Voice (polyphony) facts for kids
In music, a voice means a single line of music that is sung or played. Imagine a song where different instruments or singers are playing their own tune at the same time. Each of those separate tunes is called a "voice." Even if no one is singing, and it's just instruments, we still call them voices!
Sometimes, people also use the word "part" to mean the same thing as "voice." For example, if a song has three different melodies playing at once, you might hear it called a "3-part" song or a "three-voice" song. This is common in a type of music called polyphonic music, where many melodies weave together. A fugue, for instance, often has a set number of voices, like a 3-voice fugue, which means three main melodies are happening at once. These voices could be sung by three different people, played by three different instruments, or even all played by one person on a single keyboard instrument like a piano.
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What Is a Musical Voice?
A musical voice is like a single path a melody takes in a song. Think of it as one person's turn to sing or one instrument's turn to play its own tune. When you listen to a band, the singer has one voice, the guitar has another, and the bass has a third. They all play together, but each has its own distinct line of music.
Voices in Different Music Styles
In many types of music, especially older classical music, composers often wrote pieces with a specific number of voices. For example, a piece for a string quartet usually has four voices: one for each violin, one for the viola, and one for the cello. Each instrument plays its own melody, but they all fit together to create the full sound.
Why Is It Called a Voice?
The term "voice" comes from how music was often written for singers. Even when instruments started playing these separate melodic lines, the name "voice" stuck. It helps musicians talk about how many independent melodies are happening at the same time in a piece of music.
Related pages
Images for kids
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A score for Mendelssohn's Opus 13 string quartet. You can see four main parts, or voices, for the different string instruments.
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A bar from J.S. Bach's "Fugue No.17 in A flat." This shows how two different voices can be seen on one musical staff, with their note stems pointing in different directions.
See also
In Spanish: Particella para niños
