SUBJECTS
|
BROWSE
|
CAREER CENTER
|
POPULAR
|
JOIN
|
LOGIN
Business Skills
|
Soft Skills
|
Basic Literacy
|
Certifications
About
|
Help
|
Privacy
|
Terms
|
Email
Search
Test your basic knowledge |
Music
Start Test
Study First
Subjects
:
performing-arts
,
music
Instructions:
Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
If you are not ready to take this test, you can
study here
.
Match each statement with the correct term.
Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.
This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. Usually sets up a dramatic context or emotional tone. Although verses were the most important part of nineteenth-century popular songs - they were regarded as mere introductions by the 1920s - and today the verses of Tin Pan Alley songs are infrequen
Chuck Berry
phrase
Verse
soul music
2. Called the 'Empress of the Blues -' She was born in Chattanooga - Tennessee - and performed in traveling shows and vaudeville before embarking on a recording career with Columbia Records. Her recordings include W. C. Handy's 'St. Louis Blues' and Irv
Bessie Smith
Minstrel Show
Electric Guitar
Standards
3. Popular dance ensemble during the swing era - consisting of brass - reeds - and rhythm sections.
Tin Pan Alley
Countrypolitan
Big Band
Ray Charles
4. The word derives from the African American term 'to rag -' meaning to enliven a piece of music by shifting melodic accents onto the offbeats (a technique known as syncopation). Ragtime music emerged in the 1880s - its popularity peaking in the decade
Bel canto
Ragtime
Form
Disc Jockeys
5. Popular dance ensemble during the swing era - consisting of brass - reeds - and rhythm sections.
Ethel Merman
Glenn Miller
Big Band
Refrain
6. Beat - meter - syncopation
Les Paul
Rock 'n' Roll
Rhythm
A cappella
7. Bandleader for the most successful dance orchestra of the 1920s. He billed himself as the 'King of Jazz -' widened the market for jazz-based dance music - and paved the way for the Swing Era.
Classic blues
Paul Whiteman
Cole Porter
Louis Armstrong
8. White rockabilly singer and pianist.
sound
Jerry Lee Lewis
Cover version
Crooning
9. A recurrent rhythmical series
Melody
Major/Minor
Blues
cadence
10. Dubbed the 'first tycoon of teen -' his studio production techniques are known as the 'wall of sound' because of his utilization of dense orchestrations - multiple instruments - and heavy reverb.
urban folk
Phil Spector
The Rolling Stones
Payola
11. Behind-the-scenes role at a record company. Can be responsible for booking time in the recording studio - hiring backup singers and instrumentalists - assisting with the engineering process - and imprinting the characteristic sound of the finished re
phrase
Reverb
Producer
Ethel Merman
12. Founded in California in 1961 - they popularized the 'California sound' in the early 1960s. Their hit songs included 'Surfin' Safari -' 'Surfer Girl -' 'California Girls -' 'Surfin' USA' and 'Good Vibrations.'
Beach Boys
R&B
Syncopation
Scat singing
13. Process for recording sound in the pre-microphone era. Performers projected into a huge megaphone.
Concept album
12-bar Blues
Beach Boys
Acoustic recording
14. African American musical style rooted in R&B and gospel that became popular during the 1960s.
Standards
Tempo
Patsy Cline
soul music
15. Four- or five-stringed instrument with a membrane stretched over a wooden or metal hoop that is strummed or plucked. It was developed by slave musicians from African prototypes during the early colonial period. The banjo was used in the music of the
Patsy Cline
Beach Boys
motive
Banjo
16. American popular songs from the Tin Pan Alley style of songwriting that remain an essential part of the repertoire of today's jazz musicians and pop singers.
Bob Dylan
Standards
Chuck Berry
Beach Boys
17. The first form of musical and theatrical entertainment to be regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character. Featured mainly white performers who artificially blackened their skin and carried out parodies of African American mu
Ethel Merman
The Rolling Stones
Bluegrass
Minstrel Show
18. Trombonist and bandleader; formed his own band in 1937. Miller developed a peppy - clean-sounding style that appealed to small-town Midwestern people as well as to the big-city - East and West Coast constituency.
Ballad
Glenn Miller
Reverb
Harmony
19. Founder of Motown Records.
Countrypolitan
Irving Berlin
phrase
Berry Gordy - Jr.
20. Style of folk music that grew in popularity in the burgeoning New York folk scene during the 1960s. It included artists such as Bob Dylan.
Gene Autry
urban folk
Syncopation
Louis Armstrong
21. Recordings of performances by African American musicians produced mainly for sale to African American listeners.
Race Records
Janis Joplin
Blues
Scott Joplin
22. Founded in 1914 in an attempt to force all business establishments that featured live music to pay fees ('royalties') for the public use of music.
Hank Williams
ASCAP
Aretha Franklin
Race Records
23. Brilliantly clever and articulate lyricist and songwriter - fine rock 'n' roll vocal stylist - and pioneering electric guitarist. One of the first black musicians to consciously forge his own R&B styles for appeal to the mass market. Also known for h
Chuck Berry
Acoustic recording
Jerry Lee Lewis
Texture
24. The lead singer for the Supremes. After leaving the Supremes in 1970 - she became a successful solo artist.
Hook
Louis Armstrong
Motown
Diana Ross
25. A memorable musical phrase or riff.
Les Paul
Buddy Holly
Hook
Berry Gordy - Jr.
