Music 29 Final Prep Sheet

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Human Body Clocks: walking rate, breathing rate, finger tapping rate, hand clapping rate, eyelid cycle rate, blood flow

Open-Time (cloud-time) [smoothrough], [staticactive]

Density of onsets: [empty sparse full overcrowded]

Rate of Change [static gradual rapid], [slow/predictable rapid/unpredictable]

State Change: (resulting from some feature extremity), [extremely slow (events as complete micro-forms)extremely fast (events dissolve/regroup)]

Silence: (is silence structural?) (Is silence present?) (Are large silences present?)

Motion: [haltingflowing], [staticvery active]

Form: [openings continuants closings]

Repetition: [predictableunpredictable]

Completion: [weak strong], [inconclusivefinished]

Process: [continuous discontinuous] [

Sectional: (big global shifts in frequency domain or time domain)

Growth Process: [gradual slow fast hyper-fast], [continuitydiscontinuity]

Texture: (weave of the fiber or cloth) [empty sparse full overcrowded]

Density: [silencethin thick]

Global Morphology

Stability: [stable unstable turbulent]

Structure: simple complex

Perception/Cognition

Surprise [rupture]

Feeling: [relaxed tense], [warmcold]

(awe, anticipation, rupture)

Sonic descriptors organized around terms developed by David Huron.

Certainty/Uncertainty:

predictable unpredictable (event domain, frequency domain)

consistentvaried

Tendency:

louder softer (loudness), lower higher (pitch, frequency bands), dull bright (timbre, loudness), thin thick (event domain, texture, timbre),

slow fast (tempo, event domain), consonant dissonant (frequency domain), order disorder (order-disorder continuum),

openingcontinuuingclosing (global morphology), empty sparsefullovercrowded (event domain, texture), smooth rough (timbre),

relaxedtense (frequency domain, grid-time), drywet (resonance, room effects), simplecomplex (global morphology, form, structure),

frontalclosedistantinfinite (spatial location)

Completion:

weak strong (global morphology, form, structure), inconclusive finished (global morphology, form, structure)

Mobility:

flowing halting (event domain), static active motion-filled (event domain), continuity discontinuity (global morphology, form, structure)

Stability:

stable unstable volatile/turbulent (event domain, frequency domain)

Power:

weak strong (frequency domain, event domain), delicate muscular (frequency domain, event domain)

Emotion:

warm cold (global morphology)

Sonic descriptors adapted from the UST investigations Marseilles (Unités Sémiotiques Temporelles - Temporal Sémiotic Units). The various terms attempt to roughly categorize recurring patterns of temporal behavior in all forms of sound/music.

Extinction

When a passage slows down or otherwise extinguishes itself slowly.

Suspension

When a passage first establishes itself in a process, then has a brief pause of some sort where time is suspended for an instant.

Putting on the Breaks

When a pulsing passage slows down rapidly to a halt.

Taking it to the max

When a passage pushes the limits of some boundary -- it can be a human performance limit, or some form of saturation of a process. in this temporal mode the music hits the limit of one continuum and is on the verge of a state change.

Compression-change

When musical material speeds up rapidly, then breaks into almost silence