When there is only one melody of real interest and it is combined with other, less prominent sounds, the texture is called homophonic. A harmonized melody is an example of homophonic texture; for instance, one person singing the tune of “Yesterday” while playing chords on a guitar. We might indicate a chord on the pitch/time graph by a vertical box enclosing the dots (see margin). Each box represents a chord; the sum of these boxes represents the harmony. Homophony can be thought of as a tight, smooth texture — like silk, among textiles.

When two or more melodies are played or sung simultaneously, the texture is described as polyphonic. In polyphony (po-líf-uh-nee), the melodies are felt to be independent and of approximately equal interest. The whole is more than the sum of the parts, however; the way the melodies play off one another makes for the possibility of greater richness and interest than if they were played singly. In the textile analogy, polyphony would be compared to a rough fabric in which the strands are all perceptible, such as a multicolored woolen blanket.

It’s also important to recognize that polyphonic music automatically has harmony. For at every moment in time, on every beat, the multiple horizontal melodies create vertical chords; those chords make harmony. A word often used for polyphonic texture is contrapuntal, which comes from the word counterpoint, the technique of writing two or more melodies that fit together.