Describing unfamiliar music

Hello, welcome to today's lesson entitled, "Describing Unfamiliar Music." My name's Mr. Norris, and today we're gonna be exploring some of the ways that we can create a really sophisticated, and detailed description of a piece of unfamiliar music drawing on a whole range of musical elements. So, without further ado, let's get on with it. Today's outcome is I can use my knowledge of all musical elements to write a detailed description of a piece of music. Two key words today. The first is musical element, and these are the building blocks of music, which include rhythm, melody, harmony, structure, and others that will be exploring in a bit as well. And then musical effect. And this is the impact that a certain musical idea or device has. For example, this could be creating a certain mood or a feeling. The first part of today's lesson is focused on structuring a musical description. Describing unfamiliar music requires us to think about the piece of music as a whole. We should aim to give a clear and complete picture of the piece, bringing together all of the musical elements. What are the musical elements that we can describe? You can just quickly pause my video, and see if you can think of as many as you can. So, the key musical elements are melody, harmony, tonality, rhythm, metre, tempo, articulation, dynamics, texture, timbre, instrumentation and structure. So, we've got 12 there, and well done if you remembered a load of those. Now, there's various different acronyms you can use to remember these musical elements, and people use different ones, these are two that you may have come across and they're useful just to help us remember what the musical elements are, rather than actually helping us understand what those musical elements are about. So, the first is MADTSHIRTT with two T's at the end. And you can see there each letter corresponds to one of those musical elements. Another one you might have come across is DRASMITTTH with three T's in SMITTTH. And each of those, they can be useful if your brain works in such a way that helps you to remember the names of the musical elements. So, useful as a prompt. Let's just check your understanding of those two, which musical elements are missing from each acronym? You can just pause my video while you work this one out. So, the missing elements were melody, structure, and timbre. Those were the three missing elements from the two acronyms. And it may be that you or your school uses a completely different acronym from this, which is fine, but these are useful ones if you don't have one to already use. Acronyms can be a useful tool for remembering different musical elements as I've said, but it's more important to ensure the description of each element is thorough and accurate. A structured method can help create a thorough musical description of a piece of unfamiliar music. One useful method is the table method. This is a really effective one I think. To discuss the melody, the rhythm, and texture in this unfamiliar piece, we're gonna write the musical elements in one column, then we're gonna write key points about each in the other column. So, we're gonna have a listen to this now, we're gonna describe the melody first of all, and we're gonna use this format here. So, we've got the element on the left-hand side, and then we're gonna write a description of the melody in the table. So, let's just have a listen and just do this in your head for now. (gentle music) So just before I reveal the answer, try and think of a few points there that you could make about that melody. And some of the things you might have said then, you might have mentioned, for example, that it has conjunct movement mostly, it uses a few scalic runs. There's an ascending sequence that's mnemonic device and it's got quite a large range of melody as well. Now we've thought about the melody, we can do the same about the rhythm and the texture. We're just gonna put some short bullet points in those two boxes in the table there. Again, just do this in your head for now, but this is the process that we work through. So, let's have a listen now. First of all, let's listen for the rhythm. How would we describe the rhythm? (gentle music) So, try and think of a few key points about the rhythm. And here are some of the things we might have said. You might have said there's a semiquaver melody and there's a minim and crotchet accompaniment. And those are the two things. There's a real difference between the rhythms and the accompaniment and in the melodies that have much faster rhythms. Now, let's have, listen one last time and let's think about the texture this time. (gentle music) So, think of a couple of key points you can make about that texture. And here's what I would say. I would say there's a melody and accompaniment texture, starts with just the clarinet and the piano. And then later on there's a countermelody joins in. You might have mentioned that the texture gets thicker, or you might have mentioned that it feels a bit polyphonic towards the end with the multiple different melodies going on. So, this method, this table method ensures that each musical element is covered, and it helps us to structure our description clearly and effectively. We'll look at how we then do that. So, once we've got these points, we then combine them to write a paragraph. We start off with our first element, which is melody, and we can write a sentence based on the points we've made. So, we've got those bullet points in the table. I'm now gonna say this melody