Musical tradition is at times a rather odd element of this popular art. One of those traditions that still holds true for today is that of using Italian terms to instruct a performer in notated scores ...

A dulcimer is a stringed folk instrument which basically comes in two different varieties: the hammered dulcimer – which has strings stretched over a sounding board with a trapezoidal shape, generally ...

Music is littered with vocabulary. Dictionaries of music list the numerous terms that you have the option to embed into your language if you wish. Many of these terms are Italian as that wonderful ...

We could say that most indie music is alternative, but not all are indie. Let’s unpack this statement. Many alternative rock bands in the 1980s signed with independent labels, but later moved to one ...

The influence of W.A. Mozart across all areas of culture has been colossal, from the Baby Mozart Project through to contemporary song. You can hardly pass through a day without encountering the music ...

When we think of an orchestra, we immediately think of a large number of violinists sitting in front of the stage, in an almost privileged place near the conductor, just like the cellos and violas.

The notation for swing rhythm is an approximation but as close as it can be without requiring immensely complex and cumbersome sub-divisions of note values. The result of the swing is a sense of ...

With the distance of one hundred and ten years between us now and the premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, it can be difficult to understand what the fuss was all about. Several things ...

Before plunging headlong into the details of this title, let’s just take a moment to appreciate what is meant when the word counterpoint is used in music. Sometimes confused with polyphony, which ...

To be completely clear from the outset of this article, the term ‘folk music’ covers an immensely broad and diverse selection of music from across the world. Quite frequently this term is used to ...

This first extract is taken from a 2015 performance called ‘Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II’. The remarkable achievement here is that the music is performed live to the cartoon that plays on a gigantic ...

French composer Claude Debussy did not align himself with the movement that became known as Impressionism. Understandably, Debussy resisted this classification as with it could come restrictions, ...