Do you remember the great jazz tune titled “Four” by Jon Henricks? It told a story about what Jon considered as the 4 important aspects of life: truth, honor, happiness and love.

Music has 4 basic components too. We’ve already considered the first three: melody, rhythm, and harmony. The 4th is tone color. (Some might say that lyrics are a 5th element, but not all musical compositions have words, so I vote no on that notion.)

Tone color is the distinctive sound that each instrument or voice makes. A bass, alto, tenor, piano, sax, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, french horn, etc. can all play the same note, but does the same sound come out? No. They can all be on the same pitch, but each instrument has a distinctive sound of it’s own. And it is the blending of all these sounds that makes what we call a “band” or “orchestra” or “choir” or “combo” or whatever.

Obvious? Yep. But it’s kind of nice to know the stuff of which music is made.

Tags: music, piano