Pop Music Key Words
A section of a song in which one particular musician is featured.
solo
The electromagnets built into an electric guitar that sit just below the strings, on the electric guitar's scratchplate.
pickups
According to Mark Katz, this practice common in beatmaking is defined as, "A form of musical borrowing in which a portion of one recording is incorporated into another."
Sampling
A section of a pop song that typically has the same music but different lyrics when it returns.
a verse
The make up of instruments in a band, recording, or musical work.
Instrumentation
The style of finger picking developed by Elizabeth Cotten.
Cotton Picking Style
The name of J Dilla's song from his album Donuts that we discussed in our class on sampling.
Don't Cry
The colloquial name of the sweeping widespread scare that coincided with the Reagan era and led to the ultimate use of the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" warning sticker on albums.
Satanic Panic
The underlying pace of a song, measured in "beats per minute" (BPM)
tempo
The year the popular pitch correction software plugin AutoTune was released.
1997
One of the rules of sampling Schloss describes in his book.
No biting; only sample records; can't sample hip hop; can't sample respected records; can't sample reissues or compilations; can't sample more than one part of a record
The year the PMRC released their "Filthy Fifteen" list and a senate hearing was called to debate the use of the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" warning sticker.
1985
The clearest/loudest audible frequency of a sound, measured in Hz and/or letter name in the Western Classical system.
pitch
Two of Catherine Provenzano's case studies when analyzing the cultural meanings of AutoTune, and describing why and how it has come to seem inauthentic among pop music listeners.
T-Pain and Taylor Swift
(I'll accept Cher, too, though she's not technically one of her case studies)
The inventor of the compact cassette tape and the company they worked for.
Lou Ottens, Philips
The three types of hooks in a pop song, per Sloan's taxonomy.
motif hooks, conceptual hooks, section hooks
The unique sound quality of any given instrument, voice, or sounding object, made up of its collected resounding frequencies.
timbre
The popular electronic keyboard instrument that the Yamaha DX7's E. PIANO 1 preset closely mimicked.
the Fender Rhodes
The particular electronic component invented in the 1950s that made magnetic tape technology and radio technology more portable and affordable.
transistors
motif/conceptual/section - dealer's choice
Multiple notes being sung by a vocalist over the course of a single syllable.
melisma
A reason the DX7 became ubiquitous in 1980s pop that was NOT discussed in Lavengood's article, but was discussed in lecture.
its portability compared to other synthesizers
1931
The audible clues one might use to argue for their hearing of part of a song as a pre-chorus, and not just simply part of a preceding verse.
It builds tension into the verse; its instrumentation/rhythmic patterns/harmony/melody is more similar to the chorus than the verse; its lyrics are similar every time it returns; there is a pause or a sense of finality before the section, but not into the chorus