10 INTRODUCTIONnadir; even if you sing that opening as low in pitch as you comfortably can, you
are likely to fi nd yourself straining for the apex at “the rockets’ red glare.” That
opening phrase moves in the melody’s lower pitch area, or register; the rock-
ets and bursting bombs occur in the melody’s upper register. When the apex
returns near the end, at “the land of the free,” many ballpark soloists jump up to
an even higher note, extending the tune’s already wide compass, creating a new
apex, and showing off their own vocal range. Is it an accident that they take such
liberty on the word “free”?
Shifts in compass or range can also outline a melody’s structure. The four
phrases of “Happy Birthday” are nearly identical in rhythm, and the fi rst three
are also very similar in melodic contour. They differ, however, in their melodic
compass: from the same starting pitch (in this case, the melody’s nadir), each
phrase uses progressively more disjunct motion to rise to successively higher
pitches, with the third phrase climaxing on the melody’s apex. The fourth phrase
then relaxes with a falling contour and a narrower range. Likewise, although
each phrase in “Lost Highway” (LG 17.2) has a similar contour, phrases 2 and 3 lie
higher and higher in the tune’s compass, reaching the apex about two-thirds of
the way through, before phrase 4 returns to the low register of phrase 1.TIMBRE
We may hear a melody played with perfect rhythm and pitch and at an appro-
priate dynamic level, yet fi nd the performance unsatisfactory if the performer
draws an unpleasant timbre from the instrument. Conversely, a particularly
beautiful tone color can persuade us to forgive slight imperfections in pitch and
rhythm.
Timbre is a key element in how we perceive differences between musical
instruments. Learning to identify the different instruments of the orchestra
by ear can greatly increase your enjoyment of orchestral music. W hat at fi rst
can seem like an undifferentiated wash of sound takes on new
meaning when you can follow the interlocking melodic lines
of violins, clarinets, French horns, and so on. An awareness of
timbre can also help distinguish different performance tech-
niques on a single instrument, and even the signature style of
specifi c performers. The trumpet, for instance, can be played
either open, that is, in the usual fashion, or with a variety of
mutes, objects placed in the bell of the instrument that have
the effect of not only reducing the volume (hence the name) but
also, and more importantly, altering the timbre in fascinating
ways. Contrast the timbre of Louis Armstrong’s open trumpet
at the beginning of West End Blues (LG 12.4) with that of Miles
Davis’s muted trumpet on Summertime (LG 16.3). On Black and
Ta n Fa n ta s y (LG 12.5), Bubber Miley extracts a phantasmagoric
array of timbres from his trumpet using a “plunger-and-growl”
technique, described in chapter 12 (his solo begins at 1:00 and
gets particularly elaborate around 1:30).
To understand timbre, we need to take a close look at how
musical instruments vibrate to produce musical tones. VisualizeK Cootie Williams, a
longtime member of Duke
Ellington’s orchestra, using
a plunger mute.172028_00b_001-017_INTRO_r3_ko.indd 10 23/01/13 9:47 AM