"There are three main types of shofar blasts — tekiah, shevarim and t’ruah. A fourth type, tekiah gedolah, is just a longer version of the regular tekiah blast." (source)

"I wonder what goes through people's minds during the tekiot, those 100 blasts of the shofar heard around the world on Rosh Hashanah. Awe? Remorse? Nostalgia? A warmth of peoplehood? Custom requires a complex permutation of three notes, Tekia, Shevarim, Terua—long notes, moaning notes, and sobbing notes. And the message of this ancient instrument of alarm that is known as the shofar is itself a very complex one." (Glinert)