Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but with regard to royalty free background music, the beauty is in the ear of the listener. Before you download a handful of good mp3 wav files, take some time to review what elements of musicality stand out to you, and the purpose behind your song selections. Beautiful music is often tied to classical influence, evoking emotions from deep within the soul.
This style describes the feel that music has in performance. For example, a piece of music may have a bright feel—which is denoted as “con brio”—or it may have a somber, heavy feel, which would be notated “doloroso”. There are a host of different terms used to indicate style and they generally appear over the first measure of a major section of music.
Beethoven’s Fifth, for instance, starts out with a style mark “Allegro con brio”, which is usually taken to mean moderately fast and spirited. Every composer has a style. It may be the way they express sorrow, such as the way in which Beethoven could illicit a dark canvas from the string section on which the melodies could play. They may have a way of expressing playfulness that can brighten an entire room, such as in the case of Mozart. In any case, each piece of music will bring with it unique aesthetic criteria to express artistic choices.
Phrasing is one of the most important elements of music. Phrasing defines the way the audience perceives certain passages and can make a piece a great one or an awkward one. Phrasing is sometimes defined within sheet music and sometimes left up to the musicians.
When you say something with spoken language, you join the words together in what’s called a sentence, which is made up of individual phrases. The phrases have their own meaning and work together to make your point clear. The same is true in music. A musical phrase is a set of tones that are played together as a unit. Using Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as an example again, the first two measures of the piece—which form the leitmotiv—constitute one of the most well-known phrases in all of music.
