Music is the universal language, and we all speak it to some extent from birth to death. All music has a commonality beneath the surface that is organic to all forms and styles of music. Music is composed of three elements - melody, rhythm and harmony. The melody is made up of a horizontal line of notes that move up and down on the treble clef. Rhythm is the music's beat, swing, and throb. Harmony is the musical background - the chords or intervals "behind" the melody.
It's no secret that almost everyone enjoys music in some form or another. After all, it is the universal language, and we all speak it to some extent from birth to death. It begins with our mothers' lullaby and ends with our funeral song, with a zillion stops in between.
But what exactly is music? What keeps it going? We all like some aspects of it and dislike others.
The country-western fan may not be a jazz fan, but he or she certainly enjoys the sound of pickin' and grinnin'. And the jazz fan feels the exact opposite.
That's exactly how it should be. There simply would not be the variety that we have now if we all liked the same type of music. We can listen to music ranging from heavy classical and opera to rock, children's songs, Broadway musicals, gospel music, and blues.
Each has its place, and each appears to be vastly different from another type of music on the surface. The key phrase here is "on the surface." But there is a commonality beneath the surface of all music that is organic to all forms and styles of music.
So, what is it that all music has in common?
At least three things - sometimes more, sometimes less:
1. Melody
2. Rhythm
3. Harmony
The melody is the part of a song or composition that you whistle or hum - the song's tune. In some ways, it is the most obvious of the three elements because melody is what distinguishes a song. It would be difficult to imagine a song or piece without melody.
The melody is almost always written in the treble clef, also known as the treble staff, in musical notation. It is made up of a horizontal line of notes that move up and down on the clef as the tune rises or falls.
Rhythm is the music's beat, swing, and throb. Depending on the type of music, it occurs in repeating patterns. It resembles a horizontal line of beats that happen at regular or semi-regular intervals. A waltz, for example, is built around a heavy beat followed by two lighter beats. So a waltz is in triple meter, with one strong beat followed by two weak beats, and then repeated.
A march, on the other hand, is typically composed of a heavy beat followed by a light beat, followed by another heavy beat followed by another light beat. (Of course, I'm simplifying - there are many varieties...) So a march is in double meter, as one would expect given that we have two feet and march in left-right-left-right patterns.
All rhythms are some combination of triple meter and/or duple meter, and the possibilities are endless, ranging from boogie to R&B to mambos, sambas, bossa novas, and so on.
The third aspect of music is harmony, which is the musical background of a song - the chords or intervals "behind" the melody. A song without harmony sounds empty, similar to a vocalist singing without an accompanist, or accapella. Harmony is not required for music to function, but in practice it almost always is, even if it is just the interplay of two melodies, as in counterpoint.
You could spend a lifetime studying the nuances of music, but in its most basic form, it is these three elements combined: melody, rhythm, and harmony.
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