Regardless of what field or industry you’re in, you’re going to have a lot of vocabulary to learn. We thought we would put together some of the less common terms yet terms you are bound to see at some point in your musical studies.

Style- “Play with the right style”! This phrase will be uttered by your private teacher at some point. Style is what gives different genres of music their unique sound. The swing style in jazz requires you to swing eighth notes instead of playing them traditionally. With very slow music, “legato” style means that you should play all notes smooth and connected. Some describe legato as walking through honey. Things are heavy without any breaks in the sound.

Texture- Most of us can visualize texture as it relates to a painting but what about in music? Texture in music is determined by how the composer mixes different instruments together. Every musical instrument has their own timbre or tone color and when these are mixed, they produce different textures. The most skilled of composers know how to use texture to make their piece truly come alive.

Orchestration- Speaking of texture, orchestration is the art of mixing instruments together. Commercial music like film music often employs teams of orchestration experts to create specific textures that fit the movie perfectly.

Cantabile- This is another style of music that literally means “singingly”. Everything is connected with an emphasis on using the most beautiful of tone quality when playing it. It’s not important that the music is loud or rhythmically perfect. Instead, the performer must make sure that the music is remembered as if the best vocalist just sang it.

Counterpoint- Counterpoint is a discipline that composition students must learn. It is often required in most higher educational composition curriculums. Counterpoint is the study of how different musical lines interact with each other. If there are too many lines being played at the same time, the music gets cluttered.

Score- For music that has multiple players playing different parts, a score is used by conductors and performers often for rehearsal purposes. By putting all parts on one page, mistakes are easy to identify. If you ever accompany a vocalist where their part and your part are on the same page, you’re looking at a score.

Accelerando- Sometimes music gradually speeds up and when that happens, we call it an accelerando. Often in music it is abbreviated as “accel”. The opposite of accelerando is ritard or “rit.” Which is a gradual slow down of the music.

Of course there are many more vocabulary terms that we use in music. Want to learn more? Go online and take one of the numerous vocabulary tests and learn about the many more. Also check back and we’ll post even more of these terms. Also remember that if you’re playing a piece of music and you see a term that you don’t know, take time to look it up. If the composer took time to write it in to the music, it must be important.

Have you seen the “Musical Genius Course”?