What is the difference between conjunct motion and disjunct motion

What song is an example of a conjunct melody? What does a comma mean in music? What is conjunct example? Is melody important in a song? Related Posts. Much of melody writing done for instruments, especially for the piano, is difficult or impossible to sing.

The following are to be considered when writing for the voice:. How disjunct is the melody? Too many intervallic leaps can cause the melody to be difficult or impossible to sing. Does the vocalist have time to breathe between phrases? Is the vocal range of the song too great? Does the range within a section of the song change too quickly?

The range of the average pop vocalist is as follows:. The lead sheet format reflects the importance of the melody. Harmonic voicings, texture, and orchestration are not found in lead sheets. The lead sheet solely contains the melody, the lyric, and the harmony notated with chord symbols.

The melody should be notated in a clear-cut but accurate fashion in the treble clef. Notes and rhythms that are purely embellishments need not appear on the lead sheet. If a section of a song is repeated and some melodic rhythms and pitches are slightly altered as often happens in verse sections , cue notes should be written for these deviations.

Chord symbols should appear directly over the beat or part of the beat on which they are played. It may be necessary to approximate this if a melody note is not sung on the exact rhythm. They started with only one line, but they soon began adding more. Sometimes the lines were even color-coded, using red for C and yellow for G, for example. Color-coding fell out of practice, but musicians kept adding lines until there were five staff lines , as in our modern notation system.

Range refers to the total range of pitches encompassed in the melody: how high and low the melody goes. If the score does not indicate which voice or instrument should be used to perform the music, the range can be used to help determine which voices and instruments are appropriate for use.

For example, if the range includes pitches that are too high or too low for a voice then it must be played on an instrument. For more on instrument ranges, see Timbre. A motive or motif is the shortest possible melodic unit and may consist of as few as two different pitches, as in Beethoven's 5 th Symphony. Motives are the musical equivalent of a catch phrase or slogan and are often used in that capacity in commercials.

Notice the motive on "by Mennen" and "Hot Pockets" in these commercials:. Motives may also be incorporated into a larger melodic unit: a phrase. One can picture a line that goes up steeply when the melody suddenly jumps to a much higher note, or that goes down slowly when the melody gently falls.

Such a line gives the contour or shape of the melodic line. You can often get a good idea of the shape of this line by looking at the melody as it is written on the staff, but you can also hear it as you listen to the music.

Arch shapes in which the melody rises and then falls are easy to find in many melodies. You can also describe the shape of a melody verbally. Another set of useful terms describe how quickly a melody goes up and down. A melody that rises and falls slowly, with only small pitch changes between one note and the next, is conjunct.

One may also speak of such a melody in terms of step-wise or scalar motion, since most of the intervals in the melody are half or whole steps or are part of a scale. A melody that rises and falls quickly, with large intervals between one note and the next, is a disjunct melody. Many melodies are a mixture of conjunct and disjunct motion.

A melody may show conjunct motion, with small changes in pitch from one note to the next, or disjunct motion, with large leaps. Many melodies are an interesting, fairly balanced mixture of conjunct and disjunct motion. Range refers to the distance between the highest and lowest notes found in a given melody.