Glossary
12-bar blues – a form of popular music consisting of 12 bars, with the IV chord starting on bar 5 and back to the I chord on bar 7.
4/4 time - most commonly used meter in popular music, consistently uses 4 beats per bar
A cappella - singing without any instrumental accompaniment
AABA – the most popular form for popular music in the 1920s to 1950s. In 32-bar form each of the four sections lasts for 8 bars. For example, the first 8 bars are labelled “A”, which then repeats. There is then a contrasting section “B” (or bridge) for 8 bars, after which the melody and chords of the “A” section are repeated.
Acoustic instrument - instruments that create sound waves without the use of amplification, like violins, saxophones, and guitars played without loudspeakers.
Album - a collection of songs on a vinyl record that revolved 33.3 times per minute. Half the songs went on one side, the rest on the other side.
Amplification - a system to make things sound louder usually involving loudspeakers.
Arena rock - rock music designed to be performed for huge audiences.
Arrangement – the arrangement of a song includes the form of sections of the song but mostly the when and where the various instruments are played.
Artificial Double Tracking (ADT) - a technique developed by Beatles’ engineer Ken Townsend to create the effect of someone re-recording their voice or instrumental performance on a new track. This creates much the same sort of enriching of the tone without using the performer’s time and energy.
Avant garde - the leading edge of a movement. In music this sometimes refers to modern music composers such as John Cage and Iannis Xenakis.
Backbeat - A special emphasis on beats 2 and 4 of every bar in 4/4 time.
Ballad - a slow to medium, romantic, sentimental or narrative song usually relating a single, dramatic event.
Bar, or Measure - notes in musical scores are organized on the page in bars. Each bar usually has 4 or 3 beats in it. Musicians when counting to themselves think the number of the beat, like saying “1, 2, 3, 4” to themselves. Each time they get to the “1” that is the first beat in the bar. Bars are separated on the musical staff lines with a vertical bar line.
Beat, as in feel or groove. When people say “I like the beat of this song” they are usually referring to the overall rhythmic quality that is created by a combination of the parts played by several instruments. The parts that are usually the most responsible for creating this texture are the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar, otherwise known as the “rhythm section”.
Beat, as in time marker. Most popular American music has four beats in a measure. In a waltz there are three beats in a measure. In Brazilian samba there are two beats in a measure.
Beat poets – a group of poets including Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti beginning in the 1950s from the San Francisco area.
Billboard is a trade magazine that monitors record sales and releases lists, or charts ranking them in popularity. The higher a record gets on the chart, and the longer it stays in the top 100, the more successful it is considered to be by music industry professionals.
Blues - the quintessential expression of the African American experience. Blues singers of the early 20th century were typically African American solo singers who would accompany themselves on acoustic guitar. Their audiences were generally African American as well.
Boogie woogie - style of piano playing emphasizing repeated rhythms played by the left hand.
Call and response – the leader, or an instrument, plays a line which is then answered by the rest of the group.
Country Western (C&W) - style of music developed during the early 1900s which was most popular among rural white audiences in the South and Southwest of the United States.
Direct Injection (DI) - directly plugging an electric instrument like guitar or bass into the mixing console instead of amplifying it through a speaker and putting a microphone in front of the speaker. The result can be a stronger and clearer signal.
Distortion - when an audio signal exceeds the maximum level that can be handled. The loudest parts are cut off and what is left sounds buzzy. Some guitarists create distortion with their amplifiers in order to change the tone.
Disk Jockey, or DJ - someone who plays records at a party, in a club, or on radio.
Dynamics - changes in volume. The Italian term crescendo indicates an increase in volume, while decrescendo means getting softer.
Echo – a delayed sound that comes late enough after the original that it can be discreetly perceived.
Eighth note – a quarter note beat can be divided into two eighth notes. In swing they are played unevenly, with the first getting held for a long time. In rock and roll each of the two eighth notes is played for the same amount of time.
Electric instruments - instruments whose vibrations (usually of strings) are picked up and are able to be connected to amplifiers. Examples: electric guitar, electric piano, electric bass.
Electronic instrument - instruments that do not have any vibrating parts but rather generate a signal through electronic circuits or signal processor. Examples: electronic organ, synthesizer.
Falsetto – a higher vocal range that usually has a lighter quality.
Fill – a part that is played between lead melodies or vocals. For example, a guitarist can play fills in between the words that a vocalist sings. By waiting to play in the gaps the singer can be heard more clearly.
