Elements of Music and Drama

Music Elements

• Music is the art of arranging sounds in time using melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
• Pitch: The relative highness or lowness of a tone.
• Volume (Intensity): The loudness or softness of a sound.
• Tempo: The speed of a composition or section.
• Duration: The length of time a sound is produced.
• Timbre: The quality of sound that distinguishes it from other sounds.
• Rhythm: The consistent pattern of sounds (identical or similar).
• Melody: A series of consecutive tones forming an individual expression.
• Harmony: The simultaneous sounding of two or more tones.
• Texture: The number of tones heard simultaneously.
• Form: The overall structure of a composition.

Drama Elements

• Drama depicts life through reenactments of real or imagined events.
• Direction: Overall control of the dramatic performance.
• Acting: Performing assigned roles.
• Editing: Sequencing scenes for a cohesive whole.
• Set Design: The layout of the set.
• Production Design: The overall visual design for a drama (especially for screen).
• Cinematography: Photography for the production.
• Costume Design: Creating the clothes for the actors/actresses.
• Make-up: Enhancing or changing the appearance of actors.
• Properties: Items carried by the actors.
• Light Effects: Determining the amount and source of light.
• Sound Effects: Creating the appropriate sounds for realism.
• Visual Effects: Producing special visual effects.
• Theme Song: A song representing the drama's theme.
• Musical Score: Other songs to set the mood.
• Story: The core narrative of the play.
• Script: The dialogue and director's instructions.
• Literary Elements: Setting, characters, plot, theme, conflict, point of view, tone, mood, and atmosphere.
• Common Types of Drama: Comedy (lighter, happy ending), Tragedy (darker themes, often ending with suffering), Opera (combines music, dialogue, and dance).

Literary Arts (Poetry)

• Literature comes from the Latin word "literatura" meaning "writing" or "learning."
• Poetry is a literary genre written in stanzas.
• Measure:
  • Vertical: The number of lines and stanzas.
  • Horizontal: The number of syllables in a line.
• Rhythm: The regular arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Rhyme: Words with similar or identical final sounds.
  • Internal: Rhyming words within a line.
  • Terminal: Rhyming words at the end of lines.
  • Perfect: Identical final sounds.
  • Approximate: Similar final sounds.
  • Eye: Identical final letters (but different sounds).
  • Masculine: One-syllable rhyme.
  • Feminine: Two-syllable rhyme.
  • Monorhyme: All lines in a stanza have the same rhyme.
  • Tririme: Three pairs of rhyming words in a stanza.