What is melody?
In a piece of music, melody is a series of notes or voices arranged to form a musical phrase. The melody in a song is the part that helps listeners recognize the song, so it is also considered the easiest part to remember.
Melody is created through musical instruments and voices. These are types of means that have two or more notes in a series of linked sounds including pitch, duration, and rhythm. To put it simply, if rhythm is the connection of sounds with duration, melody is the connection of sounds with pitch, duration, and rhythm.
Thus, a song, a piece of music is born from the combination of many melodies that repeat continuously. The melodies will be divided into motifs and connected together to form a complete song.
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motif in lalaland melody
What kind of melody is called a good melody?
Melodies are quite familiar and easy to recognize, however, a good melody will require higher requirements than that. A good melody must first ensure that it meets the three elements of pitch, duration, rhythm, and especially, that melody must be unique, and will not overlap with any previous melody.
Music consists of only 7 notes, but there are millions of songs, millions of compositions, but each composition is completely different. Each song carries a unique mark of the author who composed it. Because each piece of music includes a unique pitch, duration, rhythm, and the most important thing is the creativity of the musician.
Some notes to be able to compose a piece of music with a good melody
Musical structure: includes motif, phrase (musical sentence), section (musical section). In which, motif is the smallest unit of idea, many motifs will create a phrase, and many phrases will create a section.
Motif: a motif is a small musical section that contains the main idea of the song. A motif is similar to the idea of a paragraph, it is a small idea but contains the nature and characteristics of that musical section. A motif will contain two main elements: interval and rhythm, which are used throughout the entire piece of music.
Phrase: This is a unit in musical structure made up of motifs and other components. When a phrase ends, there will be an ending point in composition and harmony, called the Cadence point. It is like a punctuation mark in music and is located at the last bar.
There are many different types of phrase structures such as two-bar rhythm, three-bar rhythm, four-bar rhythm, etc. Phrases and motifs can start anywhere in the music. Phrases in a musical section are often the same or nearly the same.
Sections (musical passages): many phrases combined will form a section. Music passages are often different in motifs and phrases.
Repetition and Variation: these are considered 2 very important techniques in composition. Repetition is the repeated musical phrases/passages. Meanwhile, variation is the technique that makes Repetition different through changing elements such as rhythm, pitch, harmony, intensity, timbre, etc.
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After understanding these elements as well as their roles in a song, the composer can start his work and create the most sublime music thanks to his own creativity.
A good melody determines the success of a song, so understanding the definitions is the solution for you to create songs that touch people’s hearts. Hopefully the above information has provided more data for your journey of composing and playing music.