Folk music – music that evolves from the community over time. People learn to play it by ear and many times the composers of the songs are unknown. Up until the 1960s is was usually played on acoustic instruments.
Form – form in music is like the frame of a building. The form of most pieces of music can be broken down into a number of sections, each of which holds a number of measures. For example, the introduction, verse, chorus, bridge, etc. of a song are different sections in the form.
Fuzz tone - guitar effect, for example heard in the Rolling Stones song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Glissando - sweeping from one pitch range to another, for example, when a pianist like Jerry Lee Lewis sweeps his fingers from high to low notes, or low to high.
Groove – the feeling of the rhythm which is created by the rhythm section instruments like the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar.
Harmony - the combination of simultaneous notes.
Horns – wind instruments like saxophones and trumpets.
Instrumentation - what instruments and how many instruments are involved in a particular song.
Jazz - Style of music that emerged in the 1910s and was deeply rooted in African American musical traditions. Jazz emphasizes a steady beat, improvisation, and unique tones.
Key change (see Modulation).
Measure (see Bar).
Melisma - a vocal technique in which one syllable is extended over two or more notes.
Melody - a series of single notes that add up to a recognizable whole. The melody of a song is usually the most prominent element to the listener.
Meter - the system in which beats are organized in a song, usually into regular groupings of a fixed number of beats. Often used interchangeably with time signature.
Middle of the Road, or MOR – conservative type music, such as played by Journey.
Minimalism – a movement in music characterized by sparse textures and/or repeating patterns.
Modulation - a change of key within a song, also referred to as a key change
Monophonic, or “mono” - A single channel recording, with the audio meant to be played on one loudspeaker.
Motown - a record company established by Berry Gordy, Jr. in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s. Also refers to the style of music produced by that company.
Multi-track - a tape recorder that can record two or more tracks on the same piece of tape. This allows, for example, a guitar to be recorded on one track and a singer on another track. This allows for parts to be fixed or added to independently of each other, and for the mixing engineer to later decide how loud each part should be.
Outro, or ending of a song - the word is a play off the abbreviation “Intro” for introduction. Classical musicians sometimes call this the coda, the Italian word for “tail”.
Overdubbing - a recording technique in which a new track is laid over a previously recorded part. This process can be record songs in layers, or a single singer to create complex vocal harmonies.
Pedal steel guitar – an electric guitar used in country music, with pedals held horizontally and played with a slide.
Pitch - the relative highness or lowness of a sound
Pop rock - rock music that is commercial, and places emphasis on professional-sounding singing and songwriting.
Quadruple meter (see 4/4 time).
Quarter note – a measure of 4/4 is divided into four quarter note beats.
R&B - an abbreviation for “rhythm and blues”.
Range - The distance from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch that a singer or an instrument is capable of producing.
Rapping - a musical form of vocal delivery that combines rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment.
Reverb, short for “reverberation” – a mass of delayed sounds that are not perceived individually as echoes. Instead, they create a mass of sound that lingers for a time and helps create the feel of space.
Riff - a short fragment of a melody, or a melodic pattern that is used repetitively in a song.
Rhythm - relates to the durations of sounds, and patterns of durations.
Rhythm and Blues - Style that developed out of blues music when the electric guitar was popularized post-World War II. Rhythm and Blues was popular among black audiences and sung by black performers. In the 1950s it was rebranded as rock and roll for mainstream white audiences.
Single - a single song released on a 45 rpm record. The “A” side of the 7-inch disk had the main song, the “B” side contained a second song that was not promoted as heavily.
Sixteenth note - common in funk, black pop, and disco. The beat is divided into four subdivisions.
Skiffle - a kind of folk music with a blues or jazz flavor that was popular in the U.K. in the 1950s. It was usually improved by a small group and might include percussion instruments such as washboard.
Slapback echo – a delayed sound often heard in rockabilly music, particularly from Sun Records.
Snare drum – one of the drums in a drum set that often is played on the second and fourth beats of a measure to create the backbeat. Snares are wires that are in contact with the underside of the drum and buzz when the drum is hit.
Soul - the fusion of gospel and blues; a style of music that combines characteristics of R&B and gospel in a free and expressive manner.
Stadium rock (see Arena rock) – pretty self explanatory! It’s rock played in a big space, such as usually used for football games.
Stereophonic, or stereo (Chapter 5). A two-channel recording intended to be played on a left and right loudspeakers.
