Required Readings
Terms:
Music: Temporally organized (intent) sound and silence a-referentially communicative (expectation) within a context.
Explicit schemata: Data structures developed by experience and housed in memory that represent concepts about the outside world of which one is aware.
Implicit schemata: Data structures developed by experience and housed in memory that represent concepts about the outside world of which one is unaware.
Musical Variables:
• Pitch: High-Low; Major-Minor-Neither-Unclear.
• Tempo/Pulse: The speed of a regular pulse (i.e. the speed of the clock) measured in beats per minute (e.g., if one pulse per second, the tempo is 60); Moderate or "Personal" tempo is the tempo at around 100 beats per minute, at which most people feel comfortable. Also called walking tempo or personal tempo; 3 types: Fast-Average-Slow.
• Loudness: Soft-Average-Loud.
• Consonance: 1. general musical sense: A "smooth" sounding of an interval or a chord, often considered pleasant; e.g. major chord; 2. the stratification/layering of accents in the relationship of visual and musical domain: When accents align in time.
• Dissonance: 1. general musical sense: A "rough" sounding of an interval or a chord, often considered unpleasant; e.g. augmented chord. 2. the stratification/layering of accents in the relationship of visual and musical domain: When accents do not align in time. For example: The mysterious music that creeps into the very beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• Texture: A combination of different phenomena occurring simultaneously.
• Monophony: One voice. A unison or singular melody played solo or in a group.
• Homophony: Same voice. A texture in which all the voices move more or less together.
• Polyphony: Many voice. A musical texture in which two or more distinct melodic lines are played or sung simultaneously.
• Meter: A grouping of beats often acheived by a contrast in sound, i.e, one beat sounds different than the others.
• Duple: A meter that contains two beats or has groups of two, e.g., 2/4, 4/4.
• Triple: A meter that groups beats of three, e.g., 3/4, 3/8.
• Complex: A meter that uses combinations of duple and triple, e.g., 5 (2+3), 7 (3+2+2), 13 (3+3+3+2+2), etc; also when the meter is constantly changing, e.g., a sequence that goes 3/4, 2/4, 3/16, 3/4, 4/4, 4/4, 3/8, etc.
• Interval: The distance between two pitches or to notes. "Distance," here is used metaphorically to mean the difference of high and low pitches. Intervals are measured by the notes in a major or minor key. For example: John Williams uses the perfect fifth interval which can be found on a piano starting with the C (first) key and following that note with the (fifth) key, G. See illustration below.
• Timbre: The character or quality of a sound that distinguishes sounds from one another; For Example: difference in timbre allows you to be able to differentiate a flute from a violin or theremin.
• Musical Structure (Form): The large way in which the parts combine together to make the whole.
• Binary Form: (AB) Comprised of two sections, each may repeat.
• Ternary Form: (ABA) Comprised of three sections, the first repeated after the second section.
• Rondo Form: (for example: ABACADA) Comprised of alternating contrasting themes with a principle theme.
• Theme and Variation: (A A' A'' A''' A'''' etc.) A form in which material following the initial statement of the theme is followed by alternative treatment or variations of the theme.
Diegetic Music: Also called “source music”; Music that is produced by people or devices that are part of the story space of the film; Sounds that the characters in the movie should be able to hear, whether the sound source is visible or not; For example: In Casablanca, when the band plays then French national anthem in the bar, they are creating diegetic music.
Non-Diegetic Music: Music that is produced outside the story space of the film and that the characters of the film should not be able to hear (unless they hear it in their heads); For example: In Star Wars, all of the music that is played during the space scenes is non-diegetic.
Idee fixe: A recurring musical theme that is associated with a character, object, place, etc.; For Example: The five-note theme in Ben-Hur associated with miracles and the spiritual presence.
Extra Referential: References to contexts outside of the film; For example: In the Footlight Parade scene in "Shanghai Li," the "Yankee Doodle" theme with an eagle showing on screen that points to the United States.
Intra Referential: A referential relationship established within the confines of the film in question; When a character (mood, object, etc.) is given a theme that repeats in the film, it is intra-referential; For example: In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the five-note theme points to the alien.
