| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Satz | "Satz (German for sentence) is any single member of a musical piece, which in and of itself displays a complete sense," (Riemann 1976: 841) such as a sentence, phrase, or movement. |
| Scale | In music, a scale is a group of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work. Scales are ordered in pitch or pitch class, with their ordering providing a measure of musical distance. |
| Scat singing | In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with nonsense words and syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice. |
| Schenkerian analysis | Schenkerian analysis is a method of musical analysis based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker. |
| Scientific pitch notation | Scientific pitch notation is one of several methods that name the notes of the standard Western chromatic scale by combining a letter-name, accidentals, and a number identifying the pitch's octave. Scientific pitch notation is a logarithmic frequency scale. |
| Scordatura | A scordatura (literally Italian for "mistuning") or cross-tuning is an alternate tuning used for the open strings of a string instrument. It is an extended technique used to allow the playing of otherwise impossible melodies, harmonies, figures, chords, or other note combinations. |
| Second viennese school | The Second Viennese School is the term generally used in English-speaking countries to denote the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where, with breaks, he lived and taught between 1903 and 1925. |
| Secondary dominant | Secondary dominant (also applied dominant) is a type of chord used in musical harmony. It refers to a dominant of a degree other than the tonic. |
| Semitone | A semitone, or half-step is a musical interval. It is the smallest interval commonly used in Western music, and is considered the most dissonant. |
| Sentence | In music a sentence is "the smallest period in a musical composition that can give in any sense the impression of a complete statement." |
| Septet | A septet is a formation containing exactly seven members. It is commonly associated with musical groups, but can be applied to any situation where seven similar or related objects are considered a single unit. |
| Sequence | A sequence in music occurs when a given melodic or harmonic passage is successively repeated at different pitches (transposed). Sequences are either chromatic if exact or diatonic if they follow the scale being used, and may also be described as ascending or descending. |
| Serenade | In music, a serenade (or sometimes serenata) is, in its most general sense, a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. |
| Serialism | In music, serialism is a technique for composition that uses sets to describe musical elements, and allows the manipulation of those sets. |
| Seventh chord | A seventh chord is a chord consisting of a triad plus a note forming an interval of a seventh above the chord's root. When not otherwise specified, a "seventh chord" usually means a major triad and a flat seventh (a "dominant seventh chord"). |
| Sharp | In music, sharp means higher in pitch. More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by a semitone (half step)," and has an associated symbol (♯). |
| Sheet music | Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of musical notation; like its analogs -- books, pamphlets, etc. -- the medium of sheet music typically is paper (or, in earlier times, parchment), although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens. |
| Show tune | A show tune is a popular song originally written as part of the score of a "show" (or stage musical), especially if the piece in question has become a "standard", more or less detached in most people's minds from the original context. |
| Simple meter | In music, simple meter or simple time is a time signature or meter in which each beat (or rather, portion, 1/2 or 1/3 of a measure) is divided into two parts, as opposed to three which is compound meter. |
| Sinfonia concertante | Sinfonia concertante is a musical form that originated in the classical music era, and is a mixture of the symphony and the concerto genres. |
| Sinfonia | Compositions in the same style as an invention but using three-part counterpoint are known as sinfonias. |
| Singing | Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, which is often contrasted with speech. |
| Single-reed instrument | A single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. In a single-reed instrument the reed is attached to a mouthpiece that is blown on to vibrate the reed, producing the sound. |
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