2. I am a little girl.
and we were supposed to mark it up with the terms for the specific parts of the sentences, like
Sentence 1 would be: definite article, subject, verb, adjective.
Sentence 2 would be: subject, verb, indefinite article, adjective, noun.
Well, music phrases have names for their different parts as well. I have stated more than once at this site that music is a language. As a language it has words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. You can write a set of symbols to describe what a musical phrase "does" from a technical point of view.
The first concept to understand is that western music is based on a dominant-tonic relationship. To hear this dominant-tonic sound play these two chords:
G major, C major
Do you hear how "final" it sounds? We all know this sound from classical music, pop, jazz, rock, nursery rhymes, etc. It comes in many forms. Try playing these chord pairs to hear other dominant-tonic sounds:
E major, A major
B major, E minor
G dominant 7, C major 7
This dominant-tonic relationship is expressed using the following harmonic symbols:
V - I
The 'V' means that the root of the first chord is the fifth note of the scale for the key. The 'I' means that the root of the second chord is the first note of the scale for the key. Note that the symbols do not indicate what key you are in. The symbols simply say, "This is a dominant-tonic phrase." You could play this phrase in any key:
In C major the scale is C(first note), D, E, F, G(fifth note), A, B, C:
G major, C major
In F minor the scale is F(first note), G, Ab, Bb, C(fifth note), Db, Eb, F:
C major, F minor
The analogous situation in english grammar is this: you can write any number of sentences using the pattern for the first example sentence in this article, "The house is green":
The pattern is:
definite article, subject, verb, adjective.
Some examples in addition to "The house is green" would be:
The moon was bright.
The highway was jammed.
The food is delicious.
Next article we will look and some more compicated phrases and some guidelines for analyzing a music phrase.
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