Stop time - heard in songs like “That’s All Right Mama” by Arthur Crudup, “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley, and “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley.
Strings – instruments played with bows, like violins and cellos.
Swing or Swing jazz - Style of jazz that flourished from the 1920s to 1940s, characterized by contrasting sections. A popular branch of Swing Jazz was “big band jazz,” large bands that consisted of saxophones, trumpets, and trombones, along with a rhythm section of drums, bass, piano, and guitar.
Take - in a recording session a take refers to an attempt to record a song. “Maybelline” by Chuck Berry took 36 takes, or tries before they were satisfied. The Beatles’ version of “Twist and Shout” had to be recorded on take because John Lennon’s voice was nearly exhausted after a long day of recording.
Tempo - the speed of the music, noted as the number of beats per minute (BPM).
Time signature - indicates how many beats there are in a bar. A waltz is in ¾ time. Most pop music is in 4/4 time. Brazilian samba has a time signature of 2/4.
Tin Pan Alley - an area of Manhattan that was an early center of the popular music publishing industry. Also refers to the pop music that came out of this area in the early 20th century.
Tom tom drums – lower pitched drums with a muffled tone, as compared with the snare drum.
Tone - all of the aspects of a musical sound besides its pitch, loudness, or duration. Different instruments and singers can sing the same pitch. The way you can tell one from another is by their tone. Some amplifiers have tone controls, allowing to boost or cut the treble (high) and bass (low) frequencies, thereby changing the tone.
Track - multi-track tape recorders can have more than one track. Each track is often set up to record the sound of one instrument or singer. A track can also refer to the recording of a song, especially when multiple songs are contained on the same side of an LP record.
Traditional music - see folk music.
Turntablism - creating music by manipulating records on one or more record players.
Vamp - a term that refers to the repeating of a section or riff in a song.
Vibrato – a wiggle sort variation of the pitch in a singer or instrument. Classical musicians often add vibrato, especially at the ends of phrases.
Walking bass - the bass plays on all four beats and moves smoothly from one note to another. Usually played on an upright acoustic bass.
Work song - Also known as field hollers. Songs sung by enslaved Americans before the Civil War, and later by free African Americans to help pass the time and coordinate work in fields and plantations.
4/4 time - most commonly used meter in popular music, consistently uses 4 beats per bar
A cappella - singing without any instrumental accompaniment
AABA – the most popular form for popular music in the 1920s to 1950s. In 32-bar form each of the four sections lasts for 8 bars. For example, the first 8 bars are labelled “A”, which then repeats. There is then a contrasting section “B” (or bridge) for 8 bars, after which the melody and chords of the “A” section are repeated.
Acoustic instrument - instruments that create sound waves without the use of amplification, like violins, saxophones, and guitars played without loudspeakers.
Album - a collection of songs on a vinyl record that revolved 33.3 times per minute. Half the songs went on one side, the rest on the other side.
Amplification - a system to make things sound louder usually involving loudspeakers.
Arena rock - rock music designed to be performed for huge audiences.
Arrangement – the arrangement of a song includes the form of sections of the song but mostly the when and where the various instruments are played.
Artificial Double Tracking (ADT) - a technique developed by Beatles’ engineer Ken Townsend to create the effect of someone re-recording their voice or instrumental performance on a new track. This creates much the same sort of enriching of the tone without using the performer’s time and energy.
Avant garde - the leading edge of a movement. In music this sometimes refers to modern music composers such as John Cage and Iannis Xenakis.
Backbeat - A special emphasis on beats 2 and 4 of every bar in 4/4 time.
Ballad - a slow to medium, romantic, sentimental or narrative song usually relating a single, dramatic event.
Bar, or Measure - notes in musical scores are organized on the page in bars. Each bar usually has 4 or 3 beats in it. Musicians when counting to themselves think the number of the beat, like saying “1, 2, 3, 4” to themselves. Each time they get to the “1” that is the first beat in the bar. Bars are separated on the musical staff lines with a vertical bar line.
Beat, as in feel or groove. When people say “I like the beat of this song” they are usually referring to the overall rhythmic quality that is created by a combination of the parts played by several instruments. The parts that are usually the most responsible for creating this texture are the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar, otherwise known as the “rhythm section”.
Beat, as in time marker. Most popular American music has four beats in a measure. In a waltz there are three beats in a measure. In Brazilian samba there are two beats in a measure.
