What is Jargon?

What is Jargon? Is the language or terms used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people.

On my experience I have been using jargon without knowing! If you guys don’t remember my first post, I stated that I like music and that I play the piano, guitar and I sing too! When I took my music classes at GCC there was a lot of Jargon going on! But I didn’t know “jargon” is another name for “terminology” because basically that’s what it is! When I took my music classes I had to learn this jargon when reading music! I had to learn all the terms to play music how it’s suppose to sound. All the music is written in Italian, and the advantage for me is that Italian is very similar to Spanish! But of course there were terms that I had to look up on the glossary because I had no idea of what the meaning was! I remember my first music class, it was back in high school, it was guitar class. My guitar teacher was one of the most strict music teachers I ever had! He would make us respect every rule to make real music and to play it how it was written. (respecting all signatures and terms) I will provide some examples of jargon we use in music.

·       Forte = loud                                                          

·       Adagio = slowly

·       Moderato = moderately

·       Largo = very slow

·       Staccato = short, detached

·       Legato = smoothly connected

·       Fine = end

·       Vivo = lively

·       Mezzo Forte = moderately loud

·       Mezzo Piano = moderately soft

·       Piano = soft                                            

·       Diminuendo = gradually softer

·       Allegro = quickly, happy

·       Allegretto = moderately fast

·       Fermata = hold the note longer (stop)

      ·       Crescendo = gradually louder 

Of course there is more Jargon going on in music, but this examples are the essentials!

Remember that every time you listen to your favorite song/music, in order to produce the rhythm, the tune, the speed, jargon was playing its role! Playing the music exactly how it was written is called "Musicality"

One example is this orchestra, you can see they are following the rules, they are reading their music while playing and they are producing musicality.

enjoy it!! =)