Music - Made for the Souls..

Music, artful arrangement of sounds across time. This definition is obviously very broad, but a narrower one would exclude too much. Music is part of virtually every culture on Earth, but it varies widely among cultures in style and structure. Definitions of music can change dramatically over a short time, as they have across the world during the 20th century.

Greek philosophers and medieval theorists defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies, and vertically as harmonies. Music theory, within this realm, is studied with the presupposition that music is orderly and often pleasant to hear. However, in the 20th century, composers challenged the notion that music had to be pleasant by creating music that explored harsher, darker timbres. The existence of some modern-day music genres such as death metal and grindcore, which enjoy an extensive underground following, indicate that even the harshest sounds can be considered music if the listener is so inclined.

Can music exist without sound?

Some philosophers argue that music should be defined as a kind of “mental image” and that the physical aspects of sound are simply by-products of this image. If you think you can have a musical experience by imagining the sound of a piece of music, then you think music can exist without sound. But most musical experiences involve producing or listening to physical characteristics of sound such as pitch and timbre (quality comparable to texture or color in sight).

Is the tape-recorded sound of a large metal-stamping machine music? Are 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence music? Is the activity of reading a list of hundreds of seemingly unrelated objects, activities, and states of mind music? Each of these “works”, as well as many other sounds (or nonsounds), has been copyrighted as a musical composition, performed, and recorded in the 20th century. One of the legacies of 20th-century music is to have blurred the definition of music as never before.

Other experts argue that whether any particular pattern of sounds (or our mental image of this pattern) is or is not music hinges on the musical culture into which we were born and in which we have grown up. In other words, whether sounds are music or not has more to do with learning than with anything about the physical characteristics of the sounds or the inborn characteristics of people. An American or European, hearing for the first time a Javanese gamelan performance or singing by the Ewe people of West Africa, might feel disoriented and disappointed by the unfamiliar and seemingly meaningless sounds of these kinds of music. Similarly, Javanese or Ghanaian listeners might feel every bit as disappointed when they first hear the music of Austrian composer Franz Schubert or the songs of a popular rock group, and they might find these equally meaningless.

Although there is no general agreement as to exactly what music communicates or how it communicates it, some individuals and governments have believed that music possesses great powers of communication. Most ancient Greek philosophers believed that listening to music based on certain of the modes in use at the time was beneficial to the development of a young person’s character, and warned that listening to music based on certain other modes would have harmful effects. For centuries Chinese beliefs about music were influenced by the philosophy of Confucius, which music was not to entertain but to purify one's thoughts.

Next : History Of Music

When Music Began

It seems likely that everyday activities, such as the movements in repetitive work and in walking, were rhythmically regular enough to invite some sort of embellishment. Related breathing rhythms, chanting, or other accompaniment, such as the tapping of a walking stick while walking or the transformation of a work tool into an instrument while working, may have been early forms of music. In fact, whether sacred Native American corn-gathering songs or melodies heard in elevators or supermarkets, music still accompanies our ceremonial and everyday activities.

Scholars can only speculate about when music began or which cultures had music first. From ancient times people have told stories of its origins. The so-called music of the spheres was thought by Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras in the 6th century bc—and by later classical and medieval philosophers of the Western world—to be a perfectly harmonious music, inaudible on Earth, produced by the movement of the stars and planets. In many non-Western cultures ancient thinkers understood music as part of a system of cosmological, philosophical, or scientific thought. For instance, the musical scale of ancient China, derived through arithmetic from a basic note, reflected the ancient Chinese conception of the organization of the universe. Each degree of the scale was closely related to the cardinal points (north, south, east, west), the elements, the seasons, the planets, the months of the year, colors, materials, numbers, parts of the human body, animals, smells, and so forth. The Chinese found in nature eight different sources of musical sound: metal, stone, silk, bamboo, calabash, terra cotta, skin, and wood.

