It’s notated in a couple of different ways. Firstly, by writing the word crescendo below the section of music that it applies to. This is often abbreviated to cresc.

However, it’s more common to see a hairpin sign. This shows exactly where the composer wants the musician to start the crescendo and where to finish it.

You’ll often see a dynamic marking before and after the crescendo symbol. This gives the performer an idea of what volume they’re aiming for when gradually increasing in volume.

The Opposite Of Crescendo

The opposite of crescendo is decrescendo, which means to gradually decrease in volume.

It’s notated in a similar way, by either writing “decresc.” below the music or by a hairpin symbol.

But instead of the two lines starting together and gradually getting further apart, they start apart and gradually come together.

Related Terms To Crescendo

Here are some terms related to crescendo:

• Dynamics: Dynamics is the word we use to describe volume in music.
• Decrescendo: The opposite of crescendo which means to gradually get quieter.
• Diminuendo: Means the same as Decrescendo — to gradually get quieter.
• Sforzando (sfz): Sforzando indicates a sudden, sharp accent on a single note or chord. It can occur within a crescendo or at its climax, adding to the dramatic impact of the volume increase.

Examples Of Crescendo In Music

“Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, Op. 67” By Ludwig Van Beethoven

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, op. 67, by Ludwig van Beethoven, commonly known as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, is a renowned classical music masterpiece.

The most famous crescendo occurs in the first movement. The initial motif (short-short-short-long) is repeated and gradually intensified, creating tension and anticipation.

“Boléro” By Maurice Ravel

In 1928, French composer Maurice Ravel composed a captivating piece called Boléro. The piece starts pianissimo (very softly) and gradually crescendos as the orchestra swells.

“Ride Of The Valkyries” By Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” is a powerful and iconic piece of music. It originates from the opera Die Walküre, which was part of Wagner’s monumental cycle of four music dramas known as Der Ring des Nibelungen.

This piece takes around eight minutes and begins with successive layers of accompaniment. As more Valkyries join, the theme becomes more pronounced, and the orchestra swells. The soaring melodies and powerful orchestration create an exhilarating crescendo.

It’s notated in a couple of different ways. Firstly, by writing the word decrescendo below the section of music that it applies to. This is often abbreviated to decresc.

However, it’s more common to see a hairpin symbol. This is where two lines start apart and get closer together until they’re touching, as shown below.

You’ll often see a dynamic marking before and after the decrescendo symbol. This gives the performer an idea of what volume they’re aiming for when gradually decreasing in volume.

The Opposite Of Descrescendo

The opposite of decrescendo is crescendo, which means to gradually increase in volume.

It’s notated in a similar way, by either writing cresc. below the music or by a hairpin symbol.

But instead of the two lines starting apart and gradually getting closer together, they start together and gradually get further apart.

Related Terms To Decrescendo

Below are some terms that are often used alongside decrescendo:

• Dynamics: Dynamics is the word we use to describe volume in music.
• Crescendo: The opposite of decrescendo, which means to gradually increase in volume.
• Diminuendo (dim.): From the Latin word deminuere, diminuendo translates to “diminishing.” It refers to the gradual decrease in the volume of music. It means the same thing as decrescendo.
• Morendo: From the Latin word moriendum, morendo translates to “dying.” It indicates a gradual decrease in dynamics and tempo.

However, they also all need silence to give them meaning. Silence in music allows us as musicians to distinguish between different periods of sound and gives more meaning to rhythms, dynamics, melodies, and just music in general.

So what are the musical terms for silence, and how is silence used in music? 

Rests

The most commonly seen symbol in music that denotes silence is the rest.

A rest is basically the opposite of a note – instead of playing a specific pitch for a specific amount of time (e.g., a quarter note G), a rest tells the musician to be silent for a specific amount of time.

For a full description with pictures, see our post on the different types of rests in music here.

Rests are found all throughout music – not every instrument can play all the time.

However, full score rests, in which the entire orchestra or band rests and does not play, are rare.

An example is the final few measures of the famous “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. 

The start of Beethoven’s 2nd Movement in his Ninth Symphony begins with quick bursts of music followed by silences: 

Here are a few other examples of quick pauses of silence in pop and rock music.

They both have very small rests of silence, and these rests are used as part of the harmonic and percussive rhythm of the piece.

In this piece by the band Garbage, the whole band cuts out around the 0:03 second mark and the 0:14 second mark, creating a small beat of silence each time.

This next piece by Justice has even shorter rests included as part of the beat, first starting at around the 0:08 second mark: 

Tacet

Another musical term used for silence in music is tacet.

Tacet, which is pronounced tassit, literally comes from the Latin word that means “it is silent”.

So whenever an instrument is not playing during a piece of music, it is tacet. 

The word tacet is usually used for long stretches of rest, often multiple bars (measures) or longer.

