down to business

So we had our little meeting with Mr. Konrad at the Bulletin Tuesday discussing the whens, the wheres, and the hows of this community blogger business.

I purposefully waited until today to really start, seeing as Sunday is the first day of the week it will help me establish consistency in my posts.

For those of us just tuning in, which at this point is just about everyone, Welcome aboard! My Name is Michelle Kenny. I'm writing this blog with the intention to keep anyone that  is interested up to date about the Arts; specifically any shows/performances in Eastern Connecticut, also I'll be sharing lessons I've learned through my formal training as a musician and performing arts student at Eastern Connecticut State University.

As for local upcoming events in January, you can catch up by reading my last post here.


During my time as a student, I have become familiar with quite a few topics pertaining to the Arts; such as: Music Theory, Music History, Popular Music, Ethnomusicology, Theater History, and Music Cultures of the World. I'll have to turn to outside sources for any information requests on art-art (painting, sculpture, etc.).
I'd like to get into the habit of making Sunday's learning days where I enlighten my readers (be it few or many).


The Basics:
The Materials of Music
The basic materials of music are sound and time. Sounds are used to structure time in music. time occurs in the duration of the sounds and silences between sounds.
Sound is the sensation perceived by the organs of hearing when vibrations (sound waves) reach the ear.
Vibration is the periodic motion of a substance. when you play and instrument, parts of the instrument (the strings, sounding board, etc.) and the air inside and around the instrument vibrate.
Compression and Rarefaction- these terms refer to the alternation of increased (compression) and decreased (rarefaction) pressure in the air caused by an activated (vibrating) surface or air column. one complete cycle of compression and rarefaction produces a vibration, or sound wave.
Frequency refers to the number of compression-rarefaction cycles that occur per unit of time, usually one second. Audible sounds for the human ear range from 20 to 20,000 cycles per second.

The Four Properties of Sound
sound has four identifiable characteristics: pitch, intensity, duration, and timbre.
Pitch is the highness or lowness of a sound. variation in frequency are what we hear as variations in pitch: the greater the number of sound waves produced per second of an elastic body, the higher the sound we hear; the fewer sound waves per second, the lower the sound.
A tone is a musical sound of definite pitch.
Intensity (amplitude) is heard as the loudness or softness of a pitch. in acoustics (the science of sound), intensity is the amount of energy affecting the vibrating body, and is measured on a scale of 0 to 130 in units called decibels. In musical notation, gradations of intensity are indicated with the following Italian words and their abbreviations:

Italian Word       Symbol       Translation           Average Decibels
Pianissimo                pp               Very soft                       40
Piano                        p                  Soft                                50
Mezzo piano            mp              Moderately soft              60
Mezzo forte              mƒ              Moderately loud            70
Forte                        ƒ                  Loud                              80
Fortissimo               ƒƒ                Very loud                      100


Duration is the length of time a pitch, or tone, is sounded. Patterns of duration are called meter and rhythm.
Meter describes regularly recurring pulses of equal duration, generally grouped into patterns of two, three, four, or more with one of the pulses in each group accented. these patterns of strong and weak pulses are called beats.
Duple (two-beat) meter and triple (three-beat) meter are the two basic meters. All other meters result from some combination of these two.
Operating in conjunction with the meter, rhythm is a pattern of uneven durations. while the steady beats of the meter combine to form measures, a rhythm may be a pattern of almost any length.
Timbre (tam-bur) is the tone quality or color of a sound. It is what helps us distinguish the difference between the sound of a clarinet and an oboe. Example: the boy is playing the oboe which sounds like a duck (sorry oboes but that's the easiest way to describe it) and the girl is playing the clarinet which has a more airy/breathey quality to its sound.

This sound quality is determined by the shape of the vibrating body, its material (metal, wood, human tissue), and the method used to put it in motion (striking, bowing, blowing, plucking).

I can continue to bore you by rambling on about how timbre can also sound different as a result of a person's perception of the harmonic series; and explain what makes up the harmonic series but I'll leave that for another day.

I'll try to supplement these entries with a second for any vocabulary definitions.