The Elements of Music

Sound is created when an object vibrates. These vibrations are perceived by our ears and then sent to our brain. Our brain in turn analyzes these signals and let's us know what type of sound we are hearing (i.e. an alarm clock ringing, a car horn blaring, etc.). Music is differentiated from other sounds because it has certain qualities.

When you listen to a piece of music, you'll notice that it has several different characteristics; it may be soft or loud, slow or fast, combine different instruments and have a regular rhythmic pattern. All of these are known as the "elements of music."

· Beat and Meter - In order to define meter, let's first define beats. Beats give music its regular rhythmic pattern. Beats are grouped together in a measure; the notes and rests corresponds to a certain number of beats. Meter refers to rhythmic patterns produced by grouping together strong and weak beats. Meter may be in duple (2 beats in a measure), triple (3 beats in a measure), quadruple (4 beats in a measure) and so on.

· Dynamics - Dynamics are abbreviations or symbols used to signify the degree of loudness or softness of a piece of music. It also indicates whether there is a change in volume.

· Harmony - In general, harmony refers to the combination of notes (or chords) played together and the relationship between a series of chords. But to give you a better understanding of harmony, let's first define melody. Melody refers to the tune of a song or piece of music. It is created by playing a series of notes one after another. Harmony accompanies and supports the melody. It is created by playing a group of notes (either simultaneously or as broken chords) behind the melody thus giving it musical texture.

· Key - Also known as tonality; a principle in music composition wherein at the end of the piece there is a feeling of completion by going back to the tonic. The tonic (main key or home key) is the principal pitch of a composition. Simply put, key refers to the central note (i.e. key of C), scale (i.e. C scale) and chord (i.e. C Major triad)

· Melody - It refers to the tune of a song or piece of music. it is the memorable tune created by playing a succession or series of pitches.

· Musical Instruments and Voice - Musical instruments are classified as percussion, strings,woodwinds, brass and keyboards. Another method of classifying musical instruments according to the type of vibrating material used to produce sound is called the Sachs-Hornbostel System. Our voice is also considered a musical instrument. Each of us has a different voice type or vocal range and no two voices are alike.

· Music Notation - Refers to the symbols used to represent music when writing it down. These symbols specify the pitch, rhythm and meter of a piece of music.

· Pitch - The relative lowness or highness that we hear in a sound. The pitch of a sound is based on the frequency of vibration and the size of the vibrating object. The slower the vibration and the bigger the vibrating object, the lower the pitch; the faster the vibration and the smaller the vibrating object, the higher the pitch. For example, the pitch of a double bass is lower than that of the violin because the double bass has longer strings. Pitch may be definite (i.e. piano) or indefinite (i.e. cymbals).

· Rhythm - It may be defined as the pattern or placement of sounds in time and beats in music. Roger Kamien in his book Music: An Appreciation defines rhythm as "the particular arrangement of note lengths in a piece of music." Rhythm is shaped by meter; it has certain elements such as beat and tempo.

· Tempo - The Italian word at the beginning of a music piece that indicates how slow or fast the piece should be played. This is called the tempo which is effective throughout the duration of the music unless the composer indicates otherwise.

· Texture - Musical texture refers to the number of layers as well as the type of layers used in a composition and how these layers are related. Texture may be monophonic (single melodic line), polyphonic (two or more melodic lines) and homophonic (a main melody accompanied by chords).

· Timbre - Also known as tone color; it refers to the quality of sound that distinguishes one voice or instrument from another. Timbre may range anywhere from dull to lush, from dark to bright (such as the sound of glockenspiels).

Advantages:

1. The distance between actor-actress and audience may reduce.

2. The actor-actress could more interactions with the audience.

3. Opportunity to have options of audience participation.

4. Actor has to be strong enough to keep the audience to their performance.

5. Actor has to give focus to the all levels of audiences.

6. Costumes and light support becomes less important.

7. Contemporal issues become important to the audiences.

8. The reflections of the audiences are easily understood by the actors of the performances.

9. Sometimes, community people may take roles from the audience side.

10. Sometimes, various and different opinions may have collected about the issue of the performance as part of the reflections of the audiences.

11. Open air theater is cost effective.

12. It gives us opportunity to take experiment at every level of the theatre.

Disadvantages:

1. Sometimes, at the back-edge of the audience may not hear the full sound of the dialogue of the performance.

2. Over crowded may have cause the problem for the performance.

3. Sometimes audience may not satisfied with the performance of performers.

4. Sometimes actor-actress may feel uncomfortable at the open air theatre.

5. Sometimes, people may get negative impression with the performance.

Alim Al Razi

Theatre Activist & Researcher

razialim@yahoo.com

• Man pops out of a wormhole in front of himself, says hi to his past self, then falls backward into the wormhole's other end behind him and travels back in time to say hi to his previous self.
• Guy falls off a cliff. The water splashes.
• Guy takes off in a rocket
• Guy drives into a tree
• Fireworks
• The SimpsonsTM Title sequence.

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Hi different answer here :) I had to do one for school and so what i did was make the words "i dont want to do a flip book" grow bigger. Then the words "Ill take the F" Then "this is stupid" I made those spead out to say "This is _____ stupid" and made "so" grow into the space. Then "But i did the stupid flip book." Then ":)?"

Speaker as an ex-printmaker and lithograph/intaglio printer from many years ago... a printer's proof is the first one that comes off the press that meets the artist's approval for saturation, tonality, density, evenness of printing, etc.

This is held as the printer's proof by the printer (who is customarily not the artist) and is used as a benchmark for printing the edition. All prints must meet the level of quality of the printer's proof. Those that don't are scrapped, and printing continues until the edition is filled... plus a few extra for artist's proofs, personal gifts, etc.

The printer gets to keep the printer's proof, and the artist usually signs it. I got a bunch of them.

In France, the printer's proofs were marked "bon a tirer", which basically means "good to pull".

When I was going to school in Italy, us American students took a fancy to inscribing our printer's proofs with "prova di stampa", which was the customary designation for printer's proofs (if you were Italian).

Buy it because you like it not to make money on it because you will probably won't. Own about 100 all signed by the artist, lower the production number the better. Paid an average of $10 per print and they list between $300- $1200 each.