Beat poets – a group of poets including Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti beginning in the 1950s from the San Francisco area.
Billboard is a trade magazine that monitors record sales and releases lists, or charts ranking them in popularity. The higher a record gets on the chart, and the longer it stays in the top 100, the more successful it is considered to be by music industry professionals.
Blues - the quintessential expression of the African American experience. Blues singers of the early 20th century were typically African American solo singers who would accompany themselves on acoustic guitar. Their audiences were generally African American as well.
Boogie woogie - style of piano playing emphasizing repeated rhythms played by the left hand.
Call and response – the leader, or an instrument, plays a line which is then answered by the rest of the group.
Country Western (C&W) - style of music developed during the early 1900s which was most popular among rural white audiences in the South and Southwest of the United States.
Direct Injection (DI) - directly plugging an electric instrument like guitar or bass into the mixing console instead of amplifying it through a speaker and putting a microphone in front of the speaker. The result can be a stronger and clearer signal.
Distortion - when an audio signal exceeds the maximum level that can be handled. The loudest parts are cut off and what is left sounds buzzy. Some guitarists create distortion with their amplifiers in order to change the tone.
Disk Jockey, or DJ - someone who plays records at a party, in a club, or on radio.
Dynamics - changes in volume. The Italian term crescendo indicates an increase in volume, while decrescendo means getting softer.
Echo – a delayed sound that comes late enough after the original that it can be discreetly perceived.
Eighth note – a quarter note beat can be divided into two eighth notes. In swing they are played unevenly, with the first getting held for a long time. In rock and roll each of the two eighth notes is played for the same amount of time.
Electric instruments - instruments whose vibrations (usually of strings) are picked up and are able to be connected to amplifiers. Examples: electric guitar, electric piano, electric bass.
Electronic instrument - instruments that do not have any vibrating parts but rather generate a signal through electronic circuits or signal processor. Examples: electronic organ, synthesizer.
Falsetto – a higher vocal range that usually has a lighter quality.
Fill – a part that is played between lead melodies or vocals. For example, a guitarist can play fills in between the words that a vocalist sings. By waiting to play in the gaps the singer can be heard more clearly.
Folk music – music that evolves from the community over time. People learn to play it by ear and many times the composers of the songs are unknown. Up until the 1960s is was usually played on acoustic instruments.
Form – form in music is like the frame of a building. The form of most pieces of music can be broken down into a number of sections, each of which holds a number of measures. For example, the introduction, verse, chorus, bridge, etc. of a song are different sections in the form.
Fuzz tone - guitar effect, for example heard in the Rolling Stones song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Glissando - sweeping from one pitch range to another, for example, when a pianist like Jerry Lee Lewis sweeps his fingers from high to low notes, or low to high.
Groove – the feeling of the rhythm which is created by the rhythm section instruments like the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar.
Harmony - the combination of simultaneous notes.
Horns – wind instruments like saxophones and trumpets.
Instrumentation - what instruments and how many instruments are involved in a particular song.
Jazz - Style of music that emerged in the 1910s and was deeply rooted in African American musical traditions. Jazz emphasizes a steady beat, improvisation, and unique tones.
Key change (see Modulation).
Measure (see Bar).
Melisma - a vocal technique in which one syllable is extended over two or more notes.
Melody - a series of single notes that add up to a recognizable whole. The melody of a song is usually the most prominent element to the listener.
Meter - the system in which beats are organized in a song, usually into regular groupings of a fixed number of beats. Often used interchangeably with time signature.
Middle of the Road, or MOR – conservative type music, such as played by Journey.
Minimalism – a movement in music characterized by sparse textures and/or repeating patterns.
Modulation - a change of key within a song, also referred to as a key change
Monophonic, or “mono” - A single channel recording, with the audio meant to be played on one loudspeaker.
Motown - a record company established by Berry Gordy, Jr. in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s. Also refers to the style of music produced by that company.
Multi-track - a tape recorder that can record two or more tracks on the same piece of tape. This allows, for example, a guitar to be recorded on one track and a singer on another track. This allows for parts to be fixed or added to independently of each other, and for the mixing engineer to later decide how loud each part should be.
Outro, or ending of a song - the word is a play off the abbreviation “Intro” for introduction. Classical musicians sometimes call this the coda, the Italian word for “tail”.
