5 Music Terms For The Day

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Tone clusters - The simultaneous sounding of two or more adjacent tones. 

Al segno - Return to the sign, Dal segno. 

Coda - Closing section of a composition. An added ending.

Dominant - The fifth degree of the major or minor scale. Also, the term for the triad built on the fifth degree, labelled V in harmonic analysis.  

Minor - The designation for certain intervals and scales. A key based on a minor scale is called a minor key. The three types of minor scales include natural, hormonic, and melodic, which is used infrequently in choral music. The patterns for natural and harmonic scales are:

 Natural: whole      half       whole    whole     half       whole     whole
                 step       step       step       step       step       step      step
 
 Harmonic: whole     half      whole     whole     whole     1 1/2     half
                    step       step      step       step        step       step       step

 Melodic:
 ascending: whole     half       whole    whole     whole     whole     half
                   step       step       step       step        step       step       step

 descending: whole     whole     half      whole     whole     half      whole
                     step       step       step       step       step       step      step