26. A technique used by opera singers that emphasizes breath control - a fluid and relaxed voice - and the use of subtle variations in pitch and rhythmic phrasing for dramatic effect.
Bel canto
Scott Joplin
Bob Dylan
Boogie Woogie
27. Blues written by professional songwriters and performed by professional female blues singers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.
Standards
Diana Ross
Acoustic recording
Classic blues
28. The most successful white blues singer of the 1960s. Born in Port Arthur - Texas - Joplin came to San Francisco in the mid-1960s and joined a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Janis Joplin
Nashville sound
Bessie Smith
Melody
29. Urban folk singer and songwriter; he took his stage name from his favorite poet - Dylan Thomas. His songs include hits such as 'Blowin' in the Wind -' 'Mr. Tambourine Man -' and 'Like a Rolling Stone.'
Bob Dylan
Nashville sound
Timbre
Rockabilly
30. The musical pattern created by parts being played or sung together
Beach Boys
The Rolling Stones
ASCAP
Texture
31. Pianist - composer - arranger - and bandleader; widely regarded as one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century. As a composer and arranger - he devised unusual musical forms - combined instruments in unusual ways - and creat
Duke Ellington
Bluegrass
Cover version
Electric Guitar
32. 'The Queen of Soul -' she began singing gospel music at an early age and had several hit records with Atlantic - including 'Respect' in 1967 and 'Think' in 1968.
Chuck Berry
cadence
Texture
Aretha Franklin
33. Vigorous form of country and western music informed by the rhythms of black R&B and electric blues. Exemplified by artists such as Carl Perkins and the young Elvis Presley.
Crooning
Countrypolitan
Rockabilly
The Supremes
34. The leader and guiding spirit of the Beach Boys during their first decade. He wrote and produced many of the Beach Boys' biggest hits - including 'Good Vibrations.'
Harmony
Brian Wilson
phrase
Chuck Berry
35. Black female vocal group who were featured artists with Motown Records in the 1960s. Their song 'You Can't Hurry Love' was a Number One hit in 1966.
Paul Whiteman
Standards
Big Band
The Supremes
36. A guitar whose sound comes chiefly from electro-magnetic amplification The pioneer of electric blues guitar was Aaron T-Bone Walker - whose urban blues recordings just after World War II were extremely popular - Les Paul created
Minstrel Show
Electric Guitar
Phil Spector
James Brown
37. Chord - consonance - dissonance
Jerry Lee Lewis
A cappella
Harmony
Bluegrass
38. Urban folk singer and songwriter; he took his stage name from his favorite poet - Dylan Thomas. His songs include hits such as 'Blowin' in the Wind -' 'Mr. Tambourine Man -' and 'Like a Rolling Stone.'
Ethel Merman
Blues
Bob Dylan
Elvis Presley
39. Country music style involving polished arrangements and a sophisticated approach to vocal presentation. The recordings of Patsy Cline were among the most important manifestations of the Nashville sound.
Nashville sound
Cole Porter
motive
Big Band
40. Brilliantly clever and articulate lyricist and songwriter - fine rock 'n' roll vocal stylist - and pioneering electric guitarist. One of the first black musicians to consciously forge his own R&B styles for appeal to the mass market. Also known for h
Buddy Holly
Chuck Berry
Cover version
Janis Joplin
41. Illegal practice - common throughout the music industry - of paying bribes to radio disc jockeys to get certain artists' records played more frequently.
Payola
Bel canto
Strophic
Boogie Woogie
42. African American composer and pianist; the best-known composer of ragtime music. Between 1895 and 1915 - Joplin composed many of the classics of the ragtime repertoire and helped popularize the style through his piano arrangements - published as shee
Blues
Scott Joplin
AABA form
Crooning
43. Pitched/unpitched - dynamic - timbre or tone color
sound
Crooning
Patsy Cline
Chuck Berry
44. Pitched/unpitched - dynamic - timbre or tone color
Banjo
Glenn Miller
sound
cadence
45. Chord - consonance - dissonance
Harmony
Janis Joplin
Herman Parker
Duke Ellington
46. Known as the 'Genius of Soul'; songwriter - arranger - keyboard player - and vocalist fluent in R&B - jazz - and mainstream pop.
Ray Charles
ASCAP
Texture
Janis Joplin
47. At the age of twenty-one - introduced 'I Got Rhythm' in the stage show Girl Crazy written by George Gershwin.
Ethel Merman
Herman Parker
Texture
Major/Minor
48. Played records and provided entertaining patter on the radio.
Disc Jockeys
Herman Parker
Phil Spector
Nashville sound
49. The B section of AABA song form found in the refrain of a Tin Pan Alley song. The bridge presents new material: a new melody - chord changes - and lyrics.
Rockabilly
Bridge
Cover version
Dick Clark
50. Record company founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit.
Motown
The Beatles
Glenn Miller
Bridge