Melody probably derives from the inflections of the human voice. A melody is a succession of tones in rhythm. It involves pitch, or the relative highness or lowness of tone. When pitches are musically organized, they are referred to as scales. Form results from the way in which rhythm, melody, and harmony are put together.
Good music has unity to satisfy a listener's ear and variety to maintain interest.
Music is both the most mathematical and the most abstract of the arts. Unlike words, pictorial images, or bodily movements, however, musical tones in themselves have no concrete associations, and only gain meaning when they are combined into musical patterns. Although music involves sounds of all kinds and although there are no sounds that can be described as inherently unmusical, musicians in each culture have tended to restrict the range of sounds that they will admit. As such, Western music stands alongside other major musical systems, notably those of India, Indonesia, Islamic culture, China, and Japan. XML Featured by WorldSpace Copyright 1998 - 2001 Alan Richmond .