texture (music)

In music, texture is the overall quality of sound of a piece, most often indicated by the number of voices in the music and by the relationship between these voices (see types of texture below). A piece's texture may be further described using terms such as "thick" and "light", "rough" or "smooth". For example,  Aaron Copland's more popular pieces are described as having an "open" texture. The perceived texture of a piece can be affected by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used.
See more at Wikipedia.org...