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Musical Language Differences between American-

English and Other Languages


» USING THE SITE » MUSICAL LANGUAGE DIFFERENCES
STUDY BASS
Musical terminology varies from language to language. While the vast
majority of musical terms are similar, there are a handful which are not.
These create confusion for many of studybass.com's readers who study
music in languages other than American-English. I've highlighted a few of
the most common differences below.

The 7th Note SI is TI


In Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc.) notes are named
with solfège syllables—DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, SI, DO.

The solfège system used in many countries—including the United States—


was revised in the 1800's so that all notes begin with a different letter.
The 7th note Si was replaced with Ti.

In American-, and British-English, the solfège syllables are DO, RE, MI, FA,
SO, LA, TI, DO. If you listen to the Rodgers and Hammerstein song DO-RE-
MI from The Sound of Music, you will notice the lyric for the 7th note
is Tea- a drink with jam and bread.

Throughout studybass.com, SI will be referred to as TI.

Fixed Do vs. Movable Do


Romance languages and many other countries use a note naming system
called Fixed DO. Fixed DO means DO is always equal to the note C. For
example:

Note: C D E F G A B C
Syllable: DO RE MI FA SOL LA TI (or SI) DO
An alternate system, commonly used throughout the world, is
called Movable DO. In the Movable DO system, DO is always equal to the
root note of the key. For the key of G major, the movable DO syllables
would look like this:

Note: G A B C D E F# G
Syllable: DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO
Which system to use is a matter of opinion. I believe movable DO makes
more sense though it will be confusing for you if you are accustomed to
fixed DO. When you transpose the key of a song, the syllables remain the
same even though the note names change.

Solfège syllables are commonly used for ear training to help students hear
notes in the context of a key. Because few people possess absolute
pitch (being able to identify notes without a reference note), I think
movable DO is more useful as it is built aroundrelative pitch.
Throughout studybass.com, I will use the movable Do system when using
solfège syllables. For fixed notes I will always use the letter names—C, D,
E, etc.

Rhythmic Value Names (Crotchets and Quarter Notes)


The names of rhythmic values differ between American-English and
British-English. British-English rhythmic value names are rooted in an older
form of musical notation rarely used today called mensural notation. In
American-English, rhythmic value names are based on fractions of a
measure of 4/4 music.

American-English British-English
Double Whole Note Breve
Whole Semibreve
Half Minim
Quarter Crotchet
Eighth Quaver
Sixteenth Semiquaver
I think the fractional naming convention used in American-English is easier
for learning and understanding rhythm than the British-English system. It
does cause some logical problems in time signatures other than 4/4, but
this is eventually not a concern for musicians once the system is learned.

Studybass.com always uses the American-English names for rhythmic


values.

Summary
Hopefully this article has cleared up some confusion for you if you study
music in something other than American-English.

Andrew Pouska
www.studybass.com

The Elements Of Music


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One of the first things I like to do is give the student a general overview of
the basic building blocks of music and how they apply to playing the bass.
This bass lesson is to simply give you a taste of the basic elements which
make up music. If you feel like you don’t fully understand everything that
follows, don’t worry. It will make more and more sense over time. This is
simply a preview. There is a lot of information to absorb in this lesson,
and I wouldn’t expect you to get all of it in one reading.

Why Study the Basic Elements of Music?


All styles of music, be it rock, jazz, Classical, funk, blues, country, hip-
hop, or whatever, use the same basic elements of music. The reason each
style sounds different is each style combines the basic musical elements in
a different way.

A second thing that sets apart musical styles is the musical instruments
used. Classical music sounds the way it does in part because it uses
violins, cellos, woodwinds, and the like. Rock sounds the way it does
partly because it uses distorted electric guitars. Electronic music sounds
the way it does partly due to the use of synthesizers and computers. But,
the basic musical elements for each style remain the same.

These elements are the essence of music, and are a big part of what you
should study as a musician. Something important to my teaching
philosophy is to thoroughly teach each student all the basic elements of
music. Once those are understood it’s only a matter of understanding how
each style combines those elements to create that style's unique sound. As
old styles evolve and new styles emerge, the student will be able to
quickly adapt if he or she already knows everything that makes up the
new style.