has a large range, it's conjunct and uses scalic runs in an ascending sequence. So, that's a really sort of concise way of summarising those points in a sentence. Then we'd make a sentence about rhythm. It uses fast rhythms, mainly semiquavers, while the accompaniment plays sustained minimums and crotchets creating contrast. So, again, we've combined those points together into one sentence about rhythm. And then finally we do the same with texture. This is a clear melody that comes with texture made more complex when a countermelody joins later. So, there we've got a really well-structured answer. We've separated the elements out and we'll give them one concise and detailed sentence for each element that we're being asked to focus on. One for melody, one for rhythm, one for texture. And if you just look at the amount of points that we've made in those three sentences, there's a huge amount of detail we've got in there by using this process of creating the table first and then putting it into pros into a paragraph. Each sentence should make a number of points about each musical element, that's a key thing here. But this approach helps to keep the description concise as well. I'd like to have a go here at describing the instrumentation in this same clip. So, a couple of key points about the instrumentation, here we go. (gentle music) So, the key points to make here would be there's a clarinet and an oboe, and then there's piano accompaniment as well. So, we can turn them into a single concise sentence that describes this then, we've got the sort of bullet point in the table. Just have a think about how you might turn that into a concise sentence before I reveal mine. So, I would probably say the instrumentation consists of clarinet and oboe with piano accompaniment. All we're doing is taking that information that we've got on the table, turning it into a concise and detailed sentence with nothing that doesn't need to be in that sentence. We've kept it to as much detail as possible, but without any extra unnecessary information. Which of these is not a feature of a good musical description? Focuses on one element, is detailed, it uses technical vocabulary, or it is concise. I'll give you a few seconds to work out which one is not a feature of a good description. And the correct answer here then is focuses on one element. Remember, we want have a broad view of the different elements in piece and how they combine together. For Task A, I'd like to complete this table to describe the harmony, tonality, texture, and instrumentation of this excerpt. So, there's four elements to focus on, and remember when we're writing in the table, we're just using bullet points or really short phrases so we're not writing in sentences yet. You can pause my video now, get as much detail for each element as you can. Have a listen to the clip and then we'll move on to the second part of the task after. Okay, let's now move on to the second part of this task. And now what I'd like to do is use the information in your table to write a paragraph describing those musical elements in the piece. Remember, you want to keep it concise and detailed, so that means you wanna have as much information in there as you can, but without adding too much extra, without having anything in there that's not essential, not necessary or relevant information. So, now I'd like to do is pause my video, have a look at that table and try and turn it into a really detailed effective paragraph. We can do that now. Okay, let's look back at this one then. So, when we're completing the table, here are some of the things you might have said. For harmony, we might have mentioned their use of extended codes. There are short repeated two-bar sequences. It mostly uses two different chords, which are called I and II, but there's some different chords in the later section as well. In terms of tonality, it's got a major key. You might have also mentioned there that it is diatonic because it's a major key. The texture is melody and accompaniment, and the instrumentation is alto saxophone with piano and double bass. So, those are the three instruments we have there. Now, let's look at what that like might look like in an effective paragraph. So, we could say this piece features alto saxophone, piano, and double bass. They play in a melody and a compliment texture, but the saxophone playing the melody, the tonality is major throughout. The harmony uses extended chords and mostly two-bar repeating patterns using code I or II. The later section uses some different chords. So, we've taken all that information from the table and I would say that's a really concise, but detailed paragraph. It's got lots of information in it, and it doesn't feel like there's anything in there that's not relevant or that is extra. So, if you've got some of those points really well done. And that's a really good example of a model paragraph that's detailing those elements. Let's move on now to describing musical effects. Composers use musical elements in specific ways to create specific effects such as feelings, moods, or emotions. In this example, there's a very fast tempo and loud dynamics that have sudden changes. What effect do these features have on the mood and the feeling of the music? So, what I'd like to do now is you're gonna pause my video and have listen to this clip. And in that table there you'll see we've got our element and our description just like we did in the first part of the lesson, but now we're adding a third column, which is the effect column. So, we're