NMI’s RESOURCE CENTER for musical theatre writers

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

• Rubato:

  In contemporary musical theatre, this term means “freely”, or “follow the singer’s tempo changes.” Traditionally, this term refers to internal slowing and quickening within a phrase or even a measure, even though the overall pace of a passage is steady.

• Assonance:

  The repetition of vowel sounds in a passage.  Hamilton is ripe with assonance.  Assonance in contemporary (hip-hop) music can function similarly to internal rhymes, allowing words to resonate against each other.  See, for instance, for instance at all the ten trisyllable words from “Right Hand Man” (Hamilton) which have vowels similar to “elephant” in the following:

  …general
  The venerated Virginian veteran whose men are all
  Lining up, to put me up on a pedestal
  Writin’ letters to relatives
  Embellishin’ my elegance and eloquence
  But the elephant is in the room

• Creative Arranging at the Piano:

  by Bill Holcomb. New Jersey, Musicians Publications, c. 1980.

• Hyphens in lyrics:

  Four general principles of hyphenating lyrics: HYPHENATE: 1) Between double-letters (fun-ny). 2) Between differing consonant sounds (cen-tral, not ce-ntral). 3) Elongate vowels (che-mi-stry); 4) Make exceptions, however, for clarity (book-ing, not boo-king).  Dictionaries aren’t the authority here; your ears are.

  See attached for a more complete discussion and some further examples.

• Vamp:

  A section of music which is repeated a variable number of times, usually to time the music to the action on stage. Often a vamp is followed by shorter section called a safety to fine-tune the timing.

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