Need help with my Music Appreciation class!?

Question

I'm taking music appreciation over the summer since my friend said it was very easy. But the thing about it, is 2nd day within the class we started talking about key notes like tonic, super tonic, dominant, etc. then we started talking about the baroque period and different kinds of composers also timbres, dynamics, textures and the list kept going.

If i study hard and spend time reading things on the internet about these subjects i'll probably barely pass. I really thought my friend had a different teacher because this teacher that i'm currently taking is tough.

so if someone can explain these things to me or better yet provide useful links to learn these i'll appreciate it. also please provide some experience you had with this class.

Thanks a lot in advance hopefully ^^

Answer 1

I took the same class....just with a different teacher at a diff university. Yeah, the class is hard if you don't know the stuff. Just pay attention to the teacher, and do the best you can. If your having trouble, see if there's a tutoring program at your college, where someone can help you in person. If none of these work, google the stuff your teacher wants you to know.

Answer 2

Honest the teacher will GIVE you all this stuff you seek.

All you have to do is lok at it till understand, and then memorize.

If she DOES skip a thing or two, or you need more insight, google google google!!!

Answer 3

Music Appreciation is hard. its Music history in brief. The bad part is that it starts at the beginning.

I'll start with the first question

Tonic, dominant, sub-dominant are all names of notes.

In a scale you have 7 tones. Each tone and the chord based on that tone has a name

I---Tonic--The beginning note

II--Super Tonic---meaning it is ABOVE the Tonic

III---Mediant--it is the MIDDLE note of a chord

IV--Sub Dominant

V---Dominant

VI---Sub Mediant--The Middle note of a Sub Dominant Chord

VII---Sub Tonic or "Leading Tone--Because it is BELOW the Tonic

The Baroque period will deal with the beginnings of music. Thank you lucky stars you don't have to deal with Gregorian Chant!!!

Dynamics just mean how Loud or How soft.

Timbre is the Sound of an instrument you are listening to. A string instrument Timbre is different than a Woodwind, just as a clarinet is different from an oboe.

Textures has to do with instrumentation.. how "thick" or "thin" and "Light" or "Dark"

thick--lots of instruments

Thin---Few Intruments

Light---High insturment

Dark---Low Instruments

I will seem overwhelming, but, as long as you "keep pace", you'll be fine...

Answer 4

It sounds like you'll touch on a lot of stuff. Don't get too overwhelmed, everything you've mention thus far takes years to learn, so it seems the teacher is just throwing it all out there for you to see how big the world of music is.

A few things that can help you might be to google 'music theory' -that's what we call the study of things like tonics and dominants- and note names- you can learn a lot of that quickly.

If you're a student who would prefer a book, buy the book "What to listen for in Music" by Aaron Copland. -He's one of america's great composers, and his book is an excellent explanation of music appreciation in a pretty easy to understand way- plus the book is pretty cheap because it's about 50 years old- you could probably get one for less than $10 in some places.