Rhythm is ancient and primal, as our ancestors were almost certainly banging on things long before they were blowing into bone flutes. This makes it a “melodic rhythm”, which is a musical concept whereby a memorable rhythm is usually composed first, then pitches are assigned to the notes afterwards.

Music can be said to be built by the interplay of melody, harmony and rhythm. Melody is what results from playing notes of different pitches – sometimes pitches can be repeated too – one after the other in an ‘organised’ way. The relation between durations refers to rhythm. But, before rhythm, lets talk about pulse.

ostinato. melody, harmony, or rhythm that repeats continually throughout a musical composition.

• Elements of rhythm. Beat. Tempo. Rubato.
• Time.
• Metre. Rhythmic metre. Polyphonic metre.
• Organic rhythm. Prose rhythms and plainsong. Rhythm, melody, and harmony. Rhythm, structure, and style.

In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color. It may be considered the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or part need not be a foreground melody.

Since sound is a wave, it has all of the properties attributed to any wave, and these attributes are the four elements that define any and all sounds. They are the frequency, amplitude, wave form and duration, or in musical terms, pitch, dynamic, timbre (tone color), and duration.

Note is a musical notational symbol which provides the sustained sound length-value (note value) in beats and with or without pitch information within the clef-stave.

Musical symbols are marks and symbols in musical notation that indicate various aspects of how a piece of music is to be performed.