If a specific instrument or section sits out for an entire movement of a symphony, for example, their music will typically just say “Tacet”, with a long line through the music, like this: 

This line through the staff is called an H bar as it looks like a letter H.

You’ll often see H bars used to indicate that the musician shouldn’t play for multiple measures, which is known as multirests.

We indicate multirests with an H bar and the number of bars to tacet for written above the bar like this:

The example above tells the musician that they shouldn’t play for 12 bars.

You might also see the term tacet al fine which literally means ‘to be silent until the end.’

So, rests are used for short pauses, usually anywhere from a semiquaver (sixteenth note) to ten measures or so (this changes in different pieces of music – sometimes you’ll see a 64-bar rest symbol), and then anything above that would be a Tacet sign.

Sometimes in Jazz music you could see a box with the phrase “1 x Tacet”, which means “First time Tacet”, which just means don’t play the first time through a repeated section.

Caesura and Breath Marks

So far, we have looked at rests, which take the place of a single note or multiple, and tacet markings, which tells the musician not to play for a long time.

However, there are also markings and symbols that can notate a quick instance of silence in between notes.

The most common ones you will see are the caesura mark and the breath mark.

A caesura is made of two forward slash marks (//), and is placed in between measures or notes to indicate a small pause in which the beat of a piece is not counted.

Caesura marks are for an indeterminate amount of time, and so can be really quick or fairly long.

A breath mark, on the other hand, is notated as an apostrophe (’) in music.

It is usually found in the music of singers or wind instruments (saxophone, oboe, etc.), and in those cases, it literally means for the musician to take a breath.

For non-wind instruments, it just means for the musician to take a very short pause between one note and another and not have any connection between the notes.

Unlike a caesura, it is not meant to change the tempo but tends to shorten the note before it so that the next note can be played on the beat it’s supposed to.

Take a look at this short musical example, in which a caesura and a breath mark are featured: 

Silence as Music

Listen to this piece by composer John Cage.

It is called 4’ 33’’ (“Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds”), and is one of the most famous and interesting uses of silence in all of music. 

The whole piece of music is “made up” of silence.

The whole orchestra is instructed to sit there, not moving or playing their instrument, for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

The whole idea is that the “music” of the piece comes from the ambient noise of the players and the audience, as they fidget in their chairs or cough or sneeze.

What do you think of the piece? Do you consider it music or not?

That’s all for Silence in Music

That’s everything there is to know about the use of silence in music!

It is a very interesting topic to think about – is silence part of music?

Or is the music of a piece the parts that aren’t silent?

Just like light and shadow, when it comes to music and silence, one can’t exist without the other.

In this post, we’ll cover all the musical terms for soft so you’ll know what to do when you see them in a score.

The Definition of Quiet in Music Terms

The musical term for playing quietly or softly is called piano.

It’s actually where we get the name of the instrument, the piano.

It was originally called the ‘pianoforte’ because it could play both quietly and loudly (forte is the musical term for loud).

It’s pronounced slightly differently though: ‘pi-ah-no’.

When reading a piece of music you’ll probably see it written as a capital letter P underneath the staff.

What About Very Quiet?

A piece of music isn’t just loud or soft, though.

It’s a big range of different volumes and sometimes a composer will want a passage to be played very quietly or even very, very quietly.

To notate this, we add the suffix issimo to piano, which gives us pianissimo (pp), which means very quiet.

You don’t have to stop there, though. You can keep on adding Ps to get very, very soft pianississimo (ppp) and very, very, very soft pianissississimo (pppp).

The Musical Term for Moderately Quiet

Sometimes, you’ll see the letters mp, which stands for mezzo piano.

Mezzo is an Italian word for moderately, so we use this symbol to indicate to the musician to play moderately quietly.

Chart of Soft Dynamics

To help visualize the order of soft dynamics, there’s a table below with them arranged in order of loudest at the top, to the quietest at the bottom.

Soft Dynamics Chart
In Italian	Symbol	Definition
mezzo piano		moderately soft
piano		soft
pianissimo		very soft
pianississimo		very, very soft
pianissississimo		very, very, very soft

I hope that helps make a bit more sense of soft dynamics.

In this post, I’ll cover all the different musical terms that we use to describe music as loud. Let’s get started.

Loud in Music Terms

The musical term for playing loudly is called forte.

It’s pronounced ‘for-tay’ and comes from the word for strong in Italian.

The opposite of forte is piano, which is the musical term for soft.

When reading music, you’ll usually see it written as a capital letter F below the music as shown below.

What About Very Loud

If you want to notate for the musician to play even louder, you can add the suffix issimo to get fortissimo (ff) which means very loud.

You can keep on going by adding iss to get fortississimo (fff) which means very, very loud and even fortissississimo (ffff) which means very, very, very loud but this is more rare and you won’t see if very often.

