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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. The musical structure of a piece of music; its basic building blocks and the ways they are combined.
Rockabilly
Hook
Electric Guitar
Form
2. Describes a song where the stanzas are all sung to the same music
Strophic
Big Band
Scott Joplin
Duke Ellington
3. 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.
Minstrel Show
Rockabilly
Frank Sinatra
Boogie Woogie
4. Born into a wealthy family in Indiana; studied classical music at Yale - Harvard - and the Schola Cantorum in Paris.
Cole Porter
Irving Berlin
Harmony
Louis Armstrong
5. 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
Boogie Woogie
Producer
Cakewalk
Electric Guitar
6. 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
Timbre
Patsy Cline
Acoustic recording
Duke Ellington
7. Chord - consonance - dissonance
Harmony
Benny Goodman
Les Paul
Brian Wilson
8. Known as the 'Genius of Soul'; songwriter - arranger - keyboard player - and vocalist fluent in R&B - jazz - and mainstream pop.
Ray Charles
Bluegrass
Ragtime
Timbre
9. African American musical style rooted in R&B and gospel that became popular during the 1960s.
Chorus
soul music
Verse
Syncopation
10. Repeating section within a song - consisting of a fixed melody and lyrics repeated exactly - typically following one or more verses.
Countrypolitan
Ragtime
Crooning
Chorus
11. 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.
Cover version
12-bar Blues
The Supremes
Form
12. 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
Motown
Nashville sound
Bessie Smith
Sheet music
13. White rockabilly singer and pianist.
Jerry Lee Lewis
Patsy Cline
Scat singing
Janis Joplin
14. 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
Beach Boys
Cakewalk
Crooning
Janis Joplin
15. Process for recording sound in the pre-microphone era. Performers projected into a huge megaphone.
Rock 'n' Roll
Acoustic recording
Race Records
Form
16. 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
Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey
sound
R&B
Cakewalk
17. 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.
Frank Sinatra
'The twist'
George Gershwin
Producer
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
Acoustic recording
R&B
Patsy Cline
Producer
19. A musical rhythm accenting a normally weak beat
Minstrel Show
The Beatles
Ray Charles
Syncopation
20. Album conceived as an integrated whole - with interrelated songs arranged in a deliberate sequence.
Form
Banjo
Concept album
Ray Charles
21. A person who writes the words for songs
12-bar Blues
Concept album
Bel canto
Lyricist
22. The musical structure of a piece of music; its basic building blocks and the ways they are combined.
Hank Williams
Form
Electronic recording
Boogie Woogie
23. The musical pattern created by parts being played or sung together
12-bar Blues
urban folk
Texture
Herman Parker
24. 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
Chorus
Irving Berlin
Ragtime
Buddy Holly
25. Blues written by professional songwriters and performed by professional female blues singers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.
Blues
Classic blues
Electronic recording
Dick Clark
26. Technique that involves the use of nonsense syllables as a vehicle for wordless vocal improvisation.
Ray Charles
Big Band
Reverb
Scat singing
27. A memorable musical phrase or riff.
Aretha Franklin
AABA form
Duke Ellington
Hook
28. 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
Big Band
Verse
Cakewalk
Ragtime
29. 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.
Sheet music
ASCAP
Frank Sinatra
Crooning
30. Rock group from Liverpool - England - who dominated American popular music during the mid-1960s and started the 'British Invasion.' The band included John Lennon and George Harrison on lead and rhythm guitars and vocals - Paul McCartney on bass and v
Crooning
Bridge
George Gershwin
The Beatles
31. 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
Dick Clark
Tin Pan Alley
James Brown
Chorus
32. 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.
Harmony
Dick Clark
Reverb
Big Band
33. 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
Gene Autry
Boogie Woogie
Gene Autry
Lyricist
34. A style of singing made possible by the invention of the microphone. It involves an intimate approach to vocal timbre.
Crooning
Berry Gordy - Jr.
Berry Gordy - Jr.
cadence
35. 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
Electric Guitar
Strophic
Bluegrass
soul music
36. 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
Tempo
Timbre
Countrypolitan
Irving Berlin
37. Played records and provided entertaining patter on the radio.
Race Records
Sheet music
Disc Jockeys
The Rolling Stones
38. 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.
Blues
Classic blues
Standards
Buddy Holly
39. Repeating section within a song - consisting of a fixed melody and lyrics repeated exactly - typically following one or more verses.
Chorus
Paul Whiteman
Rockabilly
Benny Goodman
40. 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
Cakewalk
Benny Goodman
Big Band
George Gershwin
41. 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
Lyrics
George Gershwin
Duke Ellington
Buddy Holly
42. 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
Louis Armstrong
urban folk
Hank Williams
Polyphonic
43. 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
Glenn Miller
Scott Joplin
Race Records
Minstrel Show
44. Album conceived as an integrated whole - with interrelated songs arranged in a deliberate sequence.
Ethel Merman
Concept album
James Brown
Classic blues
45. The underlying pulse of a song or piece of music; a unit of rhythmic measure in music.
Scat singing
Beat
Bel canto
Ray Charles
46. Founder of Motown Records.
Lyricist
Blues
Berry Gordy - Jr.
Ethel Merman
47. 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.'
A cappella
Bob Dylan
Melody
Concept album
48. 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.
Arranger
Les Paul
Gene Autry
motive
49. The principal medium for disseminating popular sings until the advent of recording in the 1890s.
Sheet music
Gene Autry
Syncopation
Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey
50. Musical texture with interlocking melodies and rhythms.
Minstrel Show
Cover version
Polyphonic
Scat singing