gonna describe the effect of how that element is used, what's the effect of the fast tempo, what's the effect of the loud and sudden changes in dynamics? How does it make us feel? What kind of mood does it create? So, you can pause my video now and have a think about what you might put in those boxes. So, here's what I would write. I would say the very fast tempo gives us a feeling of energy or urgency. That's what it makes us feel. It makes us feel a bit on edge and it makes us feel very energetic. And the sudden loud changes in the dynamics while the loudness creates a feeling of action and excitement, and the sudden changes feel tense and unpredictable. So, these elements being used in such a way that they create this effect, and that table there with element description effect is a really useful way of helping us identify and analyse what's going on in the music. We can then use that, the new table with the three columns to write a descriptive paragraph. So, we take that first row there, and I'm gonna make that into a sentence. The very fast presto tempo creates a feeling of energy and urgency. So, I'm no longer just describing what the element is, I'm not just saying there is a very fast temper, I'm saying that this is the description of it and this is the effect it has. And then we just do the same with the second element. The live dynamics create a feeling of action and excitement and the sudden changes make it feel tense and unpredictable. So, again, we've taken that element, one really concise and detailed sentence detailing the element, the description, and the effect. Which is the most useful order for planning a descriptive answer? Is it element description, effect, description, element, effect, or element, effect and description? I'll give you a few seconds to work out the correct answer. And the correct answer then is element, description, effect. We start with the element, we describe what that element is like in the piece of music, and then we describe the effect of that. For Task B, you're gonna listen to this clip. I'd like to complete the table describing the rhythm, dynamics and articulation, and then the effect that these have on the mood. So, you're gonna, for each element, complete two boxes describing the element and then describing the effect of that. You pause my video in there, get as much detail in as you can and give it your best shot. Let's move into the second part of this task now. And here you're gonna use your answers to question one in that table to create a detailed descriptive paragraph about the use of rhythm, dynamics, and articulation in the clip. So, take each row, convert it into a concise and detailed sentence, and lay them out in really well structured paragraph. You can pause my video while you have a go at that. Let's review this task then. Let's start with rhythm. To describe the rhythm in that clip, we would say there're repeated fast rhythms throughout. The melody uses contrasting along sustained notes, and the effect of that is there's a feeling of energy and movement. These repeated fast rhythms really create a feeling of movement and energy. For dynamics is generally loud, but there are times when it's extremely loud, and this creates a very dramatic, intense and scary mood. For articulation, there are lots of repeated staccato and aggressive accented notes, and the effect of this is it's very dramatic and it's almost a sort of violent effect. Then we put those into our paragraph. So, we start with rhythm, the repeated fast rhythms that play throughout, create a feeling of energy and movement. The long sustained notes in the melody contrast. So, that's rhythm covered, lots of detail there. The dynamics. The dynamics are loud throughout and at times extremely loud fortissimo. So, we've got that technical word in there as well. This creates a dramatic, intense and scary atmosphere. So that's dynamics done, and then finally, articulation. The articulation uses lots of repeated staccato and aggressively accented notes. This adds to the sense of drama and violence. So, we've got a huge amount of detail in that paragraph there, but it's really quite concise. We've described three elements, and lots of detail, and it's really well structured and easy to interpret when you're reading it. So, that's a really good example there of a model paragraph for this kind of question. Let's review today's lesson then. Musical elements are useful starting point for a description of unfamiliar music. An effective description should, be concise, cover multiple musical elements and analyse the musical effect. So, we've got three key aspects there of an effective description. We can use the table method to help us structure our thoughts and arrange them into an effective paragraph. Describing the effect of each feature gives a more thorough description of a piece of music. So, hopefully today you feel like you've got a good understanding of how to structure your musical descriptions when you are listening to unfamiliar music, making sure we're using that element, description and effect, table method or similar methods to help you make sure that your thoughts are really well organised, but also that when you then put them into a paragraph, you're not missing anything out and it's very easy to interpret what you've been writing about. So, hopefully now when you're describing unfamiliar music, you'll be able to draw on some of those to help you make your descriptions more effective. Thanks for taking part in today's lesson, and I'll see you in another one.