What are the basic elements of music?

Basic elements of music: the basic elements of music refer to various elements that constitute music, including the level of sound, the length of sound, the strength of sound, timbre and so on. These basic elements combine with each other to form the common "formal elements" of music, such as rhythm, melody, harmony, strength, speed, mode, form and texture. The formal element that constitutes a musician is the means of expression of music. The most basic elements of music are rhythm and melody.

1, rhythm: the rhythm of music refers to the length and strength of sound in music movement. The rhythm of music is often compared to the skeleton of music. Beat is the periodic and regular repetition of repetitive beats and weak beats in music. Traditional music in China calls the beat "board eye", and "board" is equivalent to strong beat; "Eye" is equivalent to the second strong beat (middle eye) or weak beat.

2. Melody: Melody is also called melody. The ups and downs of music are organized horizontally and methodically according to a certain rhythm, forming a tune. In a complete musical work, tune is one of the most important means of expression. The direction of melody is endless, and there are three basic directions: "horizontal", "upper" and "lower". The direction of the same sound is called horizontal; Accent upward from bass to treble; Drop from high notes to low notes. The common progressive ways of melody are homophonic repetition, progressive and jumping. According to the adjacent notes of the scale

For progression, a jump of three degrees is called a small jump, and a jump of four degrees or more is called a big jump.

3. Harmony: Harmony includes "chord" and "harmonic progression". Chords are usually sound combinations formed by three or more notes overlapping vertically (simultaneously) according to certain rules. The transverse organization of chords is harmonic progression. Harmony has obvious functions of strong, light, thick and thin colors; It also has the functions of forming clauses, dividing paragraphs and ending music.

4. Intensity: the intensity of the midrange in music.

5. Speed: the speed of music.

6. Mode: The tones used in music are connected according to a certain relationship, and these tones form a system centered on one tone (tonic), which is called mode. Such as China's major mode, minor mode and pentatonic mode. The tones in the mode are arranged from the tonic to the highest tone to form a scale.

7. Form: the horizontal organizational structure of music.

8. Texture: the combination form of each voice in a multi-voice music work (including vertical combination and horizontal combination).

9. Melody: the organized, rhythmic and harmonious movement of sound formed by artistic conception. Melody is the foundation of music, and the thoughts and feelings of music are expressed through it.

Rhythm and beat are important factors in music creation and are of great significance in music performance. Rhythm and beat will always coexist and be inseparable in music. They organize music through the length, intensity, fixity and accuracy of sound and the relationship between them. The repetition of the same time period with and without stress in a certain order is called beat. For example, the neat pace of marching in line fully reflects this point. Assuming that the left foot is stressed and the right foot is not, then left-right-left-right is light-heavy-light-heavy, which is the beat.

Rhythm has two meanings: broadly speaking, all coordination, balance and rhythm can be called rhythm. The narrow sense of rhythm is the relationship between the length of sound. The ever-changing drums in the parade reflect the relationship between the length of the sound, such as boom-boom-boom, which is the rhythm. In musical works, the typical rhythm is called rhythm type. For example, the fast three steps in ballroom dancing (equivalent to the Viennese waltz in classical music) has a rhythm pattern of "bang, dismantle, dismantle, bang, dismantle, dismantle", which belongs to 6/8 beat in musical terminology (pronounced as the repetition of some rhythm patterns with obvious characteristics in music, which makes people feel and remember easily, and also helps to unify the musical structure and establish the musical image, so it is used in music. Another function of rhythm is to stimulate the emotions of the audience, so that they can't help singing along with the music in their body movements. Modern rock is a kind of music characterized by strong and rough rhythm. It caters to the characteristics that young people like excitement, so it is popular all over the world.

Let's talk about the beat. Each time period used to form a beat is called a unit beat. The stress used to form the beat is called beat stress. The stressed unit beat is called strong beat, and the unstressed unit beat is called weak beat. In music, the unit of beat is expressed by fixed notes, which is called beat. The beat is marked with scores. The numerator represents the number of beats per bar, and the denominator represents the note length of the unit beat. The reading method of time symbols is to read the denominator first and then the numerator, for example, three-quarters of the time is read four or three times. In music, the part between the previous strong beat and the next strong beat is called a bar. Vertical lines that separate bar lines from each other are called bar lines.

Due to the different number of unit beats and stress positions, beats are divided into several categories. A beat with two or three beats per bar is called a single beat. The characteristic of single beat is that there are only strong beats and weak beats. For example, 2/2, 2/4, 3/4 and 3/8 are all single shots. Use the same single beat, that is, two or three beats, to synthesize a sequence, so that only one beat will not be repeated, which is called double beat. In a double beat, there are several single beats, and the first beat of each single beat is a double beat. In multi-beat, the first beat is called strong beat, and the other beats are called sub-strong beat. Commonly used remakes are 4/4, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, etc.

