What Is Melodic Contour?

Music is made up of several different elements, but one that we all recognize is
melody. Melody refers to a musical idea built of individual, consecutive pitches. You also might
think of it as a single musical line. Melody is distinct from harmony, in that a melody is heard as
single notes, one right after the other, while harmony features notes sounding simultaneously.
Melodies can be built of as few as two notes and they often stretch for hundreds of notes.
There are millions of different possible melodies. Chances are, you know a few hundred that you
could hum or whistle right now. Think of, for example, your favorite nursery rhyme or your
country's national anthem.
These melodies all take material from the same twelve-note chromatic scale, so how can they be
so different, and how do we as listeners tell them apart? One way is through knowing each
melody's contour. Contour refers to the sequence of motions between notes of a melody. In
other words, contour is a measurement of how a melody moves between individual notes. All
melodies have contour and it's one of the properties that's most useful for identifying and
cataloguing melodies.
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The Four Types of Melodic Motion

Music theorists examine a melody's contour by looking at the motion between individual notes.
When one note moves to another, it can either move up or down, and it can either move by step
to an adjacent note or by leap to a note farther away. There are four possible combinations of
these variables, and so there are four basic types of melodic motion. A melody can move up by
step, down by step, up by leap, or down by leap.
The exact combination of these four motions that a melody possesses gives it its contour. We can
visualize the contour as a long, squiggly line. The line gives us information about the melody's
balance between up, down, step, and leap. More detailed information about contour can include
the exact intervals of each motion, which replaces the simple step/leap understanding.

Using and Analyzing Contour

Understanding melodies by their contour can be useful because reproducing the contour will
reproduce the melody, even in different keys. Take, for example, the tune 'Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star.' Understanding its individual notes as C, C, G, G, A, A, G enables you to play the
melody in C Major. However, examine the contour: up a fifth, up a step, down a step. Using this
information, we can reproduce the melody in any key. All we need is to choose a starting note
and reproduce the contour.
Understanding contour also helps us understand what makes melodies memorable and
expressive, which can be helpful for all musicians. To begin, good melodies tend to have diverse
contours; that is, they tend to make balanced use of all different types of melodic motion. Good
melodies will also often feature opposite pairs of motion. In other words, a melodic motion that's
followed by a motion which, in whole or in part, features its opposite.