| Term | Description |
|---|
| Falsetto | The term falsetto (Italian diminutive of falso, false) refers to the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. |
| Fanfare | A fanfare is a short piece of music played by trumpets and other brass instruments, frequently accompanied by percussion, usually for ceremonial purposes. |
| Federal Music Project | The Federal Music Project (FMP), part of the Federal government of the United States New Deal program Federal One, employed musicians, conductors and composers during the Great Depression. People in the music world had been particularly hard-hit by the era's economic downturn. In addition to performing thousands of concerts, offering music classes, organizing the Composers Forum Laboratory, hosting music festivals and creating 34 new orchestras, employees of the FMP researched American traditional music and folk songs, a practice now called ethnomusicology. |
| Figure | In music, a figure is a recurring fragment or succession of notes that may be used to construct the accompaniment. A figure is distinguished from a motif in that a figure is background while a motif is foreground. |
| Figured bass | Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and nonchord tones, in relation to a bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo. |
| Finale | Finale is the final movement of a sonata or a symphony, or a concerto or of another piece of non-vocal classical music which has several movements. |
| Fingerboard | The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is a part of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of wood that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument and above which the strings run. |
| Flam | In percussion, a flam is a rudiment consisting of a quiet "grace" note on one hand followed by a louder "primary" stroke on the opposite hand. The two notes are played almost simultaneously, and are intended to sound like a single, 'broader' note. |
| Flamadiddle | In percussion, a flamadiddle (or Flam Paradiddle) is a rudiment consisting of a paradiddle with a flam on the first note. |
| Flat | In music, flat means "lower in pitch." More specifically, in music notation, flat means "lower in pitch by a semitone (half step)," and has an associated symbol (♭), which looks somewhat like a lowercase "b". |
| Flageolet | The flageolet is an organ stop belonging to the flute group of flue pipes. It is usually found in 2-feet pitch, and more rarely 1-feet pitch. The tone is generally soft in character. |
| Fluttertonguing | Fluttertonguing is a wind instrument tonguing technique in which performers flutter their tongue to make a characteristic "FrrrrFrrrrr" sound. This is done by performing an isolated alveolar trill while playing the notes desired. |
| Folk instrument | A folk instrument is an instrument that developed among common people and usually doesn't have a known inventor. It can be made from wood, metal or other material. It is a part of folk music. |
| Formalism | Formalism in music almost always refers to music composed in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. The term was borrowed from literary theory, and was used to describe any music that was deemed by the Soviet cultural bureaucracy to lack appeal for the masses. |
| French overture | The French overture is a musical form widely used in the Baroque period. It is in three parts: the first is slow, often with double-dotted rhythms (a double-dotted crotchet followed by a semiquaver), the second is quick and fugal, and the first part returns at the end. |
| Frequency | Frequency is a measure of the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event. So the period is the reciprocal of the frequency. |
| Fret | A fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. |
| Front ensemble | In a marching band or drum corps, the front ensemble or pit is the stationary percussion ensemble typically placed in front of the football field. |
| Frottola | The frottola was the predominant type of Italian popular, secular song of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. It was the most important and widespread predecessor to the madrigal. |
| Fugue | In music, a fugue is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred to as "voices." In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th Century the term fugue has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint. |
