| W |
after the catalogue of music by Georg Christoph
Wagenseil (1715-1777) prepared by Helga
Schölz-Michelitsch; after the catalogue of music by
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) prepared by Deathridge,
Martin Geck and E. Voss |
| Wachsend |
(German) growing |
| Wachtel |
(German, literally 'quail') an instrument imitating
the bird-cry of the quail |
| Wachtelpfeife |
see wachtel |
| Wadaiko |
general term for Japanese drums |
| Wagner tuba |
brass instrument invented by Richard Wagner
(1813-83) derived from the French horn although looking
like a baritone horn; available as a B-flat tenor and an
F bass |
| Während |
(German) during |
| Wah-wah |
in jazz, an onomatopoetic term that describes the
undulating sound produced by alternating dampening, then
restoring, a portion of a tone, for example, on brass
instruments by muting, on electric guitars through the
use of an electronic device, placed on the floor and
operated with the player's foot |
| Wah-wah pedal |
a foot operated device used by an electric guitarist
and bassist which modulates the output by removing low
frequencies and boosts high frequencies producing the
characteristic 'wah-wah' effect |
| Waist |
a narrowing in the middle of the body of an
instrument, resulting in a shape like an hourglass,
typically found in string instruments, and on some drums |
| Wait |
a medieval salaried musician acting a town watchman
or a member of a court band; also old name for a shawm |
| Waka-pinkullus |
Andean single-register mouthpiece flutes |
| Waldflöte |
(German, literally 'woodland flute') an organ pipe
often at 4-foot pitch |
| Waldhorn |
a valveless hunting horn |
| Walking bass |
a bass line that moves steadily in a rhythm
contrasting to that of the upper parts; in jazz, a
walking bass usually moves by steps played on bass or
piano, with each note usually having the duration of a
crotchet (quarter note) |
| Waltz |
a simple triple time dance derived from the old
German ländler; the dance generally has an
introduction, a number of different melodies, before
finishing with a coda; harmonically, the dance has one
strong chord on the first beat, with two weaker chords
on the second and third beat, this pattern repeated from
bar to bar |
| Walzer |
(German) waltz |
| Walzertempo |
(German) waltz-time |
| Wandindi |
Kenyan guitar |
| Wankend |
(German) wavering, shaking |
| Wa Patala |
Burmese wooden xylophone |
| Wärme |
(German) warmth |
| Warpipes |
the chanter has eight holes and plays a distinctive
'pipe scale' to which is added one tenor drone, tuned an
octave below the chanter, and a bass drone tuned a
further octave lower |
| Washboard |
originally used to scrub laundry by hand and
consisting of a wooden board or frame that holds a metal
plate with a corrugated surface, the washboard has a
musical use as a percussion instrument to add a "raspy"
or scraping sound to the rhythm of a composition, a
sound similar to that produced by a güiro |
| Washint |
an Ethiopian bamboo flute with four finger holes |
| Washtub bass |
folk instrument made from an overturned washtub (the
resonator), broom handle (the neck), and a single
string, the tension on the string being provided by
pulling back and forth on the handle |
| Wassail |
a drinking festival often mentioned in Christmas
carols |
| Wassoulou, Wasulu |
a musical style from Mali typified by a strong
Arabic feel |
| Water drums |
percussion created by men or women who plunge, slap
and beat their hands in the river to create a variety of
rhythmic and melodic sounds for example, the Baka forest
people of southeast Cameroon; West African drums made
from large gourds, cut in half, scraped clean and
carefully dried, before being filled with water (if the
drum is large) or being placed cut-side down in the
water (if the drum is smaller) |
| Water organ |
see hydraulus |
| Watsa-watsa |
popular Malagasy dance rhythm influenced by music
from Mozambique and Congo |
| Waveform |
a sound wave generated by an oscillator to produce
notes with different timbres, for example, sine, pulse,
sawtooth, square |
| Wavelength |
symbolically, the Greek lower-case lambda (λ) - the
distance between one peak (or crest) of a sine wave and
the next corresponding peak (or crest). The wavelength
of any frequency may be found by dividing the speed of
sound by the frequency |
| Wayang |
(Javanese) sophisticated shadow theatre from Java in
which music is provided by a gamelan orchestra
more... |
| Wayang purwa |
wayang theatre that makes use of the purwa
repertoire, the oldest stories about cosmic events and
