The Elements of Music: A Short Discourse on Why I Hate High School Students

Now, the title shouldn't fool anyone.  I only can truly hate people I've met before.  Though the concepts that are forced on a high school level mind bothers me to some degree.  (Like teaching toward a standardized test.  However, that's a complaint for another time.)  Since all the stress of academic success falls on learning Literacy, Mathematics and Science nowadays, the Arts have taken a back seat.  Especially the performing arts and the fields of study surrounding them.  My chief complaint comes from the lack of education in music theory and composition. (That complaint can transfer to the other arts as well, but again, another time.)  Music is around us in too many forms for it to be wholly ignored like it has been in the American education system.

So, with that in mind, I present to my audience The Elements of Music (also known as Aspects of Music).  How many there are differs from who is asked, but I break it up into five different categories, a combination of old and new world concepts:

• Pitch
• Duration
• Dynamics
• Timbre (pronounced TAM brr)
• Texture

Now, each has its own subcategories with other musical terms that are more commonplace, but these are the big overarching ones.  And as each one is explored more thoroughly, more complex ideas surface.  However, for the sake of simplicity, here's where it will stay.

"Why should I care?" is probably a question that appeared during my explanation.  I'm sorry it took so long to get to that point.  Why should one care about The Elements of Music?  To me, that's like asking why someone should care about knowing first aid before treating someone or like saying, "I like those chemicals because they mix well" to a chemist.  Music is all around humanity, a common trait that all cultures share.  And knowledge, even the most basic, is vital to understanding it.  Also, seeing as though everyone has an opinion on music in one way or another, I thought it might be nice to provide some basic vocabulary besides "I like the way it sounds".  Having some clue as to why something sounds nice makes people sound less ignorant of something that's so prevalent in humanity's past, present and future, it could practically be considered a "universal language".

Back to the Elements: 

Pitch is the highness or lowness of sound.  This is a very simplistic explanation of what pitch really is, but the concept of sound wave frequency is hard to explain to grade schoolers.  (Note: That's right!  Elementary school students know about this! Isn't that a hoot?)  Since humans have a limited range of perception, most tones an average human can hear fall between 20Hz to 20,000Hz.  Pitch is also the kingdom to the phylums melody, harmony and interval.  Don't fret about those terms unless you want to, but they are what make up pitch in music.  At least, that's where I place them.

Duration is the length of, or the time involved in sound.  Rhythm and tempi (plural of tempo) fall under this category, as they constitute how long a note lasts as well as the variety and speed at which it may be sounded.  A pitch can exist at any given frequency, but without duration, it could last for only microseconds, or perhaps too long or short for human perception.

Dynamics (or intensity) are the loudness or softness of sound.  A cutting edge, easy description of it falls to a remote control's volume settings.  Frequency aside, the strength of a pressure wave like sound gives another quality to it.  Just because a note falls within our range of hearing and is long enough to pick up on doesn't mean that it's loud enough to hear.  This category deals with decibel level and particular articulation markings that cross between dynamics and:

Timbre (or tone color) is the quality of sound.  Notice how a sound can seem scratchy?  Maybe metallic or grinding?  We employ thousands of explanations for the quality of sound, and that falls under the auspicious and overlooked element known as timbre.  It explains why an oboe sounds nasally, or how a trumpet sounds different from a flute.  It gives a term to various different ways sound presents itself to human hearing.  It can be strange how one can overlook something that seems so obvious and cannot place a term to it.

Texture is its own beast, relying on many different terms.  To me, it's basically form and style of musical sound.  Wikipedia makes this its own separate concept, but I like including it the Elements because its a way to perceive what that same site refers to as "aspects of music".  If you want the lowdown on that, just go to the Wiki.  I've no time to describe further on the topic.

If I was teaching right now, I would be starting any beginning music theory class on these five concepts.  Hell, I'd even be teaching them to a college level class if I get that far.  An elementary school program would be taking each individual idea a class or two to cover.  I should write curricula and see what schools say about it, although I can almost guarantee MENC and the NJMEA would not appreciate it at this point.

The more you know, I suppose.