Thursday, 24 January 2008

Lesson - 74 : WCM Lesons - One Page Summary

WCM concepts are simple and logical…

Music like any language has letters, words, meaningful phrases and modulations and punctuation marks. It has an oral and written form.

Score sheets are used to represent music.

Clefs, Key signatures, Time signatures and musical notes of different durations are notated in such score sheets which are divided into equal time durations called Bars, to convey the music.

WCM Time pattern matrix indicates the Simple and Compound Times that can be used for the Duple, Triple and Quadruple timings.

The time pattern of a song is indicated by the time signatures.

WCM follows certain pre-determined patterns called Scales which are formed by selecting 7 notes out of the 12 keys available.

Such pattern recognition is made with the tone and semitone gaps between the adjacent notes of the pattern.

WCM has 2 main patterns called Major Scales and Minor Scales.

The Minor scales have further variations viz. Harmonic Minor Scales and Melodic Minor Scales. (When all the 12 keys are used that is called a Chromatic Scale..)

All such scales pattern can be formed on each of 12 keys, either pure white notes or the black notes called Sharps or Flats.

In Scales of Sharps, every time we jump to a perfect 5th upward from the previous tonic, to get one additional notes sharpened.

In Scales of Flats, we jump a perfect 5th backwards every time, to get a flat note added.

The sharpened or flattened notes of a scale are indicated by the Key Signatures.

The Degrees of the 7 notes of any Scale are names as Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Sub-Dominant, Dominant , Sub-Mediant and Leading note.

The Intervals between two notes are named as 2nd , 3rd etc…and their qualities are termed as Minor, Major, Diminished, Augmented and Perfect intervals.

Intervals are also classified as Consonant and Dissonant depending upon the acceptable nature to the ears.

When more than one notes are played simultaneously they form Chords.

A triad is a chord made of First + Third + Fifth of the notes of a scale under consideration.

Chords are classified as Major, Minor, Diminished and Augmented.

Chords are also classified as Concords and Discords.

Music Ranges are classified as Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass (S-A-T-B) and a good music covers all these ranges.

Such writing of vertically and horizontally related music by using Chords is called Harmony writing of Parts.

Harmony rules define the acceptable, desirable and non-acceptable way of placing musical notes vertically and horizontally to form SATB parts.

Such a music writing which follows the Harmony rules gives an effective way of forming Orchestral Music.

Orchestral instruments are classified under four major departments called Strings, Woodwinds, Brass and Percussion.

Under each department, various instruments with specified ranges to cover each of the SATB parts are available.

Music has its own Forms like Chamber Music, Concerto, Symphony, Sonata, Chorals etc.

Various Musical terms and shorthands are used to notate music and convey the way a music has to be played.

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