The idea of melody can be linked to the delicacy of sounds.
The Latin word meloidía came into late Latin as melodĭa . That is the immediate etymological antecedent of melody , a term that has several uses in our language .
The first meaning mentioned by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) in its dictionary refers to the delicacy and sweetness of a sound produced by a musical instrument or a voice. For example: "I really enjoy the melody of the harp," "This singer's voice has a very special melody," "I didn't like the melody of the speech."
The melody in music
In the field of music , a composition that develops an idea beyond its accompaniment is called melody. In this way it is opposed to harmony , which combines different but harmonious sounds simultaneously.
Melody is also called the link that exists between time and singing and the choice of sounds with which musical periods are formed in the different genres of composition. It can be said that the melody involves a combination of rhythm and pitches .
While a chord presents simultaneous sounds (it is "vertical" ), the melody is based on events that occur in time (it is "horizontal" ). The perception of melody, in any case, occurs as a unit beyond the changes evident in its development.
The melody is a linear succession of musical notes.
linear succession of notes
A melody, in short, is a linear succession of notes that is closely related to rhythm , has sounds of different pitches and takes on a leading role within the framework of a piece.
The melody enjoys a leading role, so to speak, in the field of music because it is the part of a composition that most people can remember most easily, for example, when leaving the theater. Music lovers often leave a show whistling or humming their favorite tunes, but very few can take home the structure of harmony and rhythm.
Melody, harmony and silences
We can say that harmony is a suitable basis for the execution of a certain number of notes, those that are compatible with the chords. For example, if on a piano we play the C major triad with our left hand, that is, the three-note chord, with our right hand we can create a melody that uses only the white keys, since they are the ones that represent the sounds included in the piano. said tone.
It is important to note that not only sounds are included in the melody, but also silences , which we can interpret as "pauses." When this is combined with the characteristics of rhythm we obtain very particular results, with notes that cover various beats and drawings that generate a sensation of movement, stillness, melancholy or joy, among many other possibilities.
The concept in phonetics
For phonetics, finally, melody is intonation : that is, the melodic movement with which the pronunciation of a statement is specified.
Practically, we can affirm that in all languages speakers produce certain characteristic melodies when expressing themselves orally, although in some it is much more evident than in others. For example, Japanese has a very different accent from Spanish: while we emphasize the stressed syllable and weaken the rest, the Japanese must give each syllable the same temporal duration and modify the height of the "stressed" syllable, generating different melodies in every word.
When we hear a person speak with a very "strong" or "marked" accent , we usually say that they seem to be from this or that country because of "their melody" or "their song." From our perspective, this happens in certain accents in Brazil, Italy and France, but also in all Spanish-speaking countries, where the tonal variations of regions other than ours are more striking to us.