The melody is the most basic element of music.

It is the part of the song that sounds the

most important, and catches your ear. Often, the melody is sung by a vocalist, or played
by a solo instrument.

The melodic line is a string of notes played together that make up the melody.
Extra notes, such as trills or grace notes are not part of the melodic line but are added
as ornaments or embellishments.

Shape or Contour of Melody

If we just played the same notes over and over music would be very boring. As the
music progresses, the melody rises and falls, slowly or quickly. This creates a visible
shape on the page.

We can see that the shape of this melody rises with the notes on the staff, and then
slightly falls, creating an arch shape.
Words that we can use to describe the direction or shape of a melody are: rising or
ascending, falling or descending, or an arch-shaped phrase.
Melodic Motion
Another set of terms we can use to describe the melody are those that refer to the
distance between each note.

When the notes are close together:

A melody that rises or falls gradually with only small changes in pitch between notes is
called conjunct motion. When the notes are only a semitone or a tone away from one
another, it is moving in step-wise or scalar motion.

When the notes are farther apart:

When the notes in the melody ascend and descend quickly, with large spaces between
the notes, we call this disjunct motion. We refer to these distances as “jumps” or “leaps”
Many melodies have a mixture of conjunct and disjunct motion.