As a listener, if you wanna make the music
you hear louder or softer,
you can either adjust the volume by turning
a knob on your stereo,
or gliding a cursor on your smartphone.
But when you're performing music, things aren't
that simple,
especially when playing music with frequent
variations in volume.
This video is about dynamic markings in music.
Stick around to learn what they are and what
they mean.
Two of the most effective ways to convey emotion
through music are
through speed and through volume.
I've already made a series of videos on the
subject of speed of performance.
and this video has to do with the volume of
music being performed.
There's an established convention of Italian
words and expressions
that help communicate how loud or soft to
play a section of music.
I'll be presenting these expressions in two
parts:
First of all, we'll go through the basic terms
that have to do with volume.
And second of all, we'll go through the expressions
that have to do with changes in volume.
For the sake of brevity and concision,
I won't be presenting every single term and
expression that exists out there,
but I will be presenting the most important
ones.
Let's get started.
At the root of dynamic markings, there are
only two levels of volume:
Loud and Soft.
Loud in Italian is "forte", and soft in Italian
is "piano".
Think of "forte" as yelling, and "piano" as
murmuring.
From "forte", even louder we have "fortissimo",
and a bit softer we have "mezzo-forte".
Think of "fortissimo" as screaming at the
top of your lungs,
and "mezzo-forte" is like talking very loudly,
as I am doing right now, and as I'm usually
doing because I tend to be
a loud talker.
And from "piano", if you go softer than that,
you have "pianissimo",
and a bit louder, you have "mezzo-piano".
"Pianissimo" is like whispering,
and "mezzo-piano" is like talking very softly,
like when you're talking with a friend in
a caf�
and you don't want everybody else around to
listen to what you're saying.
Here's a chart that summerizes these six basic
volume levels i just presented.
I've also marked the abbreviations used in
printed music.
Notice how the abbreviations just become a
repetition of the letters "f" or "p"
when going towards the louder and softer ends
of the chart.
On this issue,
you'll often find tripple-f's and tripple-p's
in written music,
and rarely, you'll also find more extreme
dynamic markings
such as eight f's and eight p's.
These exaggerations, for a solo performer,
become much more conceptual.
But for a full orchestra, they do have their
merit,
since there's a huge difference
between having all the performers playing
as loud as they can,
and having one single play play as softly
as he possibly can.
Let's just say that we have to leave it to
context
in order to understand the meaning of these
extreme dynamic markings.
This is it for the first part of this video.
Let's move to part two.
Let's talk about changes of volume during
a performance.
The first category is gradual changes.
The word "crescendo" means gradually getting
louder,
and the word "diminuendo" means gradally getting
softer.
Another word for "diminuendo" is "decrescendo",
which obviously means the opposite of crescendo.
More often than not, these indications are
actually notated
as symbols that look like hairpins.
By intuition, you'll understand that the narrow
end of the hairpin
is the softer end of the volume change.
The next category of changes in volume is
sudden changes in volume.
"Sforzando" means an accent.
It's like a punch, it's like a shout, it's
like a yawp,
it's like a flash of loudness in the music.
And "fortepiano" means to first play loudly,
and then shy away and start playing softly.
It's like changing your mind suddenly, and
not playing loudly anymore.
You'll also find variations of these concepts,
like sforzando-piano, and fortissimo-pianissimo,
which work on the same principle of first
playing something loud,
and then shifting to something soft real quickly.
That does it for part two of this video.
Before I let you go,
here's an important footnote that I absolutely
need to emphasize.
The whole concept of loudness and softness
in music, when it comes
to performance, is actually quite relative.
Think about it:
For a musician with a small body structure,
withoug much muscle strength, that musician's
level of fortissimo
will be much softer than the fortissimo of
another musician
with a lot of muscle strength.
The same thing goes with playing the same
dynamic markings
in a different environment;
For instance, in a large concert hall, or
in a tiny little room,
or if using amplification.
As i said earlier, context means everything
when it comes to musical performance.
Well, there it is!
Now you know a little bit more about dynamic
markings in music.
Like and share this video if you found it
interesting,
and subscribe to this channel in order to
get content like this coming up.
This being said, thank you so much for watching,
and see you later!
