• Pitch is essential to a pleasant music experience.Joueur de clarinette image by alainmantin from Fotolia.com
  
  Timbre, melody and harmony are elements of a musical pitch. Highness or lowness in a note---the frequency of sound---also can describe pitch. Pitch is an important part of music. When you play a series of pitches on an instrument you are making music. Understanding the elements of pitch can help you learn about music and become a better musician or singer.
  
  

Timbre

• Timbre is the particular sound an instrument makes, and it is heavily influenced by the materials that make up the instrument. The timbre of a piano is different from that of a violin based on how they are constructed. Think about a violin, a small instrument made of wood, glue and metal strings, and compare the sound of it with a saxophone, composed of metal, a reed and no strings. As for pitch, the timbre of the instrument can make it sound differently on different instruments. A pipe organ produces a sonorous, sustained middle C, while the piano can create a lighter-sounding middle C sound.
  
  

Melody

• Melody is a series of pitches played one after another which can make a pleasing sound. According to instrument instructor Catherine Schmidt-Jones, it is one of the most basic elements of music. The pitches that make up the melody may rise or lower as the musical phrase is played. Types of melodies depend on how pitches are arranged. A melody starting on a lower note but often jumping to higher notes is a disjunct melody. A melody without big changes in pitch as it progresses is called a conjunct melody.
  
  

Harmony

• Think of harmony as more than one pitch played at the same time. In a violin duet, one violin plays the melody and another plays harmony, an often different set of notes to complement the melody. Harmony is not as basic as melody, however. You can sing a line of melody alone, but harmony does not always sound pleasing without the melody. In fact, even notes played together in harmony can be designed to sound dissonant, or not pleasing to the ear.
  
  

Lowness & Highness

• How low or high a pitch sounds is determined by its frequency. Low frequency notes sound lower in tone and high frequency sounds sound higher. Larger instruments tend to have a low pitch, such as the bass, while smaller instruments including the violin tend to have a higher pitch.
  A melodic line of music can contain both high and low notes to keep it interesting. This series of high and low notes creates a musical phrase or sentence. On a musical staff, lower-pitched notes are in the lower portion and higher pitched notes build progressively in the upper part of the staff.