Melody
Melody refers to musical phrases. Technically we could call a melody a coherent series of notes. You will most recognize melodies as the singable parts of music. The vocal line often carries the melody. But, any instrument can play a melody and play in a melodic manner. An instrumental solo, a guitar solo for instance, is another kind of melody.
A simple, familiar melodic phrase:
Traditionally, bass players don’t play the main melodies of songs much. Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t. Bassists are doing it more and more. It is somewhere where bassists have a lot of room to grow and explore.
Even if a bass player is not playing the main melody, he or she is still able to play in a melodic way. Bassists often strive to create melodic, singable basslines. And, bassists sometimes get a chance to solo. For bass players the study of melody often goes untaught. This may be why you don't hear enough bass solos. I think melodies are essential to study if you want to create melodic basslines or bass solos. It is also essential if you want to write songs.
In Summary
This short lesson covered a lot of stuff. Hopefully it gave you a good picture of the general landscape of music. It may seem like a lot to know, and it is. But, you should realize that from all the listening to music you have done over the span of your life so far, you already know a lot of it on an intuitive level. It is just a matter of organizing your understanding of what you are familiar with hearing every day.
As you study music and how to play the bass, you'll be surprised how you don't have to know all that much about all of these topics to be a functional musician. But, if you wanted to, you could spend several lifetimes learning these things at deeper and deeper levels. I hope you will want to spend a good bit of your time learning about the basic elements of music. It's very much worth the effort.
If you feel like you didn't absorb all this information in one reading, come back and reread the lesson from time to time. You will understand these concepts better and better as you develop into a good musician and bassist.