The Musical Term for Moderately Loud

When you want the music to be moderately loud, we have one more music term called mezzo forte.

Mezzo means moderately and, when coupled with forte is abbreviated to the letters mf.

Chart of Loud Dynamics

Below is a table of all the musical terms for loud in order of quietest to loudest.

Loud Dynamics Chart
In Italian	Symbol	Definition
mezzo forte		moderately loud
forte		loud
fortissimo		very loud
fortississimo		very, very loud
fortissississimo		very, very, very loud

If you have any other questions about how we notate loud dynamics, let us know.

For that reason, dynamics are one of the most important parts of playing music. You can express so much emotion with them.

In this post, we’re going to cover all the different types of musical dynamics and how we use them with lots of examples and explanations. But first, let’s define what are dynamics in music.

Definition Of Dynamics In Music

In music, we use the word dynamics to describe the volume of music.

But rather than using words like loud and soft, we use different Italian terms and symbols to describe the volume of the piece.

We group the musical terms for dynamics into two different categories:

• Static dynamics
• Changing dynamics

First, we’ll look at the differences between these two types of dynamics.

Static Dynamics

Static dynamics are musical instructions that tell us to play the music at a certain volume that doesn’t change.

In other words, don’t get louder or quieter, play each note at the same volume as the last one.

We use three Italian terms to describe static dynamics:

• Piano
• Forte
• Mezzo

Let’s start by looking at piano (not the instrument).

Piano

The first dynamic we’ll look at is piano, which is pronounced “pi-ah-no.”

Piano is the word we use to describe quiet or soft in music.

When reading music you’ll typically see a letter p, which is telling the musician to play this part of the piece quietly.

Forte

Up next we have forte, which is pronounced “for-tay.”

It’s defined as the musical term for loud, and it comes from the Italian word for “strong.”

Just like piano, when forte is used in a piece of music, you’ll often see it indicated as a letter f.

This means you should play from this point loudly.

Mezzo

We use another Italian word, mezzo, which is pronounced “met-so.”

The definition of mezzo is “moderately” or “half.”

It is placed in front of the two dynamics: piano and forte, so you get mezzo piano (which means moderately quiet) and mezzo forte (which means moderately loud).

Again, this will most of the time get abbreviated to the first letters of each word: mp or mf.

Pianissimo And Fortissimo

We can also add the suffix “issimo,” which essentially means “very,” on to the end of piano and forte.

We just take off the last letter o from piano and e from forte. This then gives us pianissimo, which means “very quiet,” and fortissimo, which means “very loud.”

Pianissimo will get abbreviated to the double letter ps, and fortissimo will get abbreviated to the double letter fs, as shown below.

Pianississimo And Fortississimo

Not as common but still worth mentioning is that we can have very, very loud and very, very quiet dynamics.

We just add an extra “iss” to get pianississimo and fortississimo.

Even More Ps And Fs

You’re unlikely to see static dynamics other than these, but there have been some composers who’ve used even more ps and fs to make some more extreme dynamics.

Holst uses fortissississimo (ffff) in “Mars, The Bringer of War” from The Planets.

In the video below, skip to around 7 minutes in and 7:30 minutes, and you’ll hear how loud fortissississimo is!

Hearing a whole orchestra play pretty much as loud as they can is quite a thing to experience, definitely worth going to see it next time it’s on at the proms.

Another example of some extreme dynamics is from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6. 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).

You might want to turn your volume up to hear it though…

Changing Dynamics

The other type of dynamic markings that you’ll see has to do with changing dynamics.

This is where the music isn’t staying at one volume but gradually (or suddenly) increasing or decreasing in volume.

Crescendo

We use the Italian word crescendo (pronounced “kruh-shen-doh”), which means to “gradually get louder.” It comes from the Italian word for increasing.

It is often abbreviated to cresc. in a piece of music, but you can also draw a hairpin sign. This is just two lines starting together and gradually getting further apart as shown below.

Decrescendo and Diminuendo

The opposite of crescendo is decrescendo, which means to “gradually get quieter.” It comes from the Italian word for decreasing.

It gets abbreviated to decresc., but we can also use a hairpin symbol pointing the other way. The two lines start apart and gradually get closer together until they meet.

Another word that means exactly the same as decrescendo is diminuendo, which means “gradually get quieter.”

Diminuendo gets abbreviated to dim., but you can use the decrescendo hairpin or either of these words interchangeably.

Music Dynamics Chart

Below is a list of all common dynamic markings that you’re likely to come across in a piece of music, along with the symbol and the definition.

Summing Up Dynamics

I hope this helps you make a bit more sense of dynamics and how we notate volume in music.

It’s a very vital part of performing and can completely change how the music you’re playing sounds.

I’ll be adding some more information on some of the other terms used to describe sudden changes in volume soon.