The Elements of Music

Beat

Strike (a person or an animal) repeatedly and violently so as to hurt or injure them, typically with an implement such as a club or whip.

Meter

Is a recurring pattern of stresses or accents that provide the pulse or beat of music.

Tempo

The speed at which a passage of music is or should be played.

syncopation

A temporary displacement of the regular metrical accent in music caused typically by stressing the weak beat

Forte

Meaning "loud".

Piano

Meaning "soft"

Crescendo

The loudest point reached in a gradually increasing sound.

Decrescendo

A gradual decrease in volume of a musical passage.

Pitch

The quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it; the degree of highness or lowness of a tone.

Theme

Consists of a recognizable melody or a characteristic rhythmic pattern

Conjunct

Simply describes a melody that moves in distinct steps or intervals, smoothly, and in a connected way.

Disjunct

A melodic line that moves by leaps and skips rather than in steps.

Binary

A musical form in 2 related sections, both of which are usually repeated.

Ternary

A symmetrical structure in music most often represented by the letters ABA.

Strophic

Is music in which every verse or chorus is sung to the same refrain.

Through-composed

Is relatively continuous, non-sectional, or non-repetitive music.

Chord

Is three or more notes that combine harmoniously

Progression

Have the function of establishing or contradicting a tonality, the technical name for what is commonly understood as the "key" of a song or piece.

Key

Of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale, that forms the basis of a music composition

Tonality

Is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality.

Register

Is the "height" or range of a note, set of pitches or pitch classes, melody , part, instrument, or group of instruments.

Range

Is the distance from the lowest to the highest pitch it can play.

Instrumentation

Is the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and the properties of those instruments individually

Monophonic

Is the simplest of musical textures, consisting of a melody, typically sung by a single singer or played by a single instrument player without accompanying harmony or chords.

Polyphonic

Is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice>

Homophonic

Is a piece of music with chords, where two instruments play the same line of melody in the same rhythm

Heterophony

Is a type of texture characterized by the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line