Musical Terms (updated 2/25/14)




Timbre
Seating plan of an orchestra: Softest instruments in the front (Violins), louder instruments are moved to the back. The loudest instruments are in the back (Percussion)
In order to be an orchestra, a group must have bowed strings as its nucleus. If it does not contain bowed strings as the nucleus, the group is an "ensemble", a "band", or some other name.
MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface. 1. a language that musical instruments use to communicate, 2. the hardware components of this communication (ports, cables, etc.), 3. actual computer files that are created and modified from this protocol. Cell phone ringtones are typically MIDI files ending in .mid.


Voices
SATB
From highest to lowest: - Soprano (high female), Contralto (Alto) (low female), Tenor (high male), Bass (low male); most common are Mezzo-Soprano (medium female) and Baritone (medium male)
Each person has the voice type that they have been given. Training, lessons, exercises, etc. can help strengthen a voice, polish the tone, have more control, etc., but can not turn an Alto into a Soprano.

Dynamics - The relative loudness or quietness of musical sound (Volume)
Crescendo - gradual increase in volume
Decrescendo - gradual "decrease" in volume
Subito - a sudden change in the dynamic level. It may move from loud to soft or from soft to loud, but it is abrupt.

Decibels - Amount of air (or water) pressure caused by a sound wave. See chart for decibel levels.
What would be the Sound Pressure Level (decibel range) of an acoustic classical guitar? 20-60 dB
Compression: a technique of "squeezing" the dynamic range of audio by making the soft parts louder, and the loud parts softer, to arrive at a more consistent dynamic level.
Normalize: a digital technique of anayzing a waveform to identify the loudest sound, and calculating the ratio that may be modified to arrive at the point just below distortion (clipping). It then processes the entire selected audio sample that amount, making the file louder.
The Loudness Wars - a modern production technique to obtain more density from recorded audio. The selected audio is compressed and normalized several times to even out the dynamic range, but enable the entire sample to be louder. Each track is processed this way, and the resulting mix is very dense, and loud.
An uncompressed audio file (WAV file) is about 10 MB per minute, and when it is compressed (squeeze the pitches to only those frequencies that are within our usual range of hearing), it is about 1.5 to 2 MB per minute. It sound muffled and softer, with less detail.