Tempo

The Tempo is the speed of a piece, written at the top left-hand corner of music notation. It consists of special music terms that we must memorize (or use our knowledge of word roots) to derive its meaning. A full section of terms and their definitions can be found in Lesson 5: Terms.

Example: In the above picture, the tempo shown is "Allegro," which means "fast or quick." There are other terms, such as "Andante" or "walking tempo," and "Presto" or "extremely fast."


Review

  1. The tempo is the speed of a piece.
  2. The tempo is determined by a term written to the top left corner of music notation.
  3. To understand the meaning of the tempo, we must memorize individual terms, though in some situations, we can derive its meaning from word roots.

 

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