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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. A memorable musical phrase or riff.
Hook
Bel canto
Diana Ross
Producer
2. White rockabilly singer and pianist.
Jerry Lee Lewis
Concept album
Cakewalk
Refrain
3. 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.
Payola
Paul Whiteman
Form
Bel canto
4. Blues piano tradition that sprang up during the early twentieth century in the 'southwest territory' states of Texas - Arkansas - Missouri - and Oklahoma. In boogie-woogie performances - the pianist typically plays a repeated pattern with his left ha
Tin Pan Alley
Minstrel Show
Boogie Woogie
Texture
5. 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
The Rolling Stones
phrase
Harmony
6. 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.
Electric Guitar
Rock 'n' Roll
ASCAP
The Beatles
7. 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.
Buddy Holly
Electronic recording
Bessie Smith
Scat singing
8. Recordings of performances by African American musicians produced mainly for sale to African American listeners.
Nashville sound
Countrypolitan
Race Records
Cakewalk
9. 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).
Timbre
Reverb
Ballad
ASCAP
10. Played records and provided entertaining patter on the radio.
Disc Jockeys
'The twist'
Timbre
cadence
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).
Janis Joplin
ASCAP
Ballad
Beach Boys
12. 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
Form
Concept album
urban folk
Bluegrass
13. 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.
urban folk
Standards
Motown
R&B
14. 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.'
Brian Wilson
James Brown
Paul Whiteman
Producer
15. The quality of a sound - sometimes called 'tone color.'
Ethel Merman
motive
Timbre
Glenn Miller
16. 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
Frank Sinatra
soul music
Irving Berlin
Cole Porter
17. 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.
James Brown
Producer
Benny Goodman
Rhythm
18. The principal medium for disseminating popular sings until the advent of recording in the 1890s.
Sheet music
Berry Gordy - Jr.
Bessie Smith
Scat singing
19. 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.
Rhythm
Frank Sinatra
Texture
Cakewalk
20. 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.
Glenn Miller
Bob Dylan
Concept album
Dick Clark
21. A person who adapts (or arranges) the melody and chords to songs to exploit the capabilities and instrumental resources of a particular musical ensemble.
Motown
Arranger
Ballad
Reverb
22. 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.
12-bar Blues
Ballad
George Gershwin
Tin Pan Alley
23. Known as 'The King of Rock 'n' Roll -' the biggest star to come from the country side of the music world. Born in Tupelo - Mississippi - made his first recordings in Memphis at Sun Records - and later recorded for RCA and became a Hollywood film star
Elvis Presley
Blues
Arranger
Motown
24. Short for reverberation. An effect produced with an electronic device that adds a time delay to a sound and then adds it back to the signal.
Nashville sound
Hank Williams
soul music
Reverb
25. A recurrent rhythmical series
Cakewalk
Scat singing
cadence
Hank Williams
26. A recurrent rhythmical series
Cover version
cadence
Bridge
Berry Gordy - Jr.
27. 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
sound
Cakewalk
'The twist'
James Brown
28. A theme that is elaborated on in a piece of music
Louis Armstrong
motive
Glenn Miller
Ragtime
29. Record company founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit.
Arranger
Motown
Form
George Gershwin
30. Technique that involves the use of nonsense syllables as a vehicle for wordless vocal improvisation.
Irving Berlin
Scat singing
Rockabilly
Electric Guitar
31. 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
Cole Porter
Big Band
Race Records
Banjo
32. 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
Verse
Syncopation
Janis Joplin
Glenn Miller
33. The principal medium for disseminating popular sings until the advent of recording in the 1890s.
cadence
Major/Minor
Sheet music
Big Band
34. The most significant single figure to emerge in country music during the immediate post-World War II period. Williams wrote and sang many songs in the course of his brief career that were enormously popular with country audiences at the time; between
Ballad
Beach Boys
Tin Pan Alley
Hank Williams
35. The musical structure of a piece of music; its basic building blocks and the ways they are combined.
Big Band
Dick Clark
Form
Phil Spector
36. 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
Beat
Bel canto
Major/Minor
Ragtime
37. 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.'
Boogie Woogie
Brian Wilson
Frank Sinatra
Harmony
38. '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.
Bel canto
Frank Sinatra
Gene Autry
Tempo
39. Sophisticated approach to the vocal presentation and instrumental arrangement of country music; a fusion of 'country' and 'cosmopolitan.'
Paul Whiteman
Tempo
Janis Joplin
Countrypolitan
40. A British rock group who cultivated an image as 'bad boys' in deliberate contrast to the friendly public image projected by the Beatles.
Bel canto
Concept album
Beat
The Rolling Stones
41. Born into a wealthy family in Indiana; studied classical music at Yale - Harvard - and the Schola Cantorum in Paris.
sound
Cole Porter
Irving Berlin
Rockabilly
42. A musical rhythm accenting a normally weak beat
Brian Wilson
Rock 'n' Roll
Syncopation
Ethel Merman
43. Repeating section within a song - consisting of a fixed melody and lyrics repeated exactly - typically following one or more verses.
Rockabilly
Chorus
A cappella
Arranger
44. 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
Major/Minor
Ethel Merman
Patsy Cline
Janis Joplin
45. The words of a song.
Countrypolitan
Lyrics
Frank Sinatra
Acoustic recording
46. 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.
Harmony
sound
A cappella
Phil Spector
47. 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
Arranger
Minstrel Show
12-bar Blues
Cole Porter
48. 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
Ballad
Standards
Arranger
Ragtime
49. 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
Ethel Merman
Bridge
Bessie Smith
Lyrics
50. 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.
urban folk
Bessie Smith
The Supremes
Louis Armstrong