Welcome, this is Terry Ewell and this is your video on “Textures of Music.” This video supports the required reading for the course on cnx.org. The required reading has the very same title, “The Textures of Music.”
We are going to be looking at three different textures. You will be learning three different terms. You will need to know these terms for the course. The first term is “monophonic.” “Mono” means single. You can have a monocle, a single lens. Monophonic means single sound. This means a single melody occasionally with an optional rhythmic accompaniment. This single melody could be in the voice or it can be in an instrument. Here for instance, is with a voice, “We Will Rock You” by Queen.
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Now it doesn’t matter whether a single voice sings the melody or you have a chorus or a number of people singing the melody, it is still monophonic. They are still singing the same melody. In our next example we have and instrument that is presenting monophonic music. This is “Purple Haze.”
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Ok, that’s enough of that one. You can hear that there is a single instrument. There is rhythmic background. There is occasionally another instrument that interjects. (Monophonic) is a melody with at least two or three notes. You need to have a melodic line with some duration to it.
Now the next term we are looking at is “homophonic.” This refers to a single melody with harmonic support. There are traditional hymns, where all the parts sing the same rhythm. That would be considered homophonic.
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We find in the music we are studying in this course (m116) that there are actually quite a few examples of homophonic melody. For instance, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has examples of this homophonic melody.
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All of that was homophonic. We had homophonic (texture) starting out with the instrument. Then we had homophonic (texture) with the single melody joined by several instruments. Then you had this harmonic support, a harmonic background with a rhythmic section and a single voice. All of that is homophonic in texture.
Now the homophonic texture is quite prevalent in folk music and quite prevalent in a number of songs we have studied in this course (MUSC 116). “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney, that is homophonic: you have a single voice with guitar in the background. We have studied “Imagine” by John Lennon; that is also homophonic. That is with a single voice and piano background, basically. So those are homophonic.
I want to play for you now “Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. This is an example where the background is a little bit more rhythmically active, the bass part is a little more active in this. But it is still considered homophonic. We still have the one melody.
The other lines are really not melodic, they are harmonic.
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OK, so clearly there is a single melody and accompanying support to that.
Now we move to our third term that is “polyphonic.” “Poly” meaning many, and “phonic” meanings sounds. So this is more than one melody. You need to have two melodies or more. This is much less common in the styles of music (popular) that we are studying, but you do find examples of that. In “Respect” by Aretha Franklin it does have a short little passage that I want to play for you. It starts out homophonic but then we have a place where there is a dialogue between the voices.
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OK, so you could hear the polyphony (we would call it): two voices answering back and forth a little bit in there. I am giving that as an example of polyphonic music.
Frankly the Beach Boys have some of the best examples in their song, “Good Vibrations” of polyphonic music. It starts out homophonic, that is, with a single melody and accompanying background. Then we move to polyphonic in this particular area. You see the area where it says, “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations.” Let’s listen to this.
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Polyphonic
In fact that polyphonic music there has a number of textures (and instruments!). You have an instrument at the top (range) that you hear. This instrument is given a special name. It is called an electro-theremin. I think this is based off of the theremin developed in the 1920s by a Russian. But this electro-theremin is used here. It is a slightly different instrument (than the original theremin) as I understand. You have that and then the two voices with voices with different parts giving us polyphonic textures. In addition, there are parts a little later on where we have additional polyphonic textures.
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The voices are layered over each other. Different textures, polyphonic, many voices… And then, watch this, monophonic!
Yeah, so this one song, “Good Vibrations” features all three textures that we have just talked about: monophonic (single sound), homophonic (generally voice and accompanying harmonic texture), and polyphonic (multiple melodies, singing/playing at the same time). Be sure that you understand the three terms. Thank you.