When a chord is played one note at a time, we call this a "broken" or "arpeggiated" chord. A performer might play these chords by playing one pitch at a time, playing multiple pitches at once, or playing a combination of the two. This ability allows these types of instruments to play "chords", which are actually a form of harmony. Many instruments, such as keyboards and guitars, can play multiple pitches at once. However, monophonic texture is not synonymous with "played by a single instrument", or, in other words, the use of a single instrument does not in and of itself automatically imply monophonic texture. It might be easy to assume that since there is only one instrument, the texture is monophonic. If you are having a little trouble with this concept, you might consider referring back to that page.įor example, sometimes you might hear only one instrument playing (very common in a musical introduction). You read a little bit about this in About Melody, specifically under the subheading “Things that are not melodies”. One area where some people can get confused is when listening to musical introductions played on keyboards or guitars. This is not a problem - as long as you can back up your decisions with musical evidence, you are fine. Second, your description of what is going on in the music may be different from mine. One thing to keep in mind is that the main terminology that we use for textural distinctions (monophony, polyphony, homophony and heterophony) are based on how melodies interact, rather than how the other musical elements interact. Web: Heterophony [accessed February 4, 2017.įirst of all, everyone sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between different types of textures. For example, “in Persian art music, are expected to vary the singers’ improvised lines.”1 Indonesian gamelan music, Japanese Gagaku and Arabic classical music all value heterophony as part of their aesthetic.ġ. Generally speaking, while not commonly used in Western music, heterophony is highly valued in many styles of music beyond the Western European tradition. Singing in church is another good example – if you are at a wedding where some people were raised in the African Methodist Episcopal church, and some were raised in the Norwegian Lutheran tradition, no one is going to sing “Amazing Grace” identically, but most people will know it and sing it. Think of singing The Star-Spangled Banner at a baseball game, or being in a room with your friends where everyone is singing along with Rihanna or Maroon 5 – it’s going to be a bit messy, because no one learns the melody in quite the same way. In the illustration below, notice how all of the different colored lines (each representing an instrument or voice) are really, really similar with only slight differences. Heterophonic texture is closest in type to monophonic texture. In heterophonic texture all instruments and/or voices play the same melody line at the same time, but each different voice or instrument will perform it slightly differently than the other voices or instruments, generally through the use of ornamentation (see melody for a refresher on ornamentation). The selections below are all examples of homophonic texture, but are still very different. Most popular and folk music has a homophonic texture. A single voice accompanied by guitar is also homophonic texture. If you hear a single voice singing a melody with a band backing her up, this is homophonic texture. are not independent) or sometimes because their main purpose is to fill in the chords or harmony (i.e. But when they are sung or played with the melody, it is clear that they are not independent melodic parts, sometimes because they have the same rhythm as the melody (i.e. They can sound quite different from the melody and be interesting to listen to by themselves. The other parts may follow many of the rules of well-written counterpoint (polyphony). ![]() In most well written homophony, the parts that are not melody may still have a lot of melodic interest. ![]() All other parts provide accompaniment or fill in the chords. Homophonic texture has one clear melodic line - a melody that naturally draws your attention.
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