Segment 2
Melody, harmony & rhythm
Melody, harmony & rhythm
In this lesson, we are going to learn about the main three elements which form music - Melody, harmony and rhythm.
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Contents of the lesson
What is a Melody ?
What is Harmony ?
Understanding Rhythm
Audio Examples
Reference
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What is a Melody ?
A melody is a collection of musical tones that are grouped together as a single entity. Most compositions consist of multiple melodies working in conjunction with one another. In a rock band, the vocalist, guitarist, keyboardist, and bassist are all playing melodies on their respective instruments. Even the drummer is playing one.
The melody in a piece of music consists of two primary components:
What is Harmony ?
Harmony, in music, the sound of two or more notes heard simultaneously. In practice, this broad definition can also include some instances of notes sounding one after the other. If the consecutively sounded notes call to mind the notes of a familiar chord (a group of notes sounded together), the ear creates its own simultaneity in the same way that the eye perceives movement in a motion picture. In such cases the ear perceives the harmony that would result if the notes had sounded together. In a narrower sense, harmony refers to the extensively developed system of chords and the rules that allow or forbid relations between chords that characterises Western music.
Understanding Rhythm
The term “rhythm” has more than one meaning. It can mean the basic, repetitive pulse of the music, or a rhythmic pattern that is repeated throughout the music (as in “feel the rhythm”). It can also refer to the pattern in time of a single small group of notes (as in “play this rhythm for me”).
The rhythm section of a band is the group of instruments that usually provide the background rhythm and chords. The rhythm section almost always includes a percussionist (usually on a drum set) and a bass player (usually playing a plucked string bass of some kind). It may also include a piano and/or other keyboard players, more percussionists, and one or more guitar players or other strummed or plucked strings. Vocalists, wind instruments, and bowed strings are usually not part of the rhythm section.
Audio Example
Let’s take this song “In my place” by Coldplay as an example and try to segregate it into melody, rhythm and harmony sections.
Coldplay performing live
Let’s split the song into melodic, harmonic and rhythmic layers and analyse how different instruments and playing style add up.
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Melody
In this song, vocal and guitar lines define the melody throughout
Harmony
You can hear a lot of instruments like Bass, Strings , Keys which altogether are now playing the harmony of the song.
Rhythm
You can hear the rhythm of the song prominently being played on the drums and other instruments and you can try to tap your foot to keep a beat with the song.
Here you can listen to the same songs but now you can only hear the melody, harmony & rhythm that are being played by the guitar.
At last now all these three sections come together to complete the song. Try to identify the three distinctive parts of the song(Melody , Harmony, Rhythm) while you listen to it.
Activity 1
Now you can try to choose a song that you like and try to dissect the parts of it by yourself,
Try to write down the different components that you hear in the song in the box given below :-
Name of the song -
1
Melody
Harmony
Rhythm
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Activity 2
Train your ear by listening to the songs below which have been separated into
3 parts - melody, harmony and rhythm. Instruments mentioned below for each song:-
Name of the songs -
1
Melody
Harmony
Rhythm
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3
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Activity 3
Recognise all the instruments present in the audio file
Options are Electric guitar, Drums, Percussion, Piano, Organ, Strings, Violin, Bass guitar, Backing vocals, Lead vocals
Activity 4
Listen to the audio and recognise which drum groove belongs to the following songs mentioned below:-
Options are -
Reference
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