Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [phrase]

For questions related to the smallest unit of musical form, often defined as a musical unit ending with a cadence.

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Avartan in Western music score

What is the term closest to avartan of Indian classical music in Western music score? Is it a phrase, or is it a bar? Or is there another term which denotes the cyclic ticking of musical time? How is it notated in the staff notation? An avartan…
sinhayash
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Understanding and distinguishing piano slurs and phrases

I'm learning piano and recently encountered slurs and phrases. I'd like clarification on the following that relate to these two ideas. The book[1] I'm using introduces the idea of phrases, then later introduces slurs: In vocal music, singing more…
Steven Maude
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Motifs in melody writing

I read in many books/teachings etc. that the first step for creating a melody is to come up with a motif, and use that for further development. Are all melodies created like that? I hear melodies that I like which have recognizable motifs, and…
Alex P
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How to tell the beginning and ends of phrases when there is no significant rest in the music?

I can't figure out where the phrases are in this piece of music and I am expected to draw brackets over them. There is no real rest or pause so I looked at where there is an end on the tonic note and made that the end of the phrase but I am not sure…
armani
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Can an offbeat note be loudest when playing Bach?

My primitive understanding of Bach's music tells me that an offbeat note cannot be the most accented or the most important note in a phrase. But in the last gesture of the ubiquitous C major prelude, that's exactly what seems to happen. What are…
Wynne
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Highly irregular beaming in this Liszt piece - is phrasal beaming a no-no or not?

The piece is Liszt's Heroischer Marsch im Ungarischem Stil, S.231, and the passage is this (measures 57-64). Notice how irregular the beaming is in the right hand, going across barlines and grouping together some notes whilst leaving others…
KeizerHarm
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Questions on Fundamentals of Musical Composition by Arnold Schoenberg

I am reading this book and I need help to understand this line on page 4 (Construction of themes): "Nearly always the phrase crosses the metrical subdivisions, rather than filling the measures completely." Are metrical subdivisions each beat of a…
GrnPrplrngYllw
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How is a phrase pattern subdivided and measured?

I am studying a song by the Beatles called We can work it out, and reading along Notes on the Beatles by Allan Pollack. He says: "The verses are indeed 16 measures long but are divided into three phrases in a 6+6+4 AAB pattern" I can clearly count…
armani
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Is this phrase ending a half cadence, imperfect authentic cadence, or neither?

I'm working on this for a music theory class. By my analysis: Song is in key of A major The chord for measure three uses the 4th scale degree, or IV The chord for measure four is the tonic, or I I'd say that this phrase ends on a plagal cadence…
Xavier J
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Definition: Three ascending half steps as a phrase?

Is there an official definition used to describe a phrase constructed by playing three ascending half steps in quick succession, e.g. for a bass fill? I hear this used by a lot by John Taylor from Duran Duran.
Jamie Butterworth
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What is the smallest difference in note lengths that an average listener can still perceive?

Approximately speaking, what is the smallest temporal difference, expressed in milliseconds, in note lengths (for consecutively sounded notes) that an average, untrained listener can still (semi)consciously perceive? What order of magnitude are we…
Kim Fierens
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What are common pop/rock cadences and metrical stresses

I'm going through Joe Mulholland & Tom HijNacki's "Berkelee Book of Jazz Harmony" Chapter 1 and I have a few questions... I see the various plagals, half cadence, deceptives, etc...Are there cadences / rules-of-thumb somewhere I can read about,…
user2738206
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Phrasing in "Melodie" by Robert Schumann

I took this piece by Schumann (Melodie) and am trying to identify the cadences. I have already started to try and identify the phrases first. I am unsure if the first system is one phrase. Any help from what I have already done is greatly…
user88559
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What are the horizontal lines in this renaissance piece?

In one of the scores of Byrd's Ave verum corpus on CPDL, one notices horizontal lines : What do they mean? Are it a kind of phrasing marks? Were they added by the editor? Edit The Misa de Notre Dame by de Machaut is an other example :
Karlo
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What is the music theory behind the ending to this Chopin Etude?

Chopin Etude Op. 10 No. 3: I'm wondering about how to best analyze the final 3 measures. This piece simply ends on the I chord over the final 3 measures. Would this be considered a phrase even though it doesn't end with two different chords…
Lennon_Ashton
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