MUS 130 Sound Structures Unit 1 Melody Fall 2023
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MUS 130 Sound Structures
Unit 1 Melody
Fall 2023
Music’s Melody—What is it? And What are the Relevant Concepts and Terms
I. What is it? Melody
• Not allmusic has a melodic component, but many musical works have a strong melodic component
• Melody: a phenomenon of music that has a sonically linear effect. A succession of sounds that have some sort of coherence as a temporal unit. Often heard as “linear.”
II. Melodic features:
• Melodies involve multiple sound dimensions: pitch/sound structures, phrasing,
shape/form, rhythms, register, timbre, texture, dynamics, sometimes words, expressive character, etc.
III. Pitch/sound structure--Intervallic successions
• Background scales or modes, e.g., raga, makams, major/minor scales, church modes
IV. Phrases and Phrasing
• Shorter segments, parts of a larger melodic unit Part of musical form
• Phrases bear some similarity to sentences in language use.
V. Other features of melodic phrases and phrasing
• Beginnings and Endings, including cadences
• Tension-resolution
• Contour or shape
• Affect
VI. Motives, Hooks, Riffs, Licks—even shorter segments of a melodic unit
• A short segment of a longer temporal unit.
VII. Analyzing melodic structure
• Representing Motive, Phrase, and other units of musical structuring:
• Letters, Primes, and other notational devices.
2023-12-05