Overdubbing - a recording technique in which a new track is laid over a previously recorded part. This process can be record songs in layers, or a single singer to create complex vocal harmonies.
Pedal steel guitar – an electric guitar used in country music, with pedals held horizontally and played with a slide.
Pitch - the relative highness or lowness of a sound
Pop rock - rock music that is commercial, and places emphasis on professional-sounding singing and songwriting.
Quadruple meter (see 4/4 time).
Quarter note – a measure of 4/4 is divided into four quarter note beats.
R&B - an abbreviation for “rhythm and blues”.
Range - The distance from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch that a singer or an instrument is capable of producing.
Rapping - a musical form of vocal delivery that combines rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment.
Reverb, short for “reverberation” – a mass of delayed sounds that are not perceived individually as echoes. Instead, they create a mass of sound that lingers for a time and helps create the feel of space.
Riff - a short fragment of a melody, or a melodic pattern that is used repetitively in a song.
Rhythm - relates to the durations of sounds, and patterns of durations.
Rhythm and Blues - Style that developed out of blues music when the electric guitar was popularized post-World War II. Rhythm and Blues was popular among black audiences and sung by black performers. In the 1950s it was rebranded as rock and roll for mainstream white audiences.
Single - a single song released on a 45 rpm record. The “A” side of the 7-inch disk had the main song, the “B” side contained a second song that was not promoted as heavily.
Sixteenth note - common in funk, black pop, and disco. The beat is divided into four subdivisions.
Skiffle - a kind of folk music with a blues or jazz flavor that was popular in the U.K. in the 1950s. It was usually improved by a small group and might include percussion instruments such as washboard.
Slapback echo – a delayed sound often heard in rockabilly music, particularly from Sun Records.
Snare drum – one of the drums in a drum set that often is played on the second and fourth beats of a measure to create the backbeat. Snares are wires that are in contact with the underside of the drum and buzz when the drum is hit.
Soul - the fusion of gospel and blues; a style of music that combines characteristics of R&B and gospel in a free and expressive manner.
Stadium rock (see Arena rock) – pretty self explanatory! It’s rock played in a big space, such as usually used for football games.
Stereophonic, or stereo (Chapter 5). A two-channel recording intended to be played on a left and right loudspeakers.
Stop time - heard in songs like “That’s All Right Mama” by Arthur Crudup, “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley, and “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley.
Strings – instruments played with bows, like violins and cellos.
Swing or Swing jazz - Style of jazz that flourished from the 1920s to 1940s, characterized by contrasting sections. A popular branch of Swing Jazz was “big band jazz,” large bands that consisted of saxophones, trumpets, and trombones, along with a rhythm section of drums, bass, piano, and guitar.
Take - in a recording session a take refers to an attempt to record a song. “Maybelline” by Chuck Berry took 36 takes, or tries before they were satisfied. The Beatles’ version of “Twist and Shout” had to be recorded on take because John Lennon’s voice was nearly exhausted after a long day of recording.
Tempo - the speed of the music, noted as the number of beats per minute (BPM).
Time signature - indicates how many beats there are in a bar. A waltz is in ¾ time. Most pop music is in 4/4 time. Brazilian samba has a time signature of 2/4.
Tin Pan Alley - an area of Manhattan that was an early center of the popular music publishing industry. Also refers to the pop music that came out of this area in the early 20th century.
Tom tom drums – lower pitched drums with a muffled tone, as compared with the snare drum.
Tone - all of the aspects of a musical sound besides its pitch, loudness, or duration. Different instruments and singers can sing the same pitch. The way you can tell one from another is by their tone. Some amplifiers have tone controls, allowing to boost or cut the treble (high) and bass (low) frequencies, thereby changing the tone.
Track - multi-track tape recorders can have more than one track. Each track is often set up to record the sound of one instrument or singer. A track can also refer to the recording of a song, especially when multiple songs are contained on the same side of an LP record.
Traditional music - see folk music.
Turntablism - creating music by manipulating records on one or more record players.
Vamp - a term that refers to the repeating of a section or riff in a song.
Vibrato – a wiggle sort variation of the pitch in a singer or instrument. Classical musicians often add vibrato, especially at the ends of phrases.
Walking bass - the bass plays on all four beats and moves smoothly from one note to another. Usually played on an upright acoustic bass.
Work song - Also known as field hollers. Songs sung by enslaved Americans before the Civil War, and later by free African Americans to help pass the time and coordinate work in fields and plantations.