In music, all kinds of beats have their unique performance functions, which are irreplaceable by other beats. For example, marches always use two beats, waltzes always use three beats, and the two can never be interchanged. In addition, complex beats often give special vitality to music, such as jazz and rock music.

Melody is the soul and foundation of music, which embodies all the ideas or main ideas of music. When a writer writes a novel, it is easy to remember by describing the plot in words. On the one hand, it tells the real life, on the other hand, people can go back and recall the plot. The content described by music is always abstract in essence (except some title music), and the "plot" of music can only be expressed by melody, so melody seems to be equivalent to the position of plot in the novel. Melody is the guide of the audience. Therefore, when listeners touch a melody, they must be able to recognize it and track its whereabouts from beginning to end. This is the minimum requirement for an understanding audience. If you can't recognize the melody and follow it when listening to music, then you don't need to listen, because you only vaguely feel the existence of music.

What is the melody? Simply put, a single tone with different pitches and different durations is continuous, which constitutes a melody. Strictly speaking, melody is composed of mode relationship and rhythm relationship, and it is carried out independently in a single voice with multiple tones. Melody organically combines all the basic elements of music (here refers to mode, pitch, rhythm, strength and so on. ) into a complete and inseparable unity. It is inconceivable that melody can be separated from other musical elements, because the expression of melody and people's sense of strength are realized through the function and interaction of various musical elements. Melody can be divided into two types: vocal instrumental melody. Vocal melody is for human voice. Generally speaking, the range is narrow and full of singing. The melody of instrumental music is for musical instruments to play. Compared with vocal music melody, it has a wider range, greater changes in speed and intensity, and is full of rhythm and skill. But singing is also of great significance to the expression of instrumental melody.

Melody can be divided into the following four ways: 1 and progressive. That is to say, the melody follows the scale formula, which can be either ascending (12345) or descending.

(5432 1)。 2. Jump in. Jumping more than three degrees in the melody process is called jumping (135 or 53 1). 3. Homophonic repetition. The same sound appears continuously (1155665,4433221). 4. Punching, that is, repeating at different heights (123,456,654,321). In addition, the melody can be changed and developed by some means, thus expanding the scope and enriching the content of the melody.

What is a beautiful melody? This is a difficult question to answer. The composition skill book will put forward some conditions for beautiful melody, such as maintaining a certain relationship between sounds in the whole phrase or paragraph; There are obvious segments in the structure; There should be balance and contrast in direction and rhythm; It should be characterized by structure in order to show a clear musical image. Wait a minute. But even if you master these rules completely, you may not be able to write beautiful melodies. Some people say that the ability to write melodies is innate, which is not unreasonable. Compared with other musical factors (rhythm, harmony, etc.). ), the melody of a piece of music can best reflect the composer's style characteristics. People who often listen to music can often guess which period and genre it belongs to from the melody they have never heard before. Generally, people who listen to music mainly identify a piece of music by melody.

Melody is a clue that constantly guides the listener to listen to a piece of music from beginning to end. When listening to music, we must firmly grasp this clue. Most melodies are more or less accompanied by some carefully designed secondary materials. Don't let the melody be drowned by other materials that accompany it. To separate the melody from all the surrounding materials in your mind, you must be able to hear the melody.

The essence of sound

Sound has four attributes: high and low, strong and weak, long and short, timbre. The sound level is determined by the number of times (frequency) that an object vibrates in a certain period of time. Many tones have high vibration frequency, while few tones have low vibration frequency. The audio range that the average human ear can hear is about 30- 17000 Hz. The length of sound is determined by the duration of vibration. The longer the vibration duration, the longer the sound and the shorter the vibration duration. The strength of sound is determined by the amplitude, that is, the amplitude of the vibration range of the object. Large amplitude sound is strong, and small amplitude sound is weak. Timbre (timbre or timbre) is determined by the harmonics generated by the sounding object. The nature and shape of the sounding object are different, and the harmonics generated are different, so the timbre is also different.

These four attributes of sound are very important in music expression. But pitch and length are more important. Take the melody of Happy Birthday as an example. Whether you sing with your voice or play with an instrument, sing in a low voice or sing loudly, although the sound intensity and timbre have changed, it is easy to recognize this melody as "Happy Birthday". But if you change the pitch or sound value (length) of this song, the musical image will be destroyed, and people will no longer regard this as the original melody. The vibration state of sound is regular and irregular. Accordingly, sounds are divided into two categories: music and noise. Music is mainly used in music, that is, the sound with regular vibration. But noise is also an indispensable part of music performance.