is a steady periodic sound. A musical tone is characterized by its duration, pitch, intensity (or loudness), and timbre (or quality). The notes used in music can be more complex than musical tones, as they may include aperiodic aspects, such as attack transients, vibrato, and envelope modulation. A simple tone, or pure tone, has a sinusoidal waveform.
Greek languageIndo-European languageGreek (Modern Greek: ελληνικά, romanized: elliniká; Ancient Greek: ἑλληνική, romanized: hellēnikḗ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family.
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