Syntax: The alignment of visual and musical accents; In connection between music and visuals (some animation, dance sequences, etc) syntactical meaning is expressed through the superposition of musical and visual accent structures; Can be understood as embodied meaning (Leonard Meyer); Referential, in that its meaning arises from pattern itself.
Iconicity: When a musical pattern suggests a visual pattern, e.g., a "weeping willow" tree suggests weeping. For example: The "rising" music when the space ship leaves at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or when in cartoons, a falling pitch suggests the falling of Wile E. Coyote off of a cliff.
Icon: Partly referential. It denotes a connection across different frames of reference suggested by common patterns or forms; In the case of music, sound patterns/forms (in terms of pitch, dynamics, melodic contour, tempo, etc.) can suggest connections to iconic features in other frames of reference; Unlike index, the connection is not arbitrary but is based on some form of resemblance in terms of form, shape, pattern, motion, transferred from one domain to the other.
Three types of icon: ramp, arch, and burst:
• Ramp: A rise or a fall followed by an either abrupt or postponed fall off. In any case there is a time gap between the rising and the descending movement that distinguishes it from arch.
• Arch: A constant/contiguous up and down motion of pitch and/or loudness in time.
• Burst: As an isolated moment of accent in music by the use of instrumentation, loudness or pitch.
Chromaesthesia: The ability to see specific colors when specific pitches are heard; A special case of ‘Synesthesia’: perceptual, cross-modal connection of the senses. Note: Although not all people with chromaesthesia associate the same colors with the same pitches, they are all internally consistent.
Trill: A rapid change of pitch in a relatively narrow range.
Elision: (visually) During a sequence, a move through vast degrees of space and/or time; (musically) The immediate transition to a different song, unrelated theme, or key or the transition of diegetic music to non-diegetic music or vie-versa; Closely connected to the technique ‘cut’; Common visual or musical elements used for instant transition.
Mickey-Mousing: The gratuitous use of iconic sound effects with visuals common in cartoons. For example: In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the cartoon scene used the technique to musically accent the action.
Cut: To alter the angle or placement of the camera, causing an instantaneous change of point-of-view, location, scene, etc.
Syntax: The alignment of visual and musical accents; In connection between music and visuals (some animation, dance sequences, etc) syntactical meaning is expressed through the superposition of musical and visual accent structures; Can be understood as embodied meaning (Leonard Meyer); A-referential, in that its meaning arises from pattern itself. Accent in this sense represents an instant/moment of change in a variable or a change of direction.
In musical domain, the variables are: dynamic (loudness), instruments (timbres), pitch direction (melodic contour), meter, texture (switch between monophonic, homophonic or polyphonic texture or any combination of those).
In visual domain, the variables are: camera zoom in/out (the point of changed direction or stopping is the point of accent), panning (movement of camera left to right or vice versa), change of perspective or cut (often happens with multiple cameras - again, the moment it happens is perceptual accent).
The accents do not suggest forms, shapes or motion as in icon, nor are arbitrary associations as in index. Syntactical meanings arise from pure juxtapositions in time-ordered elements. But things that are syntactical can often also be iconic and referential. On the continuum of referentialism the primary source of meaning is the alignment of accent (ex. dance, ice-skating, films).
Syntactical point: Not iconic, but a point of simultaneous visual and musical accent.
Syntactical sequence: A series of syntactical points.
Throw-away music: Music that often underscores dialogue that is used simply as filler.
Symbiosis: A mutually reinforcing relationship between visual and musical elements dependent on each other.
Strata: Single and distinct layers that combine into a texture.
Mono-thematic Score: A score in which all (or the overwhelming majority) of the music is based on a single melody. For example: The score to Lilies of the Field is monothematic, as all of the music based on the tune, "Amen."
Bi-thematic Score: A score in which all (or the overwhelming majority) of the music is based on two melodies. For example: The score to Spellbound is bithematic, as all of the music based on either the "dementia theme" or the "relationship theme."
Flexitone: Raksin's use of tape speed sound modifications.
Global Features: Structures (such as binary, and ternary, or Rondo — see above) often comprised of structures of local features.
Local Features: Musical relationships related to a relatively short timeframe or scene; often further used to create global features.
Architectonic: The global structure of the use of music. Specifically how the problems presented by the film are organized and solved across the entire film.
Terms
Diagrams (new)