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Teaching musical dynamics to students is essential as a musical skill. Some educators believe that dynamics are not especially fundamental to the beginning instrumentalist, that it is something that should be taught over time. I believe, however, that if we do not teach the process of playing a variety of dynamics early on, that students will lack the capability to play musically later in their development.

The two basic dynamics (that can later be altered by modifiers) are piano and forte. Piano means soft, and forte means loud. Both of these are Italian musical terms. As you continue to study music, you’ll find that most terms are Italian, though some also come from French, German, English, and Spanish. Music is often described as a universal language, and whether or not this is true for interpretation of music by different cultures, we find that most western music societies are able to comprehend musical directions because they are based in Romance languages.

We can modify the terms piano and forte by adding prefixes and suffixes, just like we would do with any other root words. By adding mezzo before our two fundamental dynamics, we are essentially telling the performer that we want “medium” soft or “medium” loud. Thus, both the mezzo dynamics are next to each other in the dynamic spectrum since mezzo refers to a moderate amount of the specified dynamic. On the other extreme, we can add -issimo as a suffix of the word, meaning “very” and used as an extreme modifier. Thus, pianissimo, “very soft,” and fortissimo, “very loud” are on the furthest ends of the spectrum. This leaves us with a total number of six dynamics: two fundamentals, two moderates, and two extremes.

Professional and advanced amateur musicians will use additional dynamics, even more extreme than the ones mentioned, performing pianissimo and fortissimo, but for students beginning their music education experience, it is common to stick to the essential six.