A10 GLOSSARY
reel. A country dance tune in simple duple meter.
refrain. Words that repeat verbatim at the end of each
stanza or verse in a song or hymn.
reggaeton. A Spanish-language blend of hip-hop with
Latin American and Caribbean infl uences.
register. Any one part of the total compass of an
instrument, voice, or melody.
Regular Singing. Singing by rule, as encouraged
by the musical literacy movement of eighteenth-
century New England.
remix. An alteration of a recorded song by changing
the balance between layers of the texture; revising
the structure by repetition, interpolation, or other
means; shifting the pitch or tempo; or combining
any of these techniques.
responsorial texture. See call and response.
reverb. The addition of artifi cial reverberation to a
recording.
revue. A variety stage entertainment, often with an
overarching theme.
rhapsody. A classical composition with a loose form,
meant to sound somewhat improvisatory.
rhythm. Duration; the temporal aspect of music.
rhythm and blues. Postwar electrifi ed blues and
related styles.
rhythm changes. The harmonies of George Gersh-
win’s “I Got Rhythm,” used as a standard chord
progression for improvisation.
rhythm section. In jazz and popular music, a group
of instruments, such as piano, drums, guitar, and
bass, that provides the harmonic and rhythmic
underpinning for melody instruments or voices.
ride cymbal. A suspended cymbal used for keeping
time.
riff. A short musical fi gure that is repeated to build up
a larger section, whether as foregrounded melodic
material or as a background for solo improvisation.
ring shout. An African American practice of religious
singing and dancing.
riot grrrl. Any member of a punk-inspired feminist
movement of the 1990s.
ritornello. A recurring section in a classical
composition.
rock. Post-1960 rock and roll.
rock and roll. A musical category that packaged
postwar country and R&B styles for a teenage
audience.
rock opera. An extended narrative composition in a
rock idiom, whether a stage work or concept album.
root. The note on which a triad or other chord is built.roots music. Since the 1970s, an umbrella term for a
variety of American folk, blues, and country styles.
roots rock. A 1990s style that combines a return to ear-
lier rock sounds with the roots revival’s interest in
folk music.
rubato. Rhythmic elasticity in performance.
sampler. A digital device, introduced in the 1980s, used
to create rhythmic loops of prerecorded sound.
saxhorn. Any member of a family of mellow-toned
brass instruments invented by Adolph Sax.
scale. A collection of pitches arranged in order from
lowest to highest within an octave, used as the basic
material for a composition or improvisation.
scale degree. Any single pitch in a scale.
scat singing. Jazz sing ing on vocables instead of words.
scherzo. A fast-tempo instrumental movement of light
character, commonly an inner movement in a four-
movement symphony.
scientifi c music. Nineteenth-century term for music
based on theoretical knowledge.
scratching. In hip-hop, manually moving a record
back and forth under the playback stylus to produce
percussive rhythmic effects.
semitone. See half step.
serialism. Compositional technique in which all
twelve notes available within the octave are
arranged into a fi xed pattern or row, which is then
manipulated to generate a stream of constantly
changing pitches unifi ed by their derivation from
the original row.
shape notes. A system of notation in which shaped
note heads indicate scale degrees.
shout. See ring shout.
shouter. A dancer in a ring shout.
show song. A song specifi cally written for a musical
comedy or revue.
simple meter. A meter in which each beat is divided
into two equal parts.
singer-song writer. A musician who writes and per-
forms songs, typically in a folk or popular style and
with personal content, often delivered in a confes-
sional tone.
singing school. A course of instruction devoted to
teaching the rudiments of singing and note read-
ing, focused on sacred music.
single. A double-sided phonograph record, rotating at
either 78 or 45 revolutions per minute, usually with
a marketable song on the A side and less commer-
cially promising “fi ller” on the B side.
skip. See leap.172028_99a_A1-A13_GLO_r1_ka.indd A10 23/01/13 11:22 AM