If a musical selection has a lead singer or a soloist, the lead singer or soloist will be performing the melody. In most pop music in the United States, there is a melody (typically sung), accompanied by a variety of instruments. While the instruments may be playing very interesting parts, when there are lyrics, the musical part that has the lyrics is the melody.

In instrumental music, it can be difficult for beginning listeners to distinguish the melody from the other parts of the music, particularly the harmony. But keep in mind that the "featured" instrument will tend to have the melody. In acoustic performances, the musicians who are not playing the melody will play more quietly so that the melody can be heard more easily. In amplified performances, or in recorded music, steps will be taken to make the melody stand out, such as using microphones to "boost" the sound of the soloist, or placing the soloist in a place where they will be heard more prominently.

Keep in mind that a repeating pattern of notes (referred to as an ostinato) is generally not a melody - the repetitive nature of a typical ostinato makes it tend to fade into the background. It can be interesting, but not as interesting as a melody.

Frequently melodies are accompanied by other instruments – for example, someone could be singing the “Star Spangled-Banner” with a back-up band, or a flute soloist could be accompanied by a piano. As you listen to different pieces of music, make a point to distinguish between the melody and other aspects of the piece.

Sometimes it can be challenging to figure out what part or parts of a piece of music are the melody, and which part or parts provide harmonic support or accompaniment, since harmonic support and accompaniment also include pitch and rhythm.

Sometimes people mistake musical introductions for melodies because the introductions are played on a single instrument, may not be playing simultaneous pitches, and incorporate both pitch and rhythm. Listen to the following examples to understand what this means.

As mentioned earlier, pitch and rhythm alone do not make a melody. There are several other important aspects to melody:

• Its shape or “contour”

• Its range (from the highest note to the lowest note)

• How easy it is to sing

• Its character and/or mood

• Its energy

• How it might be built - motivic development, type of scale

• Whether ornamentation is used, and if so, how.

• Its phrase lengths.

All melodies have a contour – a shape. Many melodies have a contour that rises to a certain point, then comes back down in pitch.

How to listen for melodic contour

• Listen to a melody.

• As you listen, think about how high it goes, and how low.

• Melodies that move primarily by steps (moving from one note to the next note on the musical staff or in the scale) are considered conjunct.

• Melodies that move primarily by leaps (moving a distance in music theory terms of an interval of a fourth or more) are considered disjunct.

• Listen to hear if the melody stays on one pitch for a long time, or maybe only uses a few pitches that are really close together - this would be a smooth or flat contour (and also a conjunct melody).

• Does the melody leap dramatically back and forth between very high and very low pitches? This would be a jagged contour (and also a disjunct melody).

• Perhaps the melody has a smooth or flat contour for a while, but then it leaps abruptly downward or upward all of a sudden – how might you describe this?

• You can use the same terms to describe a melody’s contour that you use to describe the contour of a landscape – flat, hilly, smooth, jagged and so on.

• Even if you don't read music, you can look at the notation of a melody on a piece of sheet music to get an idea of the contour. All you need to do is “connect the dots” by drawing a line from note head to note head. This is the melody’s contour. Notice the red line on the image below. The red line is the contour of this melody. How might you describe this contour using the words we use to describe a landscape?

Melodic range is determined by the overall highest and lowest pitch in the melody. Melodic range is influenced by many things, but one of the factors is the range of notes available to the instrument that will play the melody. Each instrument plays in a particular range of pitches – instruments are limited in the pitches they can play based on how they are built. Smaller instruments tend to play in higher ranges, while larger instruments play in lower ranges. You can see this in orchestral instruments – the double bass is nearly as big as the human body, and plays lower pitches while the much smaller violin plays a much higher range of pitches.

Melodies can have wide or narrow ranges as well. You can determine the range of a melody by listening for the lowest and the highest notes in the melody. Plunk around on a piano keyboard (a free online version is just fine) to help you gauge the range. The farther apart the lowest note is from the highest note, the wider the range.

Singability can be defined as the qualities in a melody that make it easy for the average untrained voice to sing. Melodies should have all or at least most of the characteristics below to be considered singable.

