Sound in Time and Space

• pitch: the rate of sound vibration
• dynamics: the strength of sound vibrations
• tone color, timber: sound quality depending on the instruments or voices that produce them (e.g. bright, warm, ringing, hollow or brassy)
• overtone: a musical tone which is a part of the harmonic series above a fundamental note, and may be heard with it. -rhythm: the actual arrangement of durations

Rhythm

• beat: regular recurrence of short durational units
• accent: emphatic beats
• meter: recurring pattern of strong and weak beates
  • simple meter: duple and triple
  • compound meter

(rhythm 和 meter 的区别是，meter表明了这个小节是几几拍的，rhythm是其实际的节奏)

• syncopation: 切分
• tempo: absolute duration in fractions of a second
  • adagio: from ad agio ‘at ease’
  • andante: present participle of andare ‘to go’
  • moderato: ‘moderate’
  • allegretto: diminutive of allegro
  • allegro: ‘lively, gay’
  • presto: quick, from late Latin praestus ‘ready’
  • accelerando
  • ritardando
  • fermanta: a hold of indefinite length,from fermare ‘to stop’
  • a tempo: back to the main tempo

Pitch

• scale: the pool of pitches available for the making of music (diatonic scale and chromatic scale)
• interval: the difference between any two pitches (half steps and whole steps)
• octave: one having twice the frequency of the vibration of the other

The Structures of Music

Melody

• motive: a distinctive fragment of melody returning again and again (e.g. da da da DA in Beethoven’s FIfth Symphony)
• theme: the ‘topic’, a melody, a phrase, a motive even a tone color can be the theme

Texture

• monophony: one melody
• homophony: accompanying parts have the same rhythm
• polyphony: more melodies are played simultaneously
  • imitative polyphony (e.g. ‘row, row, row your boat’)

Tonality and Modality

tone + mode = key

Form

• general form: the organization of elements in a musical work
• a form: standardized formal patterns
• outer form and inner form

Genre

symphonies, sonatas, madrigals, and operas, etc..