Have you heard something about the 7 elements of music in lessons or in class? Don't worry about trying to understand all there is to know about this right now. If you are a beginner in music, only the first few should be your focus. This is just a way of breaking a piece of music into smaller units so that it is easier to learn and understand.

The phrase "elements of music" is language for the different parts that make up music. This is one of the first things you learn in a music introductory course.

There are a total of 7 elements of music to learn according to the National Standards for Arts Education. The goal here is to define these terms for you in simple language that makes it easier to understand.

1. Pitch - the low and high quality of sound. Pitch describes how low or high a sound is.

2. Rhythm - silence and sound organized in time. We can have long and short durations of sound and silence that moves to a steady pulse or beat, kind of like your heart beat.

3. Harmony - a group of pitches sounding together. What's widely used is a chord to represent harmony. This is 3 or more notes sounding together.

4. Dynamics - how loud or soft music is. Sometimes there are markings in music that tell the player how soft or loud to play in certain sections. The music then becomes more interesting to play or listen to.

5. Timbre - distinct sound native to the instrument or voice. Tone color is also what this is sometimes called. This is similar to an artist's palette of color. There are so many different kinds of sounds that can be created from one voice or instrument.

6. Texture - the vertical and horizontal relationships within music. This is something you will discover as you continue learning to read music. There are occasions when a composer creates a simple melody with little harmony. This is an example of a very "thin" texture. In other cases, the composer likes to write using a lot of action in the melody line with heavy chords underneath. A "thick" texture is what this represents. Some music sounds a lot more complicated than others when you listen to it. The texture of the music is what you are hearing.

7. Form - how written music is organized and designed. I tell many of my students that the form of music is similar to how an academic paper is written. There is usually an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Music is sometimes organized in this way also. Sometimes composers write music with a specific form in mind. In other instances, the music is created first and then analyzed to see what happens as a result.

Don't get caught up in trying to understand all of the 7 elements of music right now if you are new to learning music. Be careful not to get paralyzed by this amount of information. It can keep you from moving forward in your learning. For those learning to read music for the first time, you will mainly want to focus on pitch and rhythm.

While it is good to know about the general parts that music is made up of, keep focused on what you are learning right now. This will all be more understandable in time as you dive deeper into learning a piece of music.