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Final Exam Terms

Terms in this set (34)

Crooner
A singer specializing in crooning, an intimate, gentle style of singing facilitated by the introduction of the microphone and modern recording techniques.
Cover version
The practice of recording as song that has previously been recorded by another artist or group, often involving an adaptation of the original's style and sensibility aimed at cashing in on its success. The most famous examples involve white artists "covering" and reaping disproportionate benefits from recordings by African American artists.
Distortion
A buzzing, crunchy, or "fuzzy" tone color originally achieved by overdriving the vacuum tubes of a guitar amplifier. This effect can be simulated today by solid state and digital sound processors.
Feedback
Technically, an out-of-control sound oscillation that occurs when the output of a loudspeaker finds its way back into a microphone or electric instrument pickup and is reamplified, creating a sound loop that grows in intensity and continues until deliberately broken. (Although feedback can be difficult to manage, it can become a powerful expressive device in the hands of skilled blues and rock musicians, most notably the guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Feedback can be recognized as a "screaming" or "crying" sound.
Jump Blues
An R&B style of the late 1940s/early 1950s featuring small combos performing upbeat, danceable songs, often with humorous lyrics. Saxophonist and singer Louis Jordan was a proponent of the style.
Honky-Tonk
a. A popular style of country music that evolved in the late 1940s and early 1950s around small bars (called honky-tonks) catering to a working-class white crowd. (see Hank Williamss and Kitty Wells).
Magnetic Tape Recording
Developed in the 1930s, magnetic tape recording, offered advantages over the older process of recording onto "master" phonograph discs. In the recording studio, tape was better able to capture a wider and fuller range of musical sounds the older process. In addition, tape recording allowed musicians to re-record over the unsatisfactory parts of previous performances and add layers of sound to a recording (overdubbing).
Melisma
One syllable of text spread out over many musical tones.
R&B
An African American musical genre that emerged after World War II and consists of a loose cluster of styles derived from black musical traditions, characterized by energetic and hard-swinging rhythms. At first performed exclusively by black musicians and aimed at black audiences, R&B came to replace the older category of "race records."
Tempo Rubato
The stretching the tempo by speeding it up or slowing it down
Top 40 Radio
A style of radio programming based on a set list of selections that are played repeatedly over the course of the broadcast day. It became the prevalent mode of radio programming from the late 1950s to the 1960s.
Double-tracking, multi-tracking, or overdubbing
A method used in sound recording that allows for several different parts to be recorded separately and then layered over one another in playback.
Wall of Sound
A studio recording technique developed by Phil Specter characterized by: 1) Multiple instruments doubling each part, 2) "Reverb", 3) A careful balance of vocals in front (in the mix)
Reverb
Short for "reverberation," a prolongation of a sound by virtue of an ambient acoustical space crated by hard, reflective surfaces. The sound bounces off of these surfaces and recombines with the original sound, slightly delayed.
Rock n Roll
The popular teen-oriented music of the 1950s-1960s, as opposed to the more consciously artistic "rock" that developed from the mid-1960s on.
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