OAA Music

Music Theory

Melody

Lesson Objectives

Aspire:

To become confident at identifying melody and understanding the difference between the terms melody, riff and ostinato.

Challenge:

To understand what melody is an be able to identify where it might have been used in a piece of music.

Task 1

The video below has 20 examples of popular melodies, or TUNES, from the 1990s and 2000s - how many do you recognise?

So what is Melody?

The simplest to define melody is to say that it is the tune of the music.

There can be several different melodies within a piece of music, which sometimes overlap each other and combine in a way that it is hard to tell them apart.

For example:

Sometimes the melody does stand out ...

What plays the Melody?

Anything that can play different pitches can play a melody.

For example:

Vocals, keyboard, piano, guitar, ukulele, violin, xylophone, trumpet, clarinet etc

The only instruments which can’t play melody are untuned percussion, for example:

Tambourine, maracas, djembe, most drum kits etc.

Describing Melody

There are 4 key terms to use when describing melody. These are:

Conjunct / Disjunct / Ascending / Descending

Task 2

On a piece of paper, write these words down as a list or draw a table like this ...

Conjunct

This means when the notes are close to each other in pitch or the tune moves in STEPS. We sometimes use the term STEPWISE as well as conjunct.

Imagine playing a tune on the keyboard that used all white notes next to each other - that would be CONJUNCT.

Write a definition of conjunct in your own words

Disjunct

This is where the notes move in LEAPS, so the opposite of conjunct where the notes are next to each other. Imagine you are playing the keyboard and having to miss some notes out to play the tune correctly.

Write a definition of disjunct in your own words

Ascending

Ascending is where the melody moves higher in pitch. This can be continuous, or more often the tune can move up and down but will end higher in pitch that it started.

Descending

Descending is where the melody moves lower in pitch. This can be continuous, or more often the tune can move down and up but will end lower in pitch that it started. The opposite of ascending.

Task 2

Your table/list should now look like this:

Visual Summary

You should use only two of these words when you are describing a melody.

It can be either conjunct or disjunct.

It can be either ascending or descending

What is a Riff/Ostinato

A riff and an ostinato are two different terms for the same musical feature - a short musical pattern that is repeated. Here is a video of some guitar riffs to demonstrate what this sounds like:

A riff (or ostinato) will usually combine the three elements of melody, rhythm and harmony.

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