MusOsaurus

Melody

Melody is the part of music that you can sing or hum.  It is created by creating a string of pitches.  A pitch is a note, technically a frequency.  When you create a string of pitches you create a melody.  A melody will also usually have a rhythm which is a pattern of long and short sounds, but we will only be talking about pitches here.

Pitches can move in three ways: step, leap or repeat.  When pitches move by step the move up or down to the next higher or lower pitch with out skipping any in between.  When a pitch moves by leap it skips one or more pitches to the next pitch.  To repeat the pitch stays the same.

In general a melody can have one of four shapes.  It can rise from low to high or fall from high to low.  A melody can also have a rise and fall creating an arc shape.  It can finally do the opposite shape falling and rising again.  A good melody will generally begin and end on the same pitch but this is not always the case. 

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