How many dynamics are there in music

Composers use dynamics to change the mood. Sometimes a piece will have very few dynamics and others will have many changes. Italian terms are used to describe dynamics. Each has its own abbreviation. Listen to the examples below and compare how each dynamic should be played with the opening reference notes.

Usually the appreviation is used to show dynamics in a piece of music. Again, this will most of the time get abbreviated to the first letters of each word: mp or mf. Pianissimo will get abbreviated to double letter ps and fortissimo will get abbreviated to double letter fs as shown below. Not as common but still worth mentioning is that we can have very, very loud and very, very quiet dynamics.

In the first movement at around 10 minutes in he writes a lot of ps, six ps at one point which is pianississississimo, a bit of a mouthful to say. Diminuendo gets abbreviated to dim. Last updated 2nd March Table of Contents. Dynamics in music refers to how loud or soft is the music. It is that simple! But, because musicians and composers like to make things interesting, and sometimes difficult, there are lots of different musical terms that can be used to describe what the dynamics are in a piece of music.

Many, many years ago, when music in the Western European tradition started to become systematized, it was decided that all musical information written on the musical score would be in a common language — Italian.

In the chart you can see all the basic dynamics terms commonly used in music today. Essentially, dynamics fall into two main categories — loud or soft. The dynamic music definitions will go from the softest to the loudest Italian terms. This means that in the music, a section would be played at certain volume level, then the next section at another volume, without any graduations or subtle changes in between.

Over time, composers and technology developed so that changes in dynamics were used in pieces of music. There are two main changes in dynamics terms — crescendo and decrescendo. A crescendo is when the music becomes gradually louder. A decrescendo, or diminuendo, is the opposite and is when the music becomes gradually softer in volume. The theme music to the movie — A Space Odyssey, composed by Strauss is a perfect example of changing dynamics used for a very dramatic effect.