what's up guys this is serge and welcome back to my series of music theory lessons last video i discussed what notes and pitch are and today i'm going to talk about the seven elements of music the series of videos will start very basic in the beginning but later we'll get more advanced music is a beautiful art form that can take you back to a certain period of time it can give you a roller coaster full of emotions and it can make you do crazy things like jump in a mosh pit what are the building blocks of music here are seven elements right let's get started here i have seven elements melody harmony rhythm dynamics form timbre and texture let's start with melody melody is a series of notes that are played in succession or you can say are played one after another think of this as the horizontal element of music a melody is the part of the song that you can sing along with it grabs your attention here is a recognizable melody you may know here's what a super dope melody looks like on sheet music i'll make another video lesson on how to read cheat music later this is just to give you an idea of why i call it the horizontal element but melody is just one element and we need some more stuff to make this a more interesting piece of music next we have harmony harmony is a combination of two or more notes being played simultaneously they are occurring at the same time in other words i like to think of this element as the vertical element an example of harmony is what you may know as a chord a chord is a combination of notes being played at the same time here is an example of a chord on a guitar [Music] here is an example of a chord on a piano think of harmony as the support for the melody here's an example next we have rhythm according to oxford languages rhythm is the systematic arrangement of musical sounds principally according to duration and periodic stress so think of rhythm as the time element of music music is an art form unlike others because you have an element of time there are a few key factors that make up rhythm beat meter and tempo i will break these down in a later video but to make a quick point you may find yourself tapping your feet snapping your fingers or bobbing your head to music often this regular pulse that you are tapping your feet to is called the beat but i will go further into this later the next element we have is called dynamics dynamics show how loud or soft the music is when you're reading sheet music the word for loud is forte and the word for soft is piano when the music starts soft but gradually gets louder we call this a crescendo which sounds like this when the music starts out loud but gradually gets softer we call this a day crescendo this sounds like this [Music] the next element we have is called form form simply means how you arrange the music for example in european classical music you could have something called ternary form which is also called aba form where the a section would have a certain melody the b section would be a different melody and it would go back to the a section with the first melody here's an example of [Music] that [Music] [Applause] [Music] well that's cool bro but i don't listen to that stuff no worries the most modern example of this is how we break down songs i'm sure you've heard the words chorus verse bridge intro outro these are examples of how we arrange music today here's an example [Music] our next element is called timbre which is not pronounced timbre if you remember from my last video i played the note a on the piano and then i played it on guitar [Music] you could tell that i played the exact same note on both instruments but they still didn't sound exactly the same right these instruments have a different timbre or tone color that makes them sound different from one another i won't go into what causes differences in timbre for the sake of this video our last element is called texture texture is the layering of sounds and instruments when i play a guitar chord there's a small degree of texture that is happening from the combination of notes i'm playing but if i play a chord on the guitar and play a chord on the piano at the same time i have more texture think of texture as making something sound either full or thin another example is when you're recording guitars in your software and you double track it this creates for a fuller guitar sound we have different terms for textures one type is called the monophony when music is monophonic it only has one layer which is the melody an example of this is me playing the melody from country roads by john denver [Music] another example would be one person singing acapella another term is hamofani when music is homophonic there you have a melody and a harmony supporting it here's an example of that so this is used in most music today with a vocalist singing the melody and the band plays the supporting harmony chords you also have what's called polyphony which is multiple melodies happening at the same time here's an example of polyphony i just came up with this concludes our lesson for today next lesson i will discuss the names of the 12 notes in music and how we use them to create music if you like what you saw subscribe if not