In music, a melody (from Greek μελῳδία - melōidía, "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice, or line, is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord (see harmony). However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly Gestalt) to be called a melody. Most specifically this includes patterns of changing pitches and durations, while most generally it includes any interacting patterns of changing events or quality. "Melody is said to result where there are interacting patterns of changing events occurring in time."*DeLone et al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music, chap. 4, p.270-301. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-049346-5.

Change is necessary for events "to be understood as related or unrelated." Melodies often consist of one or more musical phrases, motifs, and are usually repeated throughout a song or piece in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their melodic motion or the pitches or the intervals between pitches (predominantly conjuct or disjunct or with further restrictions), pitch range, tension and release, continuity and coherence, cadence, and shape. "Many extant explanations melody confine us 1 to specific stylistic models, and they are too exclusive."

Elements

The melodies in most European music written before the 20th century features recurring "events, often periodic, at all structural levels" and "recurrence of durations and patterns of durations" are also important in 20th century music.

While in the 20th century pitch includes "those aspects of sound that are classed as having highness or lowness" earlier music included almost exclusively sounds having "fixed and easily discernible frequency patterns" and composers have "utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than has been the custom in any other historical period of Western music." While materials from the diatonic scale are still used, the twelve-tone scale became "widely employed."

DeLone states

quote: The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality (timbre), texture, and loudness.

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However, quality is not an essential element of melody, as the same melody is recognizable when played with a wide variety of timbres, textures, and loudness.

Melodies in the 20th century where increasingly reliant "upon the qualitative dimensions" with those dimensions "in pre-twentieth century music were almost exclusively reserved for pitch and rhythm" such as being an "element of linear ordering" rather than a highlight to "the more predominant pitch and rhythmic aspects." See Klangfarbenmelodie and Musique concrète.