• A smooth contour - In musical terms, smooth contour is achieved by step-wise voice leading – the melody must move smoothly by steps and skips, not wide leaps – the more conjunct the better. While many instruments can easily play music with wide leaps, it is more challenging for an untrained voice.

• Shorter Phrases – if you have ever tried to sing a long phrase in one breath, you know how difficult this can be. Shorter phrases are easier to sing.

• A relatively narrow range – again, trained singers have wider ranges. The untrained singer generally can only sing easily in a narrower range.

• Made with lots of repetition for easy learning.

The character or mood of a melody is the emotional aspect of it. When you describe the mood, you can use the same type of words that you might use to describe feelings – joyful, somber, weary and so on.

Important point #1: When describing the character or mood, it is crucial to not only describe the overall mood, but to describe the elements that give the music that particular character. It is also important to note that the melody alone may not be the only musical element that influences the mood of the musical selection - there may be other elements such as the harmony, timbre and rhythm that influence the mood as well. An example of what would be an effective description might be something along the lines of: "The plaintive sounds of the oboe, with its thin and reedy timbre combined with the haunting melody created an overall melancholy mood". This would be a much better description than something along the lines of "This music has a happy feel".

Important point #2: When describing a melody’s character or mood, it is important to consider what the performer or composer is trying to express, rather than how it makes you personally feel. Push yourself to go beyond what you feel, and to try to get into the composer’s head. If you want to express how the music makes you feel, great, but only if you have also done the other.

Energy is the sense of flow in music. Energy can be high, low or somewhere in between. Composers use many tools to manipulate the flow of energy. You will notice that the items listed below are musical elements other than melody. They are included here because their use can influence the energy of a melody.

• Rhythm can influence the energy.

  • Tempo - a fast tempo can convey a sense of high energy. A tempo that keeps accelerating toward the end of a piece can convey an even higher energy. A slower tempo can convey a lower energy.

  • Pulse – a strong pulse can create a higher energy; a weak or flexible pulse can bring the energy down.

• Dynamics – louder dynamics tend to bring a higher energy, while softer dynamics tend to bring a lower energy.

• Harmony – Composers can use harmony to influence the energy of a piece. An example of how harmony can influence the energy is included below, but this page will tell you more about Harmony.

While it might seem as though melodies are built at random, this is not the case. Most melodies are created from scales – a set of pitches that use some pitches and skip others. Common scales include the major and minor scales associated with much western music and pentatonic scales found often in parts of Asia.

It can be challenging to hear and identify types of scales when first learning to describe music. It is beyond the scope of this course to train you in this skill but you should be aware of the concept.

Melodies built from Motives

A motive is a short musical idea. It must be long enough to be identifiable, but it can be as short as 3 or 4 notes. Composers create motives (which can be melodic, rhythmic or both) and then manipulate them to create a longer musical idea. For example, they could speed them up or slow them down. They could play them at a low pitch level followed by playing them at a higher pitch level. They could turn them upside down or play them backwards. They could have them played by different instruments – these are just a few of the possibilities.

Ornamentation is the act of taking a basic melody and changing it up by adding extra notes. We hear ornamentation frequently in Gospel, R&B and pop styles. Ornamentation is also found in classical music, particularly music of the Baroque era. We can frequently identify a musical style in a large part just by the way that it is ornamented. Different styles have different rules associated with how ornamentation is done, and some styles don’t use any ornamentation at all.

In the words of music educator Catherine Schmidt-Jones, “Melodies are often described as being made up of phrases. A musical phrase is actually a lot like a grammatical phrase. A phrase in a sentence (for example, "into the deep, dark forest" or "under that heavy book") is a group of words that make sense together and express a definite idea, but the phrase is not a complete sentence by itself. A melodic phrase is a group of notes that make sense together and express a definite melodic "idea", but it takes more than one phrase to make a complete melody”.1

1. Schmidt-Jones, Catherine. Understanding Basic Music Theory. 3.3. Melody. OpenStax, Rice University. https://cnx.org/contents/KtdLe6cv@3.74:QzbWgnuW@12/Melody

So, how do you identify a phrase in a piece of music? When you speak or read aloud, you frequently pause between the different places in a sentence, for example, at a comma or a period. If we read the sentence above with no pauses, “I like chocolate but I prefer tea” it would not make much sense. Instead, we read it as “I like chocolate, but I prefer tea.”, with a pause after the comma. Well, melodic phrases are very much like that – in general, the melody will pause a bit at the end of each phrase.

