The word texture means: what things are made of and how they feel. Textures can be described as ‘rough’, ‘smooth’, ‘hard’, ‘soft’, ‘liquid’, ‘solid’, ‘lumpy’, ‘gritty’ etc. The word ‘texture’ is used for many different things. It can even be used in abstract senses, e.g. for music and poetry. In music we can talk about the texture of a piece of music.

If there are a lot of notes being played at once, we could call this a ‘thick’ texture. If there are just two or three notes being played so that every note can be heard clearly we could call this a ‘thin’ or ‘clear’ texture. Music may have a ‘polyphonic’ texture or a ‘chordal’ texture. The word ‘texture’, this time, is being used to describe something we hear instead of something we feel.