657 articles
Tuplet
Tuplet (irrational rhythm, artificial division): a notated group of notes dividing a beat into parts the meter does not imply, marked with a number; triplet is the common case, with duplets in compound meter and nested tuplets in advanced notation.
Turkish makam
Turkish makam (makam, makamlar), the melodic-modal system of Ottoman-Turkish classical music: 53-tone Holdrian comma theory, seyir melodic progression, Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek codification, and core makams such as Rast, Hicaz, and Segâh.
Tuvan throat singing
Tuvan throat singing, khöömei (хөөмей), is a solo multiphonic technique from Tuva, Russia, producing drone and amplified overtones in styles kargyraa, khoomei, and sygyt; distinct from Mongolian khöömii and Inuit throat singing.
Twelve-string guitar
A twelve-string guitar is an acoustic or electric guitar with twelve strings in six courses, fretted as single notes, producing a loud, shimmering, chorus-like sound.
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique (dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism): a composition method devised by Arnold Schoenberg in 1921–1923, drawing all material from a fixed ordering of the twelve chromatic pitch classes, transformed by four row forms into forty-eight variants.
Uilleann pipes
Uilleann pipes (píob uilleann, union pipes), Ireland's bellows-blown bagpipe with a two-octave chromatic chanter, drones, and chord-playing regulators; evolved from pastoral pipes by 1768, UNESCO-inscribed 2017.
Ukrainian folk song
Ukrainian folk song (українська народна пісня) is the traditional orally transmitted song of the Ukrainian people, one of the oldest forms of Ukrainian folklore, known for its rich polyphony and spanning ritual, historical, and lyrical genres.
Ukulele
Ukulele (ʻukulele, "jumping flea"): small four-string Hawaiian plucked lute developed in the 1880s by Madeiran makers Nunes, Dias, and Espírito Santo; re-entrant GCEA tuning; popularized by Kalākaua and the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
Unusual types of gramophone records
Unusual gramophone records: nonstandard disc formats from 6-inch children's records and 16-inch Vitaphone discs to chocolate records, multiple-groove and locked-groove novelties, picture discs, and inside-out acetates.
Upopo
Upopo (ウポポ) is a genre of Ainu traditional song, sung by people seated in a circle without instruments or dancing, chiefly by women on ritual occasions.
Urtiin duu
Urtiin duu, meaning long song, is a Mongolian traditional folk genre tied to nomadic pastoral life, proclaimed a UNESCO Masterpiece in 2005 and inscribed on the Representative List in 2008.
Utai
Utai is the chanted vocal music of Japanese noh theater, whose texts are called yōkyoku; its repertoire of about 250 plays spread broadly after the Ōnin War.
Valve trombone
Valve trombone: a trombone whose pitch is changed by three piston or rotary valves instead of a slide, invented in the 1820s, popular in 19th-century Italian and Austrian orchestras, later displaced by the slide trombone.
Varkari kirtan
Varkari kirtan (वारकरी कीर्तन) is the devotional musical discourse tradition of the Varkari sampradaya of Maharashtra, founded by Sant Namdev, in which a kirtankar sings and explains the saints' abhangs.
Veena (वीणा)
Veena (वीणा), the ancient Indian family of plucked string instruments; generic term in Sanskrit texts. Includes the Carnatic Saraswati veena with 24 fixed frets and the rudra veena stick zither of dhrupad.
Vibraphone
The vibraphone, also called the vibraharp or vibes, is a keyboard percussion instrument with aluminum bars, resonators, and motor-driven disks that add vibrato, prominent in jazz.
Vibrato
Vibrato: periodic wavering of pitch, loudness, and timbre in singing and instrumental playing, typically 5–8 Hz and tens of cents wide; distinct from tremolo and trill, an ornament until its 20th-century continuous use.
Villancico
A villancico is a Spanish song and verse form with a refrain and verses, born in Iberia in the late 1400s and later used in colonial Mexican cathedral music.
Villupattu
Villupattu, also called villisai or villadichan pattu, is a Tamil folk art of musical storytelling in which a lead singer strikes a bow for rhythm.
Viol
The viol, or viola da gamba, is a fretted, six- or seven-string bowed instrument played between the legs with an underhand bow, distinct from the violin family; it flourished in Renaissance and Baroque Europe before being displaced in the eighteenth century.
Viola
The viola is a bowed four-string instrument of the violin family, tuned a fifth below the violin, which appeared in sixteenth-century Italy and fills the orchestra's inner harmony.
Violin
The Violin is a bowed string instrument that emerged in northern Italy in the early sixteenth century. Andrea Amati of Cremona was one of the first prominent makers.
Violin family
Violin family: bowed string instruments of one design family, violin, viola, cello, and hybrid double bass, standardized in Cremona and Brescia around 1550 by Amati and successors.
Virtuoso
Virtuoso: a person of exceptional skill, especially in music; from Italian via Late Latin virtuosus. Originally a scholar or connoisseur (1610s); musical sense by 1743; defined by Paganini and Liszt.
Vivah geet
Vivah geet (विवाह गीत, wedding songs) are folk songs sung by women at the rites of a traditional North Indian Hindu wedding, from pre-wedding ceremonies to the bride's departure.
Vocal music
Vocal music is music performed by the human voice, solo or in combination, with or without accompaniment. Covers voice production physiology, song-versus-speech acoustics, genres from chant to throat-singing, Auto-Tune-era production, and singer vocal health.
Vocal range
Vocal range, also called extension, is the span from lowest to highest pitch a voice can produce, measured clinically as a voice range profile (phonetogram) in frequency and sound pressure level, and distinguished from tessitura and ambit.
Voice classification in non-classical music
Voice classification in non-classical music: applying classical voice-type labels to Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) singers in jazz, pop, rock, and theater. Sources agree labels work only loosely as pedagogical tools, not standardized classifications.
Volkslied
Volkslied is a German term for a simple, strophic folk song shaped by oral tradition, coined by Herder in the 1770s and opposed to the Kunstlied.
Waiata
Waiata, the Māori word for song, are sung compositions of Aotearoa New Zealand ranging from ancient laments and love songs to action songs performed in kapa haka today.