Glossary of Musical Terms

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beat
A metrical pulse. The marking of such a pulse by movements of the hand in conducting. For the grouping of beats in recurring patterns of strong and weak beats, see meter. [compare with rhythm: The subdivision of a span of time into sections perceivable by the senses; the grouping of musical sounds, principally by means of duration and stress.]

chord
Three or more pitches sounded simultaneously or functioning as if sounded simultaneously. Two such pitches are normally referred to as an interval.

chromatic
The scale that includes all of the 12 pitches (and thus all of the 12 semitones) contained in an octave, as distinct from the diatonic scale.

consonance and dissonance
1. Acoustics; consonance is the sympathetic vibration of soundwaves of different frequencies related as the ratios of small whole numbers. Consonance and dissonance are relative acoustic states that exist along a continuum in which dissonance increases as frequency ratios become smaller. Dissonance is, relatively speaking, the absence of consonance. 2. Psychology: consonance and dissonance are subjective terms describing pleasing (consonant) or displeasing (dissonant) sounds.

crescendo and decrescendo (Italian: "growing," "decreasing")
Increasing and decreasing loudness, respectively.

diatonic scale
A scale consisting of five whole tones and two semitones. Music that is performed using only the notes of a diatonic scale is called diatonic. See also major scale.

drone
Long, sustained tones, usually in a low register.

fiddle
A generic term for any string instrument played with a bow.

fifth
An interval of three wholetones and one semitone.

form
The constructive or organizing element in music. Form means that a piece is organized: i.e. that it consists of elements functioning like those of a living organism. . . The chief requirements for the creation of a comprehensible form are logic and coherence. The presentation, development and interconnection of ideas must be based on relationship.

harmony
The aspect of music consisting of simultaneously sounded pitches as opposed to pitches sounded in succession (see melody) or melodies sounded at the same time (called counterpoint). Harmony is the vertical element of musical texture.

heterophony
The simultaneous statement, especially in improvised performance, of two or more different versions of what is essentially the same melody (as distinct from polyphony).

hymn
A song of praise, usually to a god or hero.

idiophone
A percussion instrument consisting of a material (usually metal or wood) that makes a sound when struck or scraped. Example: a wood block. See also percussion, membranophone.

improvisation
The creation of music in the course of performance.
"The delegation of an unusually broad area of compositional choice to the performer, resulting in "improvisation," a term denoting a relative condition, far from necessarily securing randomness is more likely to produce a highly and conventionally constrained result, since the performer, composing with little time for circumspection and no opportunities for revision, is, first and above all, a constrained human who, as such, produces patterns of dependencies detectable as such by other humans...."
(Milton Babbitt)

interval
The relationship between two pitches

melisma
A group of more than a few notes sung to a single syllable. (melismatic)

melody
A succession of single pitches over time. Melody is the horizontal aspect of musical texture.

membranophone
A percussion instrument with a stretched membrane (or two!=usually made of skin, rubber, plastic, etc.) which resonates when struck. Example: a drum. See also percussion, idiophone.

meter
A pattern of fixed temporal units (beats) by which the timespan of a piece of music or a section thereof is measured.

microtone
An interval smaller than a semitone.

mode
A "particularized scale" or a "generalized tune," or both, depending on the particular musical and cultural context. To attribute mode to a musical item implies some hierarchy of pitch relationships or some restrictions on pitch succession. A mode is always at least a melody type or melody model, never just a fixed melody.

monophonic
Music consisting of a single melodic line without additional parts or accompaniment.

octave
An interval bounded by two pitches with the same pitch names and the higher of whose frequencies is twice the lower.

ornamentation
The practice of embellishing musical notes through additions to, or variations of, their essential rhythm, melody, or harmony. The additions or variations are called ornaments.

ostinato
A melodic and/or rhythmic figure that is persistently repeated throughout a composition or section thereof.

pentatonic scale
A scale with five pitches.

percussion
An instrument that is played by being struck, scraped, shaken, or otherwise manhandled. Percussion instruments can be divided into those that produce a definite pitch and those of indeterminate pitch. They can also be categorized as membranophones or idiophones.

phrase
A section of a musical line somewhat comparable to a clause or sentence in prose. Phrases are defined by a sense of arrival at a point of at least momentary stability in terms of harmony and/or rhythm.

pitch
The perceived quality of a sound that is chiefly a function of its fundamental frequency. In general pitch is regarded as becoming higher with increasing frequency and lower with decreasing frequency.

polyphony
Music that simultaneously combines two or more independent musical lines (melodies), each of which retains its identity to some degree.

pulse
The temporal unit of a composition or section of music. See also meter.

refrain
One or two lines of text recurring at the end of each stanza. Each repetition is set to the same melody, so the term refers to both textual and musical repetition. It is also called a chorus or burden.

register
A specific segment of the total range of pitches available to a voice, instrument, or composition. It may often be described loosely simply as high, low, etc.

rhythm
The subdivision of a span of time into sections perceivable by the senses; the grouping of musical sounds, principally by means of duration and stress.

scale
A collection of pitches arranged in order from lowest to highest or from highest to lowest.

semitone
The smallest interval in use in the Western musical tradition. There are twelve such intervals to the octave. The semitone is represented on the piano keyboard by the distance between any two immediate adjacent keys, whether white or black.

sonority
1. In discussions of 20th-century music, a sound defined by some combination of timbres or registers, especially one that plays a significant role in a work. 2. The tonal quality produced by a performer on an instrument. 3. Simultaneity.

style
1. A replication of patterning, whether in human behavior or in the artifacts produced by human behavior, that results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints. Style constitutes the universe of discourse within which musical meanings arise. 2. A general form that is recognizable apart from specific instances in which it is used.

syncopation
A momentary contradiction of the prevailing meter or pulse. This may take the form of a temporary transformation of the fundamental character of the meter, or it may be simply the contradiction of the regular succession of strong and weak beats.

tempo
The speed at which music is performed, i.e., the rate per unit of time of metrical pulses in performance.

texture
The general pattern of sound created by the elements of a work or passage. For example, the texture of a work that is perceived as consisting of the combination of several melodic lines is said to be contrapuntal or polyphonic. A work consisting primarily of a succession of chords sounded as such is said to have a chordal or homophonic texture.

timbre
Tone color; quality of tone.

tonal system
1. An organized relationship of tones with reference to a definite center ("tonal center"). 2. The system of tonality in use in Western music since about the end of the 17th century which embraces twelve major and twelve minor keys, the scales that these keys define, and the subsystem of triad and harmonic functions delimited in turn by those scales, together with the possibility of interchange of keys.

tradition
from Latin traditio: act of handing over, from traditus, past participle of tradere: to hand over, betray. (more at traitor)
Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary

transcription
Notating a piece of music in a written form.

wholetone
An interval consisting of two semitones.

Sources: The Harvard Dictionary of Music and others