Many of the elaborate melody patterns of India, called ragas, are believed to have magical or curative powers. Ragas are traditionally played at specific hours or during specific seasons; it is believed that to depart from this timetable would be harmful to the performer and audience. In some tribal societies, music appears to serve as a special form of communication with supernatural beings, and the prominent use of music in modern Christian and Jewish services may be a remnant of such a purpose. Music has always held an important role in religious rituals.The development of music among humans must have taken place against the backdrop of natural sounds such as birdsong and the sounds other animals use to communicate.Prehistoric music is the name which is given to all music produced in preliterate cultures.

• Ancient:
  
  Ancient music is music that developed in literate cultures, replacing prehistoric music.Ancient music refers to the various musical systems that were developed across various geographical regions such as Persia, India, China, Greece, Rome, Egypt and Mesopotamia (see music of Mesopotamia, Greek music, Roman music). Ancient music is designated by the characterization of the basic audible tones and scales. It may have been transmitted through oral or written systems.The term "ancient music" may also refer to contemporary, but traditional or folk, music which is considered to continue its "ancient" style and includes much Indian Music, Persian music, Asian music, Jewish music, the music of Egypt, and Muslim music.
  
  
• Medivial & Renaissance Europe:
  
  The term medieval music encompasses European music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends in approximately the middle of the fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance is admittedly arbitrary; 1400 is used here.The only medieval music which can be studied is that which was written down, and survived. Since creating musical manuscripts was very expensive, due to the expense of parchment, and the huge amount of time necessary for a scribe to copy it all down, only wealthy institutions were able to create manuscripts which have survived to the present time. These institutions generally included the church and church institutions, such as monasteries; some secular music, as well as sacred music, was also preserved by these institutions. These surviving manuscripts do not reflect much of the popular music of the time. At the start of the era, the notated music is presumed to be monophonic and homorhythmic with what appears to be a unison sung text and no notated instrumental support. Earlier medieval notation had no way to specify rhythm, although neumatic notations gave clear phrasing ideas, and somewhat later notations indicated rhythmic modes.The simplicity of chant, with unison voice and natural declamation, is most common. The notation of polyphony develops, and the assumption is that formalized polyphonic practices first arose in this period. Harmony, in consonant intervals of perfect fifths, unisons, octaves, (and later, perfect fourths) begins to be notated. Rhythmic notation allows for complex interactions between multiple vocal lines in a repeatable fashion. The use of multiple texts and the notation of instrumental accompaniment developed by the end of the era.Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600. Defining the beginning of the era is difficult, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the 15th century. The process by which music acquired "Renaissance" characteristics was a gradual one, and musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s. In addition, the Italian humanist movement, rediscovering and reinterpreting the aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome, influenced the development of musical style during the period.
  
  
• European Baroque:
  
  Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 and 1750. This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and was followed by the Classical music era. The original meaning of "baroque" is "irregular pearl", a strikingly fitting characterization of the architecture of this period; later, the name came to be applied also to its music. Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. It is associated with composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The baroque period saw the development of diatonic tonality. During the period composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation; made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera as a musical genre. Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today.
  
  
• European Classical:
  
  The Classical period in Western music occurred from about 1750 to 1820, despite considerable overlap at both ends with preceding and following periods, as is true for all musical eras. Although the term classical music is used as a blanket term meaning all kinds of music in this era, it can also occasionally mean this particular era within that tradition.The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. The best known composers from this period are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven; other notable names include Luigi Boccherini, Muzio Clementi, Johann Ladislaus Dussek, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Christoph Willibald Gluck. Beethoven is also sometimes regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic; Franz Schubert is also something of a transitional figure, as are Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Luigi Cherubini and Carl Maria von Weber. The period is sometimes referred to as the era of Viennese Classic or Classicism (German: Wiener Klassik), since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert all worked at some time in Vienna, comprising the First Viennese School.
  
