All About The 7 Elements Of Music

If you are currently learning about music right now in a class or on your own, you may have heard someone talk about the 7 elements of music. Don't worry about understanding this completely right now. It is just a way to break down a piece of music into specific areas making it easier to learn, think about, and discuss.

The "elements of music" is jargon for the different components or parts that music is made up of. If you take an introductory course in music, this is one of the first things you will learn.

There are a total of 7 elements of music to learn according to the National Standards for Arts Education. My intention here is to define these for you in very simple terms to make it easier to understand.

1. Pitch - the low and high quality of sound. Pitch is basically a way of describing how high or low a sound is.

2. Rhythm - silence and sound organized in time. We can have long and short durations of sound and silence that moves to a steady pulse or beat, kind of like your heart beat.

3. Harmony - a collection of pitches sounding simultaneously. A chord is used most often to represent harmony. It is 3 or more notes sounding together.

4. Dynamics - how loud or soft music is. Sometimes there are markings in music that tell the player how soft or loud to play in certain sections. This makes the music more interesting to play or listen to.

5. Timbre - distinct sound native to the instrument or voice. Tone color is also what this is sometimes called. Think of it as an artist's palette of color. There are so many different kinds of sounds that can be created from one voice or instrument.

6. Texture - the vertical and horizontal relationships within music. This is something you will discover as you continue learning to read music. There are times when a composer uses a simple melody with very little harmony. This is an example of a very "thin" texture. Other times, the composer likes to write heavy chords with a lot of action in the melody line. A "thick" texture is what this represents. Some music sounds a lot more complicated than others when you listen to it. The texture of the music is what you are hearing.

7. Form - how written music is designed and organized. I tell many of my students that the form of music is similar to how an academic paper is written. There is an introduction, body and conclusion. Music can sometimes be organized in this way also. There are times when composers will write music with a specific form in mind. In other cases, they create the music first and then see what organization of the music (if any) happens as a result.

If you are new to learning music, don't get caught up in trying to understand all of the 7 elements of music right now. Be careful not to get paralyzed by this amount of information. It can keep you from moving forward in your learning. If you are learning to read music for the first time, then you will want to remain focused on rhythm and pitch.

While it is good to know about the general parts that music is made up of, keep focused on what you are learning right now. All of this will become more understandable in time as you dive deeper into your learning.

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