divine will . The Javanese word purwa means
‘beginning’ or ‘first’ and derives, probably, from the
Sanskrit parwan, a word used to denote the
chapter of the Mahabharata |
| Wa ya zo |
Lakota (Native American, also known as Sioux) word
for the flute or whistle |
| Wayte |
an old name for the hautboy or shawm |
| Wechseln |
(German) to change |
| Wechselnote |
(German) changing note |
| Weg |
(German) away, off |
| Wehmut |
(German) sorrow |
| Wehmuth |
(German) sorrow |
| Wehmütig |
(German) sorrowful |
| Wehmüthig |
(German) sorrowful |
| Weich |
(German) soft, tender, light, minor |
| Weinend |
(German) wailing |
| Weinlied |
(German) drinking song |
| Well-tempered |
see 'equal temperament' |
| Welsh harp |
a Celtic harp |
| Welsh step dancing |
see clogging |
| Wenig |
(German) little |
| Werden |
(German) to become |
| Werdend |
(German) becoming |
| Were |
a Muslim style of music performed most often as a
wake-up call for early breakfast and prayers during
Ramadan celebrations |
| Western mouth organ |
see 'harmonica' |
| Western music |
see
Western music - a short history |
| Whammy bar |
a pitch bending device that moves the bridge on a
guitar |
| Whiffle |
a fife used in English morris dancing |
| Whip |
a percussion instrument consisting of two pieces of
wood hinged so that the player can snap the arms
together to simulate the sound of a whip |
| Whirling Dervishes |
ritual dancers who belong to the Mevlevi order, a
devotional Islamic brotherhood that uses liturgical
dance |
| Whistle, Whistleflute |
an end-blown pipe of wood, metal or plastic |
| Whistle, Whistling |
the human whistle relies on the shape of the mouth,
acting as a resonator, to pitch the sound produced; if
two whistling notes are produced, the resonances are
set-up in the back and front of the mouth; some
whistlers can hum a note while whistling another |
| White noise |
analogous to white light containing equal amounts of
all visible frequencies, white noise contains equal
amounts of all audible frequencies (technically the
bandwidth of noise is infinite, but for audio purposes
it is limited to just the audio frequencies). From an
energy standpoint white noise has constant power per
hertz (also referred to as unit bandwidth), i.e., at
every frequency there is the same amount of power (while
pink noise, for instance, has constant power per octave
band of frequency). A plot of white noise power vs.
frequency is flat if the measuring device uses the same
width filter for all measurements. This is known as a
fixed bandwidth filter. For instance, a fixed bandwidth
of 5 Hz is common, i.e., the test equipment measures the
amplitude at each frequency using a filter that is 5 Hz
wide. It is 5 Hz wide when measuring 50 Hz or 2 kHz or
9.4 kHz, etc. A plot of white noise power vs. frequency
change is not flat if the measuring device uses a
variable width filter. This is known as a fixed
percentage bandwidth filter. A common example of which
is 1/3-octave wide, which equals a bandwidth of 23%.
This means that for every frequency measured the
bandwidth of the measuring filter changes to 23% of that
new center frequency. For example the measuring
bandwidth at 100 Hz is 23 Hz wide, then changes to 230
Hz wide when measuring 1 kHz, and so on. Therefore the
plot of noise power vs. frequency is not flat, but shows
a 3 dB rise in amplitude per octave of frequency change.
Due to this rising frequency characteristic, white noise
sounds very bright and lacking in low frequencies.
[Here's the technical details: noise power is actually
its power density spectrum - a measure of how the noise
power contributed by individual frequency components is
distributed over the frequency spectrum. It should be
measured in watts/Hz; however it isn't. The accepted
practice in noise theory is to use amplitude-squared as
the unit of power (purists justify this by assuming a
one-ohm resistor load). For electrical signals this
gives units of volts-squared/Hz, or more commonly
expressed as volts/root-Hertz. Note that the denominator
gets bigger by the square root of the increase in
frequency. Therefore, for an octave increase (doubling)
of frequency, the denominator increases by the square
root of two, which equals 1.414, or 3 dB. In order for
the energy to remain constant (as it must if it is to
remain white noise) there has to be an offsetting
increase in amplitude (the numerator term) of 3 dB to
exactly cancel the 3 dB increase in the denominator
term. Thus the upward 3 dB/octave sloping characteristic
of white noise amplitude when measured in constant
percentage increments like 1/3-octave.]
