Rather than discretely defined phrases, Brahms often runs phrase into phrase, and mixes melodic motives to create a fabric of continuous melody.

His music has an overall lyricism and is tightly constructed around melodic and harmonic motives.

"Fall Dog Bombs the Moon" is based on short melodic motives, the kind that seemed to permeate his previous album, Heathen.

Both these melodic and rhythmic motives get used throughout the movement.

A shout chorus characteristically employs extreme ranges, loud dynamics, and a re-arrangement of melodic motives into short, accented riffs.

In a Tokyo lecture given in 1984, Takemitsu identified a melodic motive in his Far Calls.

In Dybbuk, Bernstein used a Kabbalistic tree to derive some of the melodic motives.

The music is like a string of boldly disconnected rhythmic riffs, melodic motives and aborted attempts at development.

Walden's playing always "evoked character and emotion through sometimes deceptively simple melodic motives."

The movement opens with a melodic motive from the clarinets, and the slower, second main motive is introduced almost immediately after.