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This guide provides information that allows you, the project producer/director, to speak a common language with the
composer. In it you’ll find help with the qualities of music, music vocabulary, period definitions, and more.
General Qualities
The following is a list of some opposing qualities. When choosing a quality, think of the breadth of possibilities between
the opposites to help nail down the quality you are looking for. It is most helpful for the composer to choose a clear mood
or quality, and not try to combine opposites.
• Thick/Thin
• Dark/Light
• Somber/Humorous
• Snappy/Languid
• Tense/Loose
• Excited/Relaxed
• Repetitive/Linear
• Spacey/Grounded
• Folksy/Artsy
• Joyous/Macabre
• Goofy/Serious
• Staccato/Legato
• Static/Developing
• Celestial/Earthy
• Fiery/Watery
Macro Qualities
Macro Qualities are the basic building blocks of music. Use the general qualities to describe a macro quality. The basic
elements of music are:
Melody A single line of notes that go up and down: Homophonic, Polyphonic, Monophonic
Harmony Scales, chords and related pitches 16th (Renaissance), 17th (Baroque), 18th (Classical), 19th (Romantic)
Century, Impressionist (whole tone), 12 tone
Rhythm How the time is designed
Rhythmic Metrical: 4/4,6/8, 5/4, 7/8, etc.
Non-metrical: Oceanic (Rise & Fall), random
Texture The Quality of sound: sharp, soft, metallic
Dynamics The loud and soft of the music: Forte, Piano, Crescendo, Diminuendo
Style The genre, if it’s jazz, is it: Bebop, Swing, Free, Cool, or Hot?
Instruments Also known as timbre
Ensemble The collection of instruments
Form The structure that holds the music together
Purpose Is this a march, a birthday, a funeral, worship, dance?
Tempo How fast or slow, the rate of speed
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Victor Spiegel Music Music Producer’s Guide
Instrumental Qualities
Combined with General & Macro Qualities, you can specify more exactly the total sound with the instruments you wish to
use, e.g. Celestial Baroque Brass; Thin 5/4 Percussion; Goofy polyphonic strings.
Woodwind (Air): Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, English Horn, Bass flute, Bass Clarinet
Brass (Fire): Trumpet, Trombone, French Horn, Baritone, Tuba
Strings (Water): Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass (Arco, pizz, spiccato)
Voice: Solo, Choir, Antiphonal, Soprano, Alto Tenor, Bass
Percussion (Earth): Pitched/Non-pitched (Bells, Timpani/Snare, Triangle, Cymbal)
Organ: Pipe/Electric
Percussive Strings: Harp, Guitar, Lute, Oud, Dulcimer, Harpsichord, Autoharp, Piano: Grand, Electric, Upright
Found: (e.g. Cats, Rocks, Hiccups)
Synthesizer: (see gen. qual.)
Ethnic (specify country): Chordophones, Aerophones, Metallophones, Membranophones
Symphonic/Ensemble/Solo
Saxophones: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone
Rhythm
Rhythm is how the time in music organized. It is the design in time. We recognize music most often through patterns.
Rhythm is the basic pattern with a pulse or beat. Rhythm is a pattern we know intimately because our life depends on it.
Your heartbeat is the rhythm of life: baBOOM, baBOOM. This pattern is a simple rhythm without which you would not be
reading this. This beating of your heart creates a Pulse. The pattern that the rhythm makes can be Constant, Changing,
Simple or Complex.
Tempo
The pulse is the basic unit around which rhythm develops. Another name for pulse is Beat. In music, the pulse holds the
music together, as a heartbeat holds your life together. When the beat disintegrates, the music dies. We call the rate of
speed of the beat Tempo. The choices are Very Fast, Fast, Moderate (Walking Tempo), Slow (turtle walk), and Very Slow
Meter
Meter is the grouping of beats. Back to your heartbeat – the meter is 2, because it repeats the pattern baBOOM. The
word Chocolate creates a meter of 3: Cho-co-late Cho-co-late, with the emphasis being on the first sound. A meter of 4
might be a phrase like Little Baby, bigger brother, with the emphasis being on the Li.
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Victor Spiegel Music Music Producer’s Guide
Melody
A single line of pitches that go up and/or down is a Melody. You already know hundreds of melodies. They are the ones
you can sing, whistle or hum. When one melody enters on top of itself, we call that a Round or Canon. Frére Jacques and
Row Row Your Boat are examples of Canons. When several different melodies occur at the same time we call this
Counterpoint.
Texture
For the next minute, close your eyes and feel the things around you. How would you describe the texture of the material
you are sitting on, or the texture of your shirt, skin, hair, paper… whatever you have on and around your desk. I’ll wait
right here until you’re done. Now how would you describe the texture of your hair – soft, flowing, or is your hair short and
springy? How the instruments play – the articulation –creates the texture of the composition.
Harmony
Can be defined in two different ways: 1) A system of how notes work together; 2) Notes piled up on top of each other to
create a sequence of chords. Many cultures do not use chords, but rather a coherent tuning modal system. For us, a
mode will mean a scale neither major nor minor.
Purpose
Every piece of music you hear has a purpose. It may be the expression of a particular artist/composer, but it can also be
for worship, to sell a product, to enhance a scene in a movie, to communicate a message, or to celebrate a wedding.
Ensemble
In world music, instruments are grouped into families:
Chordophones: An instrument the sound of which is created by means of strings stretched between two points (violin,
guitar, berimbao).
Aerophones: A musical instrument (trumpet or flute) in which sound is generated by a vibrating column of air.
For example.