[from the
Electronics Music Dictionary] |
| Whithorn |
primitive oboe-like instrument made from the bark
and wood of the willow |
| Whole note |
 |
a semibreve |
|
| Whole rest |
 |
a semibreve rest |
|
| Whole step |
(American) a whole tone |
| Whole tone |
the interval of a major second |
| Whole tone scale |
six note scale where the interval between successive
notes is a tone (whole step) |
| Wie |
(German) as, like, as if |
| Wie anfänglich |
(German) as at the beginning |
| Wieder |
(German) again |
| Wiederholung |
(German) repetition |
| Wiegend |
(German) rocking, swaying |
| Wiegenlied |
(German) lullaby, berceuse, cradle-song |
| Wienerisch |
(German) Viennese |
| Wile |
notched flute from Ghana |
| Willow Flute |
long whistle without finger holes used in the folk
music of Sweden and Norway; also called seljefløyte |
| Wind band |
an orchestra with no string section apart from the
double-bass |
| Wind chimes |
a percussion instrument made of hollow wood, bamboo
or metal tubes, suspended on a frame, and struck or
blown by the wind |
| Wind instrument |
a musical instrument that produced a sound by being
blown into, usually made of metals (including brass),
plastic or wood although other materials used include
ivory, bone, clay and glass |
| Wind machine |
a device that simulates the sound of the wind |
| Wirbel |
(German) drum roll |
| Wirbeltrommel |
(German) tenor drum |
| Wire brush |
a type of drum stick with a fan of stiff wires |
| Wohlgefällig |
(German) pleasant, pleasantly |
| Wolf |
a false note on a stringed instrument the result of
an unintentional resonant response |
| Wood |
a naturally occuring product of trees and large
shrubs. When discussing the expansion and contraction of
wood, the three axes of movement are defined as (i) the
tangential direction, which is along the curve of the
tree rings; (ii) the radial direction, which is across
the rings, or through the diameter of the tree; and
(iii) the axial direction, which is along the length of
the trunk. As wood is generally handled in the form of
boards this means that for a plainsawn board, the
tangential direction is across the width of the face and
the radial direction is through the thickness, while for
a quartersawn board, the opposite is true; the
tangential direction is through the thickness and the
radial direction is across the width of the board |
| Wood block |
a percussion instrument |
| Woodwind, Woodwind instrument |
wind instrument usually made of wood, or formerly
made of wood even if now made of metal, plastic or some
other material; in American a woodwind quintet or
woodwind choir may include the French horn, but the
French horn is actually a member of the family of brass
instruments |
| Word painting |
musical depiction of words in text, so that the
music tries to imitate the emotion, action, or
adjectival description in the text, a device used often
in madrigals and other works of the Renaissance |
| World music |
music where influences from more that one cultural
tradition intermingle, first made popular in the 1980s |
| WoW |
(German, abbreviation for Werk ohne Opuszahl
meaning 'a work without an opus number') indicating
works that were either unpublished or were not assigned
an opus number by the composer |
| Wq |
after Alfred Wotquenne (1867-1939) who in 1905
catalogued the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
(1714-1788), and also catalogued the music of Christoph
Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) |
| Wuankara |
Chinese bamboo pipe |
| Wubala |
highest-pitched of Ghanaian Wile flutes |
| Wu-ch'ang |
traditional percussion used in Chinese opera |
| Wuchtig |
(German) weighty |
| Wunsch |
(German) wish |
| Würde |
(German) dignity |
| Würdig |
(German) dignified |
| Wurstfagott |
(German) see racket |
| Wut |
(German) rage |
| Wuth |
(German) rage |
| Wütend |
(German) raging, furious |
| Wüthend |
(German) raging, furious |
| Wüthig |
(German) raging, furious |
| Wütig |
(German) raging, furious |
| WV |
Wagenseil-Verziechnis catalogue of the
orchestral works of Georg Christoph Wagenseil
(1715-1777) prepared by Schölz-Michelitsch |
| WWV |
Wagner-Werke-Verzeichnis catalogue of the
works of Richard Wagner (1813-1883) by Deatheridge, Geck
and Voss |
