Literacy in Music
How literacy is used in music:
- Subject specific key vocabulary
- Understand exam question terminology ie. compare & contrast
- Essay writing skills
- Lyric writing
- Deciphering signs and symbols
- Summarising wide topics concisely for short answer exam questions
- Knowledge of different languages
Key Terms
Key Stage 3
Call and response - in which a soloist sings a phrase to which a group of singers respond
Conjunct - a style of melodic writing in which each note is a stepwise
Consonant - harmonies which sound pleasing, opposite of dissonant
Disjunct - many leaps between notes in a melody
Dissonance - a combination of notes producing clashing sound when played together
Duration - the length of sounds
Dynamics - the volume of sound
Pitch - high or low sounds
Ostinato - a rhythmic, melodic or harmonic pattern repeated many times
Rhythm - a pattern of beats
Riff - a short catchy melodic or rhythmic idea repeated throughout a song
Stave - the 5 lines that music is notated on
Syncopation - when accented notes are sounded off the beat or on weak beats
Tempo - the speed of the music
Texture - layers of sounds
Triad - a chord of three pitches, the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the scale
Key Stage 4
A cappella - unaccompanied singing
Acciaccatura - grace note
Anacrusis - pick up or upbeat
Antiphony - a texture where groups of musicians play alternately
Appoggiatura - a melodic ornament where an adjacent note sounds dissonant then resolves
Arco - playing string instruments with the bow
Arpeggio - the notes of a triad played one after another
Articulation - how smoothly the notes are played
Augmentation - when an interval, chord or rhythm is expanded
Baritone - a male voice with a range midway between tenor and bass
Binary form - musical structure of two sections each of which is repeated
Broken chord - a chord in which all the notes are sounded individually
Cadence - a pair of chords which mark the end of a musical statement
Chromatic - notes that don’t belong to the current key; opposite of diatonic
Compound time - a metre in which the main beat can be sub-divided into three
Contrapuntal - a texture where two or more melodic lines are played simultaneously
Diatonic - music using just the notes of the home key
Diminution - when an interval, chord or rhythm is reduced
Enharmonic - two keys or notes which sound the same but are written differently
Homophonic - a musical texture in which all parts move in similar rhythm
Imitation - where the melody in one part is copied a few notes later in a different part
Interval - the distance between two pitches
Inversion (melody) - the pitch moves in the opposite direction
Melisma - A series of melodic notes sung to the syllable
Mode - an alternative scale to the diatonic major and minor
Modulation - the process of changing key midway through a piece
Monophonic - music consisting of a single, unaccompanied melody line
Passing note - a non-harmony note placed between two harmony notes a third apart
Pedal note - a sustained note, usually heard in the bass, while the harmony above it changes
Pizzicato - string players plucking the string instead of bowing
Polyphonic - a musical texture where two or more parts move independently
Portamento - a performing technique of sliding form one pitch to another
Rallentando - slowing down
Rubato - where some flexibility of rhythm is used to create expressive affect
Scalic - Melodies based on segments of scales
Sforzando - strongly accented note, indicated with the sign sf
Shuffle - similar to swing rhythm, but with a much stronger triplet feel
Simple time - a metre in which the main beat can be subdivided into two
Swing - in jazz or blues style, the first quaver will be played longer than the second
Ternary form - a musical structure of three sections, ABA, also called arch form
Tremolando - a musical effect created by the rapid repetition of a single note
Triadic - a melody based on the notes of the triad
Key Stage 5
Additive rhythm - where the bar is divided into beats of unequal length
Antecedent & consequent - question & answer phrasing
Auxiliary note - a non-harmony note one step away from the chord onto which it resolves
Bitonal - music which is in two keys simultaneously
Cadential 6/4 - a second inversion chord resolving to the dominant (1c-V)
Circle of 5ths - a series of chords whose roots are each a perfect 5th lower than the previous
Cluster chord - a chord of at least three adjacent notes
Compound interval - intervals which are greater than an octave
Contour - description of the shape of a melody
Counter melody - an independent melody sounding against another melody
Counterpoint - the simultaneous combination of two or more melodies with independent rhythms
Da capo - repeat from the beginning
Diminished chord - a triad made up of two minor 3rds
Dominant 7th - dominant chord when the 7th note is included
Echappée note - an unaccented, dissonant melodic decoration note, that is one step away from the essential note
Extended chord - a triad with notes added to it such as a 7th, 9th, 11th or 13th
False relation - a simultaneous or adjacent occurrence in different parts of a note in its natural form and its flattened or sharpened form
Harmonic rhythm - rate at which the harmony changes in a piece of music
Harmonic series - the notes which naturally occur on an instrument
Motor rhythm - an insistently repeating short rhythmic pattern
Non-functional harmony - where the chord progressions do not follow the needs of standard harmony
Non-harmony note - a note outside the harmony with which it is sounding, so usually sounds dissonant
Note of anticipation - a non-harmony note stays the same as the harmony changes for the following note
Parallel 3rds - a melodic line is simultaneously played a 3rd higher or lower
Parallel harmony - the parallel movement of two or more lines
Periodic phrasing - where the melodic phrase is structured in pairs of 2 bar phrases, making pairs of 4-bar phrases and so on
Resolution - the harmony moves from a discord to a concord
Retrograde - an extract of music played backwards
Secondary dominant 7th - a dominant triad which resolves to a chord that is not the tonic
Secondary triads - chords ii, iii, vi and vii in any key
Sequence (melody) - repetition of a motif in the same part but at a different pitch
Stringendo - tempo direction for getting faster
Substitution chord - a complex chord which functions in the same way as the simple chord it replaces
Suspension - a note for the previous chord carried over to the following chord, creating dissonance, before resolving
Tenuto - from Italian ‘to hold’, hold the note slightly longer than written
Tessitura - the average range of a piece
Walking bass - a bass part with a regular rhythm throughout a piece
Whole tone scale - a scale where there is a whole tone between all the notes
Reading List and Sample Assessment Materials
Key Stage 5 Exam Style Questions