If you know the basic building blocks of music, playing, creating, and
improvising music will be much easier and more satisfying. This approach
isn’t difficult, but it does take patience and commitment. This isn’t one
of those “Play like a pro in 10 days!” approaches. This stuff takes years to
learn.

Now, let’s get an overview of these musical elements about which I keep
talking…

The Basic Elements of Music


The elements of music can be broken down into a three general
categories: rhythm, harmony, and melody. Each of these categories has a
number of subcategories which I will define below. I have also added some
recorded audio examples. Just click to load them as you go.

Rhythm
As a general category, RHYTHM refers to all the time-based aspects of
music. Let’s examine the common elements of rhythm and how it relates
to bass playing…

Beat
BEAT refers to the underlying pulse of the music. Most music has a steady,
recurring beat to it. When you listen to music, you might be inclined to
tap your foot to the beat.

One of your biggest responsibilities as a bass player is to maintain the


consistent pulse of the music, or help keep the beat.

Here's an example of the bass and drums creating a steady beat:

Meter
METER refers to how the pulse, or beat, of the music is divided and
counted. Commonly, music is divided into repeated groups of 4 beats
counted 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4…and so on. Many other meters are possible. It’s
possible to count in 3, 5, 12, or any other number of beats. Some meters
are more common than others.

As a bassist, your basslines will help define the meter of the music.
Defining where beat 1 occurs helps people to feel the meter. Often
several musicians as a group do this, but you should be able to define the
meter all on your own.

Without a reference, you can't tell what the meter is:

By punctuating or defining beat 1 every 4 beats, you create a pulse in "4":

By punctuating or defining beat 1 every 3 beats, you create a pulse in "3":

Tempo
TEMPO refers to the pace of the music, or how fast or slow the beat of the
music is.

Bass players, as well as all of the other musicians, maintain the tempo by
not speeding up or slowing down the music as it is played.

A slow tempo:

A fast tempo:

Rhythm
RHYTHM, in a specific sense, refers to when and for how long individual
musical events occur. A musical event could be all sorts of things – a single
note, a group of notes, a percussive sound like a drum, or even silence.
Rhythm is about when to start and stop these musical events. The when of
a musical event is called ATTACK. The how long of a musical event is
called DURATION.
There are many different rhythms and combinations of rhythms. Rhythms
have different names, such as half note, quarter note, and eighth note,
which indicate their duration. This will be explained in later lessons.

A large part of playing the bass revolves around rhythm, and will be a lot
of what you study and practice.

A simple rhythm may sound like:

A more complex rhythm on a similar idea may sound like:

Now, Harmony
HARMONY refers to how notes, or pitches, are combined with one another.
The combining of notes happens on many different levels in music. Groups
of notes are played at the same time and notes can be played one after
another. Harmony is a vast subject and often intimidates and confuses
people (especially when it is poorly explained).

Let’s look at the basic elements that make up harmony…

Chords
CHORDS (pronounced ‘kords’) are groups of notes played together at the
same time. For example, a C major chord contains the notes C, E, and G.
When the notes C, E, and G are played at the same time, a C major chord
is produced. There are many different types of chords and ways to play
them.

Chords are named with a note name and something to identify the type of
chord, orCHORD QUALITY, it is. You might see chords named Fmaj7, or A7#9,
or just C. In later lessons on studybass.com, we will go through what all of
these chord qualities represent.

As far as the note side of music goes, chords, and the notes they contain
(CHORD TONES), are the primary thing bassists need to understand and
study. Bassists usually don't play chords outright on the bass. Playing
chords at a low pitch can sound muddy. Instead, bass players outline the
chord by emphasizing individual notes of the chord. This requires a
thorough understanding of chords. Never forget that everything revolves
around chords.

Here's how the C major chord sounds on piano:

The C major chord played low on bass sounds muddy:

The C major chord tones outlined by the bass:

I think one of the biggest faults in music education today is students are
first pointed towards scales, then chords. This is backwards. Both are
important, but chords are primary. Scales complement chords. I will
explain all of this in more detail in later lessons.
Arpeggios
Arpeggio is pronounced ‘ar-pay-zhe-oh’. Many people wonder, “What is
the difference between a chord and an arpeggio?” An ARPEGGIO is the notes
of a chord played one after another instead of at the same time. For
instance, to play the arpeggio for a C major chord (which contains the
notes C, E, and G), we would play the note C, then E, then G, one at a
time.

