What is Variation in Music?

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Duane Carter and on behalf of Expert Village, I am going to be talking today about learning how and how to appreciate music. We've already discussed variations somewhat while we were talking about motif's. Variations is a very common device that is quite necessary. If music was repeated constantly without variations, we would become boring after a while. Therefore, variations has been employed in all styles for thousands of years. Some techniques used to vary the music are adding trills and ornamentations to the melodies, adding different harmonies or even transposing the whole song into various keys. Once you become an active listener, you should be able to recognize these different techniques quite easily. However if you are a very careful listener, you should be able to hear other things going on in the music such as the manipulation of the motif. You should be able to hear it played backwards, upside down or backwards and upside down. There are various different techniques that composers use to vary the music. "