Music glossary - Letter S
PLEASE CHOOSE A LETTER: SSaltarello: Italian "jumping dance", often characterized by triplets in a rapid 4/4 time. Scale: Successive notes of a key or mode either ascending or descending. Scherzo: Pertaining to the sonata form, a fast movement in triple time. Secular music: Nonreligious music; when texted, usually in the vernacular. Septet: A set of seven musicians who perform a composition written for seven parts. Sequence: Restatement of an idea or motive at a different pitch level. Sextet: A set of six musicians who perform a composition written for six parts. Sextuple meter: Compound metrical pattern of six beats to a measure. Sforzando: Explosively Shamisen: Long-necked Japanese chordophone with 3 strings. Sharp: A symbol indicating the note is to be raised by one semitone. Simple meter: Grouping of rhythms in which the beat is subdivided into two, as in duple, triple, and quadruple meters. Slur: A curve over notes to indicate that a phrase is to be played legato. Sonority: The tonal quality produced by a performer on an instrument. Spiritual: Folklike devotional genre of the United States, sung by African-Americans and whites. Staccato: Short, detached notes, marked with a dot above them. String quartet: A group of 4 instruments, 2 violins, a viola, and cello. Strophic form: Song structure in which the same music is repeated with every stanza (strophe) of the poem. Swing: A term applied to the style of jazz that originated about 1935, particularly in the music of the Benny Goodman orchestra. Syncopation: The rhythmic result produced when a regularly accented beat is displaced onto an unaccented beat. Synthesizer: Electronic instrument that produces a wide variety of sounds by combining sound generators and sound modifiers in one package with a unified control system. |