Effect of The Arab Spring on Egyptian Music
Michelle_Michy
UPdatedMusicFundamentaltermsconceptsSP181.pptxMusic
Humanly organized sound
British Ethnomusicologist,
John Blacking
Culture
People’s way of life, learned (negotiated) and transmitted thru the centuries of adapting to the natural and human world.
Jeff Titon
Worlds of Music
Ethnomusicology is the study of music in the context of human life.
Jeff Titon, Gage Averill
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A Framework for the Cross-Cultural Study of Music
Every musical event has historical, cultural, social, physical, biological, cognitive, sonic symbolic, contextual, political, economic, and material dimensions: a wholistic approach demands an acknowledgement and appreciation of all of them.
Gage Averill
Proposition 1
All music production and reception is based on the body.. Involving sensory perception, cognition, and movement.
Gage Averill
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Proposition 2
All music is embedded in systems of belief.
Musical performance and practice is governed by cultural concepts of what music is and does. These beliefs form the core of local systems of knowledge about music.
Gage Averill
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Proposition 3
Music doesn’t just reflect social process–
it IS social process,
interaction, and organization
Gage Averill
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Aesthetics
Succinctly, ‘aesthetics of music’ could be defined as ‘speculation on the nature of music excluding the purely physical attributes of sound’. The term ‘aesthetics’ has been variously defined as a theory of sensuous perception, a study of taste, and a theory of beauty in nature and art; in time it became widely accepted as a concept denoting the philosophical investigation of the theory of art. Oxford Music Online
A fancy definition….
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Aesthetics
That which is beautiful… appealing
(a quality defined and negotiated among the people of a shared community)
That which is culturally valued, judged desirable, and effective
Zelensky
A practical definition for our purposes… JS. 2nd def, Natalie Zelensky Univ of Maryland, MUET 220 Lecture notes
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Melody
A succession of notes, varying in pitch, which have an organized and recognizable shape.
Oxford Dictionary of Music
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Harmony
The combining of notes simultaneously, to produce chords, and successively, to produce chord progressions.
Monophony– Single melodic line
Heterophony-- Vague term, coined by Plato,
used to describe simultaneous variation of one melody.*
Homophony– Term applied to music in which the parts move ‘in step’ with one another, instead of exhibiting individual rhythmic independence and interest, as one finds in…
Polyphony- “many voiced”
Harmonic Textures
We’ll be talking about these definitions more in class…
* Oxford Music Online
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Pitch
A basic dimension of musical sounds, in which they are heard to be high or low.
The subjective sense of pitch is closely correlated with frequency (number of sound vibrations per second).
Experiments have shown that the correlation is not exact; judgments of pitch are affected by other variables such as volume, timbre, and duration.
Interval
Distance between two notes….
Melodic Intervals
Harmonic Intervals
(Consonance / Dissonance)
Timbre
Tone color:
That which distinguishes the quality of tone of one instrument or singer from another.
Scale
A sequence of notes in ascending or descending order of pitch.
Dynamics
The intensity of volume with which notes and sounds are expressed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knm8l0U2Ku4
Rhythm
‘What is rhythm? The answer, I am afraid, is, so far, just – a word: a word without generally accepted meaning. Everybody believes himself entitled to usurp it for an arbitrary definition of his own. The confusion is terrifying indeed’
Curt Sachs
Rhythm
Rhythm covers all aspects of musical movement as ordered in TIME, as opposed to aspects of musical sounds conceived as pitch.
Harvard Dictionary of Music
Beats…
…or pulses measure musical time
Accents…
…refer to strong versus weak beats
Jeremy Yudkin, LISTEN
Meter
In measured music the grouping of beats into a recurring pattern defined by accentuation…
(A cyclical or repeating rhythmic framework)
Nelson on Solkattu … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt-JLmD6CGg
Check out Solkattu w Nelson… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt-JLmD6CGg
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Tempo
The speed at which a piece of music is performed.
Polyrhythms
Rhythmic complexity
Juxtaposition of duple and triple patterns
Interlocking parts
Aesthetic preference for dense overlapping textures
Referencing multiple sources including David Locke’s Ch 3 Worlds of Music
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Repetition
Improvisation
Call and Response
Rests: Silence
A notational sign that indicates the absence of a sounding note or notes
Sachs and Hornbostel’s classification system (1914)
Aerophone
General term for musical instruments that produce their sound by setting up vibrations in a body of air.
Chordophones
General term for musical instruments that produce their sound by setting up vibrations in a stretched string.
Includes harp, plucked lute, bowed lute, zither
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Membranophones
General term for musical instruments that produce their sound by setting up vibrations in a stretched membrane.
Idiophones
General term for musical instruments that produce their sound by setting up vibrations in the substance of the instrument itself.
Transmission
This refers to the means by which musical compositions, performing practices and knowledge are passed from musician to musician.
Check out: http://0-www.oxfordmusiconline.com.helin.uri.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/46823?q=transmission&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit
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Dissemination
Like transmission, dissemination is another term that refers to how music moves from one person to the next, from one culture to another.
‘Dissemination’ can include aspects of mediated transmission involving modern and evolving technology.
JS
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Enculturation
This refers to the process of learning the culture of (one’s own) people, specifically its language, norms, beliefs, and appropriate behaviors….
Tim Rice. Oxford Music Online
Musical Enculturation
…the learning of a music culture, includes such processes as cognitive development in children, teaching strategies, learning techniques, how performative behaviors are understood as social behavior, learning how to interact with audiences and patrons, and discovering the symbolism or meaning of various aspects of musical style and presentation.
Tim Rice
Enculturation
is "both a conscious and an unconscious conditioning process whereby man, as child and adult, achieves competence in his culture, internalizes his culture and becomes thoroughly enculturated."
E. Adamson Hoebel
Acculturation
…”refers to culture change in conditions of direct contact between people of different cultures.”
Tim Rice, Grove Music Online
Check out this wonderful article on Acculturation: http://0-www.oxfordmusiconline.com.helin.uri.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/46451?q=Acculturation&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit
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Transculturation
…” a process of cultural transformation marked by the influx of new culture elements and the loss or alteration of existing one.”
Margaret Kartomi
… a term intended to avoid the connotation of political hegemony implied by the older term acculturation (as suggested by Fernando Ortiz): a term that is not dependent on personal, direct contact, but theoretically accommodates mediated exchange.
Perspectives
Etic
Outsider
Emic
Insider
Appropriation:
The borrowing of musical influences
What’s wrong with cultural appropriation? (http ://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong /)
Adaptation: Adapting or changing borrowed influences to reflect local expressive sensibilities
Assimilation: Incorporating, absorbing adapted influences so they become part of the local music culture
Julie’s minimalist definitions– to be filled out in class discussions
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Syncretism
fusion
Preservation:
Upholding, preserving traditional music forms
Innovation:
Pushing the form– allowing new ideas to be incorporated in existing music systems
Synchronic / Diachronic
These are terms borrowed from Linguistics. A 'synchronic' analysis refers to studying something in a given moment of time.
("...Concerned with events existing in a limited time period and ignoring historical antecedents." Merriam-Webster) For example, if an Ethnomusicologist were to travel to a village to study the music there, she could spend an enormous amount of time just studying the intricacies of daily musical activities and encounters. If she wanted to see how the music has changed over time, the nature of her analysis would become diachronic, factoring in those 'historical antecedents' that have had significant impact on current music making practices. (Diachronic: "of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of time." Merriam-Webster)
Performance Practice
The conventions and shared knowledge, rules and procedures, that enable a performer to create a performative moment or event…
(We’ll continue to work on this definition… J Searles)
JS
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