When a melody has words, the musical phrases often follow the phrases and sentences of the text.

For example, listen to “Down by the Sally Gardens” as sung by Loreena McKennitt. Notice how the phrases in the music line up with the phrases of text (printed above).

Sometimes, if you want to figure out the phrases in a piece of music, you can write down the lyrics and look at how they line up on the page, then compare them to the song. However, the punctuation used in lyrics will not always line up with the musical phrases, so you need to use your ears as well – where do the musicians pause? Where do they breath? These things can give you clues.

Another aspect of listening to musical phrases is understanding how to listen for their endings. A cadence is a musical device that a composer uses to indicate a pause or “point of rest” in the music. Some cadences feel very final – they sound like the end of a section or the end of the entire piece. Others sound like a resting point, but don’t feel finished.

There are two basic types of cadences – open and closed. The open cadence feels unfinished, while the closed cadence has a feeling of finality.

Let’s use a musical example to help explore this idea of open and closed cadences.

Listen to this recording of “I’ll Fly Away” (below) from the soundtrack of “O, Brother Where Art Thou?” performed by Alison Krause and Gillian Welch. There is a pause after each phrase, but the first and third phrases end with that unfinished sound – what we call an “open” cadence. The 2nd and 4th phrases have more of a sense of finality – we call this a “closed” cadence.

Now that you know where the open and closed cadences are, listen to this recording again. This time, notice how each phrase ending with an open cadence is paired with a phrase that ends in a closed cadence. Phrases that are paired in this way – a phrase ending in an open cadence followed by a phrase ending in a closed cadence – are called antecedent and consequent phrases. In such a pairing, it almost feels like the antecedent phrase is posing a question that the consequent phrase will answer.

We can again compare this to speech - even without looking at the punctuation we know a question and answer when we hear them by how they are spoken: Are you going to school? (In English, the voice tends to rise at the end of a sentance with a question mark). Yes, I am going to school. (In English, the voice tends to fall at the end of a sentance with a period).

Now that you have an idea of how to hear the end of a phrase, you can try determining the length of a phrase.

The simplest way to determine phrase length is to look at an actual piece of music. The vertical lines on the 5 line music staff are called “bar lines”. The space in between each bar line is called a “measure”. One way that you can determine phrase length is simply to count the number of measures used by each phrase.

Look at the image below. Count the number of measures for each phrase in “I’ll fly away”, then answer the following questions below.

Of course, you won’t always have a piece of music to help you. In this case, you can often determine phrase length by using your ears. This is a great skill to have, especially if you are a musician who likes to learn things by ear.

First, determine the meter (if there is meter).

To determine the meter, you need to tap along and decide first if the music has a meter, then, whether the meter is duple or triple. While there are more kinds of rhythm than these, this is the easiest way to start. If you don’t know how to listen for meter yet, you should check out the Rhythm Page.

Second, count the measures.

Once you have determined the meter, you can use this to count the measures. For example, if your meter is triple, then each measure gets three beats. You can determine your phrase length by counting 1-2-3, 2-2-3, 3-2-3, 4-2-3, etc, until you come to the end of the phrase. You can then start the numbers up again with the beginning of the next phrase – 1-2-3, 2-2-3, etc.

Melody is only one of the musical elements. As you have learned, melody has many different aspects, giving you many different ways that you can describe melody. As you begin to use what you have learned, don’t feel compelled to try describing all of these things at once – instead, try taking an aspect or two to begin with.

One more thing: For a wonderful essay on what makes a memorable melody, read Suzanne Vega’s “What’s a Melody For?”

All written materials are by Elizabeth Pauly unless otherwise noted, and can be shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, 2020.

Image Credits: All images by Elizabeth Pauly unless otherwise noted, and can be shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, 2020.

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