Meaning & use
melody
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Meanings
nouncountablemusic
A series of notes that form a tune you can hum or sing.
Grammar: Countable: a melody, several melodies.
Patterns
- a melody for something
The flute played a simple melody that stayed in my head.
She hummed the melody while washing dishes.
The composer wrote a melody for the opening scene.
nouncountable or uncountablemusic
The main tune of a piece, as opposed to the chords or rhythm that support it.
Grammar: Contrasted with harmony and rhythm: melody and harmony.
Patterns
- melody and harmony
The violin carries the melody while the piano plays chords.
Students learn to find the melody in a score.
The song has a strong melody but weak lyrics.
nounsingularliteraryfigurative
A pleasant, musical quality in sounds, such as birdsong or a voice.
Grammar: Literary and figurative: the melody of her voice.
Patterns
- the melody of something
The melody of the stream soothed him to sleep.
She loved the melody of her grandmother's voice.
Birds filled the morning with melody.
Word forms
| plural | melodies |
|---|
Common combinations
- haunting melody
- A haunting melody drifted from the window.
- catchy melody
- The chorus has a catchy melody.
- hum a melody
- He likes to hum a melody as he cooks.
- main melody
- The cello takes the main melody.
- melody and harmony
- Good songs balance melody and harmony.
Synonyms and how they differ
- tune
- Tune is the everyday word for a melody you can remember and carries a less technical tone.
- air
- Air is an old-fashioned word for a simple song melody.
- theme
- A theme is a melody that returns and is developed in a longer work.
- strain
- Strain is a literary word for a passage of music.
Opposites
Word family
- melodic adjective
- relating to melody or pleasant to hear
- melodious adjective
- sweet-sounding
- melodically adverb
- in a tuneful way
- melodist noun
- a composer of melodies
- melodramatic adjective
- exaggerated in emotion (a related word with a different sense)
Commonly confused: melody or harmony? melody or rhythm?
melody vs harmony
Harmony is the combination of notes played together as chords, whereas melody is the single line of tune.
melody vs rhythm
Rhythm is the pattern of beats and timing, not the notes themselves.
Practice
In a song, the part you sing or hum on your own, rather than the chords underneath, is the ____.
Choose one answer.
The melody is the main tune. Harmony means supporting chords, so it is the tempting but wrong answer.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “melody”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.