Samba Em Preludio

This is a vocal technique where one syllable is sung with one note. The opposite of this would be melismatic where one syllable is sung with multiple notes. The whole of Samba Preludio is syllabic.

An arpeggio is the notes of a chord played  or sung separately. In Samba Preludio this technique is used in the vocal line such as bars 4-6, this also happens in the bass part in bar 88 (which is a variation on the vocal part used earlier in the piece).

 A sequence is the repetition of a musical phrase at a higher or lower pitch than the original. This is used in Samba Preludio in the vocal line in bars 4-6, also in bars 35-37 in the vocal part.

This means 'rob time' and is a way of playing music freely rather than sticking to a strict pulse. This is a feature of Chopin's Nocturnes which this piece was inspired by. This happens in the introduction of Samba Preludio.

Bossa Nova (means new trend)  is the blending of samba & cool jazz. The music is in syncopated 2/4 time, with a dotted crotchet & quaver rhythmic pairing. Instrumentation is simple, limited to a few rhythm instruments. In vocalized passages the musical background becomes more subdued to allow the singer greater range for improvisation. 

A triplet is where three notes should be played in the space of two, highlighted by a square bracket with a ‘3’. This is a big feature of the rhythm in Samba Preludio, have a look at the score and see how many 3 brackets above notes there are.

This term means 'off beat'. This could either music that accents normally weak beats like 2 and 4 in a bar, this is used in Reggae and Ska music. This term also describes notes that are between the main beats. In bar 19, the start of the section marked Bossa Nova, there are some dotted crotchets followed by quavers. This is an example of notes that go across the 2nd beat of the bar.

Mono means one, phonic means sound, so this texture involves just one layer of sound, without harmony. In Samba preludio most of the introduction is monophonic as there is only one note being played at once. Although there are a couple of exceptions you could still describe this intro as monophonic.

This is a term that is specific to the string family (violin, viola, cello, double bass) these instruments mostly just play one note at once. When they do play more than one note the term double stopping is used. In Samba Preludio this happens once in the introduction and a few times and multiple times during the Bossa Nova section.

This is a term that refers to melodic decorations. In Samba Preludio this technique is used right at the start of the piece and on the score there is a wiggly line to show this.

A harmonic is a term that describes releasing a high note on a stringed instrument by lightly touching the string rather than pushing you finger down to the fretboard/fingerboard. This is used in the introduction of Samba Preludio.

Extended chords are any chord that has more than the usual 1st, 3rd, 5th degrees of the scale in. As an example, a C chord has the notes C,E,G in it, these are the 1st, 3rd, 5th of the C scale. If I was to add the note B in to this chord then I have extended the chord. As B is the 7th note in the C scale I would call this chord Cmaj7. 

In Samba Preludio there are lots of extended chords as it is jazz influenced, and jazz uses extended chords all of the time. Here are some examples of extended chords that the guitar plays in verse 2. C#m11b5, F#7#5, F7b5. These are complex chords that have multiple added notes.

In the guitar solo uses various performance techniques. Hammer-ons, pull-offs, tremolos. The guitar solo is really hard to play so is describes as virtuosic (a virtuoso is a really good musician).

Conjunct is a term that describes a melody that moves up or down by one note at a time, this is sometimes called step-wise. 

Disjunct is a term that describes a melody that moves up or down by jumping to notes that are not next to one another. This is sometimes described as melodic leaps.

There are examples of both of these types of melodic movement in Samba Preludio.