C major arpeggio:

Playing and practicing arpeggios on bass will be a major part of learning


and understanding chords. Knowing this will help you interact with the
chords of a song and the chords other musicians are playing.

Chord Progressions
A CHORD PROGRESSION is a series of different chords played one after
another. Most songs revolve around a few chord progressions used
repeatedly throughout. For example, a common chord progression is C – G
– Am – F. (Remember, these are chords, not individual notes.) So the
chords would progress C major, then G major, then A minor, and then F
major.

The bassist plays a large part in defining the chord progression as it goes
by in a piece of music. This is one of the bassist’s main responsibilities.
And, that is why a bassist must really learn about chords and chord tones
inside and out.

The C-G-Am-F chord progression:

The bass helps support the chord progression:

Scales
A SCALE is defined as a group of notes arranged from lowest to highest, or
highest to lowest. A scale is different from an arpeggio because it is not
based on only the notes of a chord. There are many different types of
scales. Scales are named with their starting note, or ROOT NOTE, followed
by the type of scale it is. You may see scale names like E major, C# minor,
F major pentatonic, or D dorian.

C major scale up and down:

Even though it is important to play scales up and down to learn an


instrument, that is rarely how they are used in music. Scales come from
reducing the notes of a piece or part of music and reordering them from
lowest to highest. For example, let’s say a bassline plays the notes: C E G
E F A C A G B D B C...

Simple bassline example:

We can remove the duplicate notes and reduce that down to the notes C E
G F A B and D. Then, we reorder them from lowest pitch to highest and
we get C D E F G A B…the C major scale. The original bassline actually
outlined three chords – C major (C,E,G), F major (F,A,C) and G major
(G,B,D). When we summed all the notes together we got a scale. Chords
actually produced the overall scale for this piece of music.

Scales complement chords. You will run across many books and lessons
which say play this scale over this chord, and that one over that chord. I
think this is dangerous to tell a student right off the bat. It’s not wrong,
but first you need a firm grasp of the chord to which you apply the scale.
Even if you are playing a phrase out of the notes of a scale, a good phrase
will still outline the underlying chord.

Key
A KEY is the scale that a piece of music revolves around. It is usually a
major or minor scale. What I mean by ‘revolves around’ is all of the notes
of the chords, melody and other parts come from, or center around, the
notes of this scale. That doesn’t mean you can only play the notes of the
key, but the notes of the key provide a kind of musical anchor for the
piece of music.

In the scale example above where we reduced the notes of the bassline,
we would say that the music was in the key of C Major since all the notes
revolved around the notes of the C major scale.

And finally, on to melody...

on to harmony...

Melody
MELODY refers to musical phrases. Technically we could call a melody a
coherent series of notes. Most of you will recognize melodies as
the singable parts of music. The vocal line often carries the melody. But,
any instrument can play a melody and play in a melodic manner. An
instrumental solo, a guitar solo for instance, is another kind of melody.

A simple, familiar melodic phrase:

Traditionally, bass players don’t play the main melodies of songs much. Of
course, that doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t. Bassists are doing it
more and more. It is somewhere where bassists have a lot of room to grow
and explore.

Even if a bass player is not playing the main melody, he or she is still able
to play in a melodic way. Bassists often strive to create melodic, singable
basslines. And, bassists sometimes get a chance to solo. For bass players
the study of melody often goes untaught. This may be why you don't hear
enough bass solos. I think melodies are essential to study if you want to
create melodic basslines or bass solos. It is also essential if you want to
write songs.

In Summary
This short lesson covered a lot of stuff. Hopefully it gave you a good
picture of the general landscape of music. It may seem like a lot to know,
and it is. But, you should realize that from all the listening to music you
have done over the span of your life so far, you already know a lot of it on
an intuitive level. It is just a matter of organizing your understanding of
what you are familiar with hearing every day.

As you study music and how to play the bass, you'll be surprised how you
don't have to know all that much about all of these topics to be a
functional musician. But, if you wanted to, you could spend several
lifetimes learning these things at deeper and deeper levels. I hope you
will want to spend a good bit of your time learning about the basic
elements of music. It's very much worth the effort.

If you feel like you didn't absorb all this information in one reading, come
back and reread the lesson from time to time. You will understand these
concepts better and better as you develop into a good musician and
bassist.

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