Kathryn Brickell Music is proud to offer voice lessons to our students in Queens. We will be posting informative articles relating to voice instruction and voice lessons.
The following article consists of a new terminology to add to your music repertoire.
We hope you will enjoy your voice lessons with our wonderful, experienced and dedicated local voice teachers.
Melisma
Here is a piece of musical terminology to add to your (hopefully already vast) repertoire of musical terminology: melisma. The term refers to a type of musical embellishment in which a sequence of whimsical grace notes is played. In singing the term refers to the extension of several extra notes over the course of one syllable. For example, in Bob Dylans rendition of House of the Rising Sun, when he holds a syllable and gives that guttural jump in tone, like on the word me in the line and me, oh god, I’m one, that is Bob Dylan indulging in melismatics. The word comes from the Greek root, melos, meaning tune or song. The English word melody comes from a combination of the Greek melos and aoide, meaning ode. Aoide is also the root of the word tragedy, which strangely comes from tragos goat + aoide song. Somehow tragedy once meant goat song. Dictionaries can hold just as many distractions as an iPhone, apparently.