Agogic Accent
Making a note stand out by lasting longer, not by being louder
Related
An agogic accent makes a note stand out by lasting longer: not louder, but staying. It is one kind of accent, alongside dynamic and metric accent.
It is often overlooked yet very effective: lengthen one note slightly in a melody and the ear immediately hears it as "important". The usual mistake is to equate accent with "louder" — duration, colour, attack and harmony all create accent; relying only on dynamics soon makes the music coarse.
Read deeper → accent
Sources
- 时值重音的概念，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Accent" 与 "Agogic"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.