Music
is made out of three basic elements as melody, harmony and rythem.
Melody is a group of notes played one after the other (monophonic),
it is the basic tune of a song which can be hummed. (Jones, 2007).
Harmony is a series of notes in combination (chords) which
will be played simultaneously and can completely change the mood of
the music. Rhythm is the beat of the music. Jesse
Gress claims rhythm is the bonding agent that allows
musical pitches to be organized in time. He further stated that
rhythm can exsist without melody but melody cannot exsist without a
rythem (Gress, 2001). Therefore it is essential to have a rythem in
melody. Victor Zuckerkandl author of the book
Sense of Music claims that melody can be defined melody as
horizontal aspect of music and harmony, comprising of blocks of tones
or chords that makes up the vertical aspect in music (Zuckerkandl,
1971).
MacPherson and Hunt state that melody is one of the prime factors in
determining the choice of chords. Further they state that harmony
must be used to fit the tune for a melody to be
colourful (MacPherson & Hunt, 2003).
On the other hand Cynthia explains that harmonic music consists of
two or more notes played simultaneously. When three or more tones are
sounded together, a chord is produced (Cynthia, 2001)
therefore movement of chords can be represented the harmony which
makes the music pollyphonic.
The
evidence above suggests that melody is the basic tune of a song which
is superimposed over a specific rhythm and harmony on the other hand
harmony makes the melody rich and colorful by adding variations and
moods. This further indicates that harmony strongly depends on its
melody and harmonizing can vary according to the composer’s moods.
Therefore one song can have more than one harmony and a harmony
depends on the composer’s preference.
