Test your basic knowledge |

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.
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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. 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.






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






3. The son of an immigrant leatherworker - did much to bridge the gulf between art music and popular music. Studied European classical music but also spent a great deal of time listening to jazz musicians in New York City. Wrote Porgy and Bess (1935) -






4. 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.






5. At the age of twenty-one - introduced 'I Got Rhythm' in the stage show Girl Crazy written by George Gershwin.






6. 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.






7. 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.






8. The words of a song.






9. A memorable musical phrase or riff.






10. White rockabilly singer and pianist.






11. The quality of a sound - sometimes called 'tone color.'






12. A recurrent rhythmical series






13. A short musical passage






14. 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






15. In the verse-refrain song - the refrain is the 'main part' of the song - usually constructed in AABA or ABAC form.






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






17. 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.






18. 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.'






19. A musical rhythm accenting a normally weak beat






20. The principal medium for disseminating popular sings until the advent of recording in the 1890s.






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






22. 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






23. 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.






24. 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






25. Motive - phrase - cadence






26. Known as the 'Genius of Soul'; songwriter - arranger - keyboard player - and vocalist fluent in R&B - jazz - and mainstream pop.






27. Founder of Motown Records.






28. '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.






29. 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.






30. 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.






31. 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






32. 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






33. The words of a song.






34. The musical structure of a piece of music; its basic building blocks and the ways they are combined.






35. 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.'






36. 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.






37. The musical pattern created by parts being played or sung together






38. 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.






39. 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






40. 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.






41. 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






42. Popular dance ensemble during the swing era - consisting of brass - reeds - and rhythm sections.






43. Popularly known as the 'Mother of the Blues -' was the first of the great women blues singers and had a direct influence on Bessie Smith.

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44. 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






45. A memorable musical phrase or riff.






46. 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






47. 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






48. 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.






49. A person who writes the words for songs






50. Repeating section within a song - consisting of a fixed melody and lyrics repeated exactly - typically following one or more verses.