Notes

There are different styles for playing melodies, mainly referred to as legato and staccato. A melody using a legato (borrowing from Italian word legare meaning to bind, tie together) binds notes together to create a smooth melody. While staccato (borrowing from the Italian word staccare, to detach) detaches notes to create a melody with disconnected notes of music. For example, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is a legato style melody that is calm and smooth while the song Battle Hymn of the Republic uses staccato to create a melody that conveys enthusiasm. Melodies also make use of a series of short notes called phrases that sound complete even when played apart from the entire melody. Phrases can be notes of similar pitch that help to bring together the entire melody, or can also be contrasting pitches (rising and falling). The end of a phrase that feels like a conclusion to the melody is a cadence. Harmony refers to the construction of chords, their progression and their connection to the melody. Harmony utilizes simultaneous pitches (or notes) to create a sound or a melody. A chord is an example of multiple notes played together forming a harmony. Different instruments played together at different pitches can also form harmonies. Not all combinations of notes create a harmonious sound. Harmony specifies the rules for simultaneous pitches that sound good when played together. A single note sounds in perfect harmony with pitches in octave. Tone Color
Composers creating a music score for a film construct music that is suitable to the genre, the emotion, or the feel portrayed in particular scenes in the movie, such as romance, fear, melancholy, or suspense. A melody created by using a flute can have a calm soothing effect, while one can use a drum or a trumpet score to add energy and enthusiasm. When two instruments play the same melody, one can distinguish the feel produced by the change in instrument. The characteristic feature that distinguishes the character or feel of the music (dark, rich, bright, and so on) is the tone color or timbre. Composers often consider the tone color of an instrument and the feel they wish to impart to the music score when they create a musical composition. Composers use a combination of tone colors to create different emotions. For example, the tone color of a combination of a fife (instrument similar to flute) and drums creates an imagery of a battle or marching army. However, today’s advanced technological environment helps composers to create newer tone colors by combining traditional instruments and electronic techniques. Texture
Just as the arrangement of interwoven fibers determines the texture of a fabric, the interweaving of sounds or melodies creates musical textures. Therefore, musical texture is an interaction of different layers of sounds in a melody. Just like fabric, musical textures are as light, heavy, dense, or thick. The basic music textures in music are monophonic, polyphonic, and homophonic. Monophonic texture: This texture refers to a melody consisting of a single melodic line. A performance of making one common sound, such as singing Happy Birthday in unison, is an example of a monophonic texture sound. Polyphonic texture: This texture involves two or more melodic lines and sounds performed at the same time. This helps to create an enriching and impressive sound or melody. This method of combining two or more melodies together to create an impressive piece of music is called counterpoint. When a melody with polyphonic texture plays repeatedly, one can understand the beauty of the interwoven musical elements of sounds, voice, and instruments. For example, a vocal and instrumental performance is an example of polyphonic musical texture. Homophonic texture: Homophonic texture refers to a dominant melody accompanied by chords. Such a texture involves chords or voices that comply with the melody. An example of homophonic texture is a folksinger singing while playing the guitar. Contrast: Incorporating changes in a piece of music produces contrast; this may be a change in pitch, tempo, texture, or volume. Contrast in a musical piece can change the mood of the music and elicit a different feeling from the piece of music. An example of this is Antonín Dvořák's Symphony no. 9, which has a key change and change in time signature from the third to the fourth movement. Variation: Variation is a technique that keeps some features of a music piece as is, while other features vary. Variation could include a change in any part of the musical note such as harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, and so on (or any of these combined). For example, J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Form: Form refers to the overall structure of a music piece. It describes the layout of a musical composition divided into sections. Form includes repetition, contrast, and variation. Form is an arrangement of parts that follow an order. Musical pieces can be broken down into sections and assigned an uppercase alphabet as the section name; a new alphabet names a new section. The verse of poem Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star follows the ABA form (also know as the threefold or ternary form) since it has three parts. Examples include Chopin's Prelude in D-Flat Major (Op. 28) and the opening chorus of Bach's St. John's Passion. Musical pieces with a simple AB structure are in binary form (or twofold). Examples of binary form include Oh, Susannah and Greensleeves.