Set (music)

A set (pitch set, pitch-class set, set class, set form, set genus, pitch collection) in music theory, as in mathematics and general parlance, is a collection of objects. In musical contexts the term is traditionally applied most often to collections of pitches or pitch-classes, but theorists have extended its use to other types of musical entities, so that one may speak of sets of durations or timbres, for example.

A set by itself does not necessarily possess any additional structure, such as an ordering. Nevertheless, it is often musically important to consider sets that are equipped with an order relation (called segments); in such contexts, bare sets are often referred to as "unordered", for the sake of emphasis.

Two-element sets are called dyads, three-element sets trichords (occasionally "triads", though this is easily confused with the traditional meaning of the word triad). Sets of higher cardinalities are called tetrachords (or tetrads), pentachords (or pentads), hexachords (or hexads), heptachords (heptads or, sometimes, mixing Latin and Greek roots, "septachords"—e.g.,), octachords (octads), nonachords (nonads), decachords (decads), undecachords, and, finally, the dodecachord.

Set (darts)

A set in darts consists of a sequence of legs (games) played, ending when the count of legs won meets certain criteria. Throwing first is considered an advantage in a leg, so players alternate who throws first in each leg during the set.

Generally, a set will consist of the best of five legs (first player to win three) - although there are some exceptions. The most notable being the Winmau World Masters, where a set is the best of three legs (first to two).

Example

During the final of the 2007 PDC World Darts Championship, Raymond van Barneveld defeated Phil Taylor by seven sets to six in one of the most dramatic darts matches of all-time. The breakdown of how each set went is shown here.

Taylor won the first two sets by three legs to nil, then added the third set before van Barneveld took the next two. The match continued and went to six sets all. Neither player managed to gain a two-leg advantage in the final set "tiebreak" so the deciding leg was played when the score reached 5-5. Before the final leg, the players threw for the bullseye with the nearest given the advantage of throwing first.

Country dance

A country dance is any of a large number of social dances of the British Isles in which couples dance together in a figure or "set", each dancer dancing to his or her partner and each couple dancing to the other couples in the set. A set consists most commonly of two or three couples, sometimes four and rarely five or six. Often dancers follow a "caller" who names each change in the figures.

Introduced to France and then Germany and Italy in the course of the 17th century, country dances gave rise to the contradanse, one of the significant dance forms in classical music. Introduced to America by English immigrants, it remains popular in the United States of America as contra dance and had great influence upon Latin American music as contradanza. The Anglais (from the French word meaning "English") or Angloise is another term for the English country dance. A Scottish country dance may be termed an Ecossaise. Irish set dance is also related.

Characteristics

The term "country dance" may refer to any of a large number of figure-dances that originated on village greens. The term applies to dances in line formation, circle dances, square dances and even triangular sets for three couples.