music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, a stab is a single

staccato Staccato (; Italian for "detached") is a form of Articulation (music), musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration, separated from the note that may follow by silence. It has been described by theorists and ...

note or chord that adds dramatic punctuation to a composition. Stabs may be provided by horns (real or synthesized)—a horn stab—or an orchestral sample—an

orchestra hit An orchestra(l) hit or stab is an isolated staccato note or chord synthesizer, synthesized from the sounds of many orchestral instruments together, or sampled from a single Sforzando (musical direction), sforzando performance. The orchestra hit ...

—and usually occur on a 1-beat. Stabs are used in a wide variety of music genres including

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

, rock, classical,

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...

, freestyle, trap, EDM,

metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

and ska. There is no standardized notation symbol to specifically indicate a stab. They are most commonly notated as a short note value with a staccato dot, sometimes with the verbal marking "stab". Stabs are also used in electronic music in the form of very short snippets of a song used as rhythmic accents in a new composition. Early breakbeat hardcore, such as Prodigy's "

Fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

", and hip hop in general made use of stabs.

References

Chords Funk Breakbeat hardcore {{Music-theory-stub

See also

References