Test your basic knowledge |

Subjects : performing-arts, music
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
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  • Match each statement with the correct term.
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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. 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






2. Born in Hoboken New Jersey into a working-class Italian family. His singing style combined the crooning style of Bing Crosby with the bel canto technique of Italian opera.






3. The first successful singing cowboy; born in Texas - He was a successful film star and a popular country and western musician. Helped establish the 'western' component of country and western music. Developed a style designed to reach out to a broader






4. Teen-oriented rock 'n' roll song using a twelve-bar blues structure; it celebrated a simple - hip-swiveling dance step.

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5. The 'Godfather of Soul.' He was known for his acrobatic physicality and remarkable charisma on stage. No other single musician has proven to be as influential on the sound and style of black music as James Brown.






6. Illegal practice - common throughout the music industry - of paying bribes to radio disc jockeys to get certain artists' records played more frequently.






7. Technique that involves the use of nonsense syllables as a vehicle for wordless vocal improvisation.






8. 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.






9. 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.'






10. A guitarist and inventor - designed his own eight-track tape recorder and began in 1948 to release a series of popular recordings featuring his own playing - overdubbed to sound like an ensemble of six or more guitars.






11. A type of song in which a series of verses telling a story - often about a historical event or personal tragedy - are sung to a repeating melody (this sort of musical form is called strophic).






12. African American musical style rooted in R&B and gospel that became popular during the 1960s.






13. 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.'






14. A person who adapts (or arranges) the melody and chords to songs to exploit the capabilities and instrumental resources of a particular musical ensemble.






15. Early rock 'n' roll guitarist - singer - and songwriter from the country/rockabilly side of rock 'n' roll. Killed tragically at the age of twenty-two in a plane crash.






16. 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






17. A musical rhythm accenting a normally weak beat






18. 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






19. Africanized version of the European quadrille (a kind of square dance). The cakewalk was developed by slaves as a parody of the 'refined' dance movements of the white slave owners






20. Beat - meter - syncopation






21. A style rooted in the venerable southern string band tradition. It combines the banjo - fiddle - mandolin - dobro - guitar - and acoustic bass with a vocal style often dubbed the 'high - lonesome sound.' The pioneer of bluegrass music was Bill Monroe






22. Clarinetist and popular band leader; known as the 'King of Swing.' His popularity and the success of his band helped establish the swing era in the early 1930s. He was the first white bandleader to hire black musicians in his band






23. Born in Hoboken New Jersey into a working-class Italian family. His singing style combined the crooning style of Bing Crosby with the bel canto technique of Italian opera.






24. Played records and provided entertaining patter on the radio.






25. 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






26. The standard form of a blues song: a twelve-bar structure made up of three phrases of four bars each; a basic three-chord pattern; and a three-line AAB text.






27. 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.






28. 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






29. A memorable musical phrase or riff.






30. Generally recognized as the most productive - varied - and creative of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters. His professional songwriting career started before World War I and continued into the 1960s. His most famous songs include 'Alexander's Ragtime Band






31. Technique that involves the use of nonsense syllables as a vehicle for wordless vocal improvisation.






32. 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.






33. A musical genre that emerged in black communities of the Deep South-especially the region from the Mississippi Delta to East Texas-sometime around the end of the nineteenth century






34. Host of the popular teen-oriented television show American Bandstand






35. The lead singer for the Supremes. After leaving the Supremes in 1970 - she became a successful solo artist.






36. 'Time' in Italian; the rate at which a musical composition proceeds - regulated by the speed of the beats or pulse to which it is performed.






37. 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






38. The scale systems central to Western music; a series of pitches organized in a specific order of whole- and half-step intervals. The major scale can give music a feeling of openness and brightness - whereas a minor scale can give music the feeling of






39. 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.






40. The underlying pulse of a song or piece of music; a unit of rhythmic measure in music.






41. White rockabilly singer and pianist.






42. 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.






43. One of the most common structures that Tin Pan Alley composers used to organize their melodic and harmonic material. This structure would be found in the refrain of a verse-refrain song.






44. Nickname for a stretch of 28th Street in New York City where music publishers had their offices—a dense hive of small rooms with pianos where composers and 'song pluggers' produced and promoted popular songs. The term - which evoked the clanging soun






45. Process for recording sound in the pre-microphone era. Performers projected into a huge megaphone.






46. Blues written by professional songwriters and performed by professional female blues singers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.






47. Early rock 'n' roll guitarist - singer - and songwriter from the country/rockabilly side of rock 'n' roll. Killed tragically at the age of twenty-two in a plane crash.






48. 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.






49. 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.'






50. 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






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