Vocal
Electronic
Mood
Mood plays an important role in music. Mood description is subjective, like taste, but we can sometimes agree on the
general feeling of the music. How does the music make you feel? Is it Happy, Sad, Inspiring, Dark, Angry, Nostalgic or
any other feelings from the grand garden of human experience? Sometimes the music is a complex blending of several
moods.
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Victor Spiegel Music Music Producer’s Guide
Dynamics
The Loud and Soft in music. How music changes dynamically contributes to the creation of its power and intimacy.
Dynamics creates contrasts and pulls us in. From very soft to very loud, we can increase the loudness (crescendo) or go
from loud to soft (diminuendo).
Form
Form creates the shape of the music. Like architecture, it shows us the space the music lives in. It can be very simple
such as a folk or pop song: Verse, Chorus, Verse (ABA). It might have many sections that keep returning (Cyclical). A
composed piece may not repeat sections, but just keep moving forward towards a conclusion like a story (Linear).
Improvised pieces have their own internal structure. There are many other kinds of forms of music to be explored, waiting
for someone like you.
Listening Compass
TEMPO Very Fast Fast Moderate Slow Very Slow Changes
METER 4 3 2 6/8 None Complex
Music Vocabulary
Accelerando Getting faster
Acoustics 1. the science of sound. 2. the properties of a concert hall or other buildings as they affect the sounds
produced in it.
Adagio Slow, relaxed tempo
Allegro Fast, brisk tempo
Andante Walking tempo
Aria A song for solo voice in opera
Bass Lowest part of the music, such as string bass or bass singer
Brass An instrument family whose sound is produced by blowing into a cup-shaped mouthpiece
Chord Generally, three or more notes played at the same time. A chord may relate harmonically
Coda Italian for “tail”. The concluding section of a piece of music
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Victor Spiegel Music Music Producer’s Guide
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Victor Spiegel Music Music Producer’s Guide
Period Definitions
Baroque: (1680-1750) Free flowing, often polyphonic style of music. Rules of construction are very strict, however. The
Fugue, canon and imitation techniques are some of the basic building blocks. [Bach, Vivaldi]
Classical: (1750-1800) A style of music distinguished by its symmetry and box-like construction. Measures are generally
grouped in fours and eights, modulation and development are straightforward. Developed as a reaction against the
Baroque. The Sonata and Sonata form are crystallized. Mozart, Haydn
Romantic: (1800-1860) From the French Roman, meaning novel, story. This style arose as a parallel to the availability of
books to all classes. The structure is based on the Sonata form, generally, but is allowed to grow and develop like a story,
with many characters, plots, twists and turns, highs and lows. 1850 Late Beethoven, Brahms
Impressionism:(1860-1900) "A style of composition designed to create descriptive impressions by evoking moods
through rich and varied harmonies and timbres". Ravel, Debussy
Special Effects
There are several ways in which a recording can be altered and otherwise messed with. These are:
• Reverberation
• Delay
• Flange
• Chorusing
• Pitch Shifting
Reverberation is the kind of room the performance takes place. Imagine all the different kinds of spaces you have ever
been in. From your bathroom which is very short but sometimes appropriate (for singing in the shower), to the racquetball
court and gymnasium, to the Grand Canyon. The space a performance takes place in translates into a quality like
Spacious or Intimate. Different instruments can be in different spaces, so they don't muddy each other. A lead voice can
be in a large chamber while the percussion and bass can be in a very small space. This gives a foreground/background
clarity. Intimacy uses a very small space or sometimes no reverberation at all.
Flanging occurred when two tape decks, playing the same exact recording, were touched on the flange of the tape reel,
causing a slight delay, The combined sound created something unique- a sliding up and down of pitch.
Chorusing. In musical terms a chorus is: A) a composition in four or more parts written for a large number of singers. B)
A refrain in which an audience joins a soloist in a song. C) A repeat of the opening statement of a popular song played by
the whole group. D) A solo section based on the main melody of a popular song and played by a member of the group. E)
A body of singers who perform choral compositions. F) A body of vocalists and dancers who support the soloists and
leading performers in operas, musical comedies, and revues.
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Victor Spiegel Music Music Producer’s Guide
In the technology discourse a chorus is also an effect that modifies the sound of a single instrument to simulate a group of
the same instruments. The subjective effect of a real chorus is caused by the fact that each of the sounds being mixed
together have different frequencies and/or timbres. The mixture becomes extremely complex as the relative phases of the
signals cause partial cancellation and reinforcement over a broad frequency spectrum.
The synthetic chorus effect was first obtained by subjecting the sound to a series of very short time delays and mixing
them. The delays were then modulated to increase the uncertainty of the combined pitch. This "time based" method takes
quite a few delays to achieve a good, rich effect. More recently pitched based chorusing has been introduced, which is
sometimes more convincing as a true chorus. These units work by splitting the signal into many frequency bands and then
randomly varying the phase and amplitude of each before recombining them. Both methods are valid and can produce
good results, but there is often a fundamental difference in the sound between the two.
Pitch Shifting takes material and makes it sound higher or lower. In voice work, it can be used subtly to deepen a voice,
or in its extremes, you can create monsters or mice-like critters.
The best projects are usually the ones where each individual feels they've made a contribution and can take pride in their
part. Your job is to give a vision to these people and gently guide them towards a shared goal.
It is important to be consistent but flexible, to learn to speak the different languages of your associates, and stay open to
learning from them. They want the project to succeed as much as you do because their reputation is on the line.
Creativity is a bridge into the unknown. It helps to have friends.
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