  
• Romantic:
  
  Romantic Music is a musicological term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in European music history, from about 1815 to 1910.Romantic music as a movement refers to the expression and expansion of musical ideas established in earlier periods, such as the classical period. Romanticism does not necessarily apply to romantic love, but that theme was prevalent in many works composed during this time period. More appropriately, romanticism describes the expansion of formal structures within a composition, making the pieces more passionate and expressive. Because of the expansion of form (those elements pertaining to form, key, instrumentation and the likes) within a typical composition, it became easier to identify an artist based on the work.For e.g., Beethoven favored a smooth transition from the 3rd to 4th movement in his symphonies, and thusly his pieces are more distinguishable. Overall, composers during this time expanded on formal ideas in a new and exciting way.
  
  
• 20th Centuary:
  
  A revolution occurred in 20th century music listening as the radio gained popularity worldwide, and new media and technologies were developed to record, capture, reproduce and distribute music. Because music was no longer limited to concerts and clubs, it became possible for music artists to quickly gain fame nationwide and sometimes worldwide. Conversely, audiences were able to be exposed to a wider range of music than ever before, giving rise to the phenomenon of world music. Music performances became increasingly visual with the broadcast and recording of music videos and concerts. Music of all kinds also became increasingly portable. Headphones allowed people sitting next to each other to listen to entirely different performances or share the same performance. Copyright laws were strengthened, but new technologies also made it easier to record and reproduce copyrighted music illegally.20th century music brought new freedom and wide experimentation with new musical styles and forms that challenged the accepted rules of music of earlier periods. The invention of electronic instruments and the synthesizer in the mid-20th century revolutionized popular music and accelerated the development of new forms of music. Eastern, Middle-Eastern, Latin and Western sounds began to mix in some forms. Faster modes of transportation allowed musicians and fans to travel more widely to perform or listen. Amplification permitted giant concerts to be heard by those with the least expensive tickets, and the inexpensive reproduction and transmission or broadcast of music gave rich and poor alike nearly equal access to high quality music performances.
  

Back: Introduction
Next: The Elements of Music

The Elements Of Music

The Elements of Music consists of the factors which makes different kinds of music. These elements makes listening to sound - music to some ears & noise to others.

These Elements of Music can be categorised as:

• Pitch:
  
  Although most musical cultures share the concept of highness and lowness of pitch, awareness of this concept is not inborn. Psychological studies have demonstrated that few five-year-olds understand the concept of high and low pitch, whereas most nine-year-olds do. Pitch depends on the rate of vibration, or frequency, of sound waves that produce a particular tone. Higher pitches have a higher frequency (greater rapidity of vibrations) than lower pitches. Most musical cultures recognize the octave, a unique relationship of two pitches. Two pitches are an octave apart when their rates of vibration form an exact 1:2 ratio. Tones an octave apart blend together so smoothly that listeners often confuse the two tones or think they are hearing a single tone.
  
  Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. While the actual fundamental frequency can be precisely determined through physical measurement, it may differ from the perceived pitch because of overtones, or partials, in the sound. The human auditory perception system may also have trouble distinguishing frequency differences between notes under certain circumstances.
  
  Pitch naming systems reflect this similarity by giving notes an octave apart the same name (A, B, C, for example, in Western music). Most musical cultures recognize the concepts of pitch and octave, but not all. For example, there is no Japanese word for octave although what Westerners call octave is found in traditional Japanese music.
  
  Each musical culture has one or more sets of tunings that define the gaps or intervals between pitches in that group’s music. By the 18th century, most Western music was based on 12 equivalent intervals per octave. This system is represented by the Chromatic Scale. Its 12 equally spaced tones per octave, called half-steps or semitones, can be heard by playing the tones that correspond to 12 adjacent frets on a guitar fretboard, or to 12 adjacent keys on any modern Western keyboard instrument. The semitone is the smallest gap in traditional Western music, but smaller intervals (collectively referred to as microtones) are used in some modern Western music, as well as in some other musical cultures.
  
  Again, learning plays an important role in what pitch relations are considered pleasing. In a psychological study early in the 20th century, participants spent several months becoming familiar with the sound of a scale based on such small intervals that all 12 scale members fit within a standard half-step. By the end of the learning period, many participants stated that this microtonal scale sounded very natural, and they could recognize melodies composed with this scale. Some participants even stated that the top note of the scale seemed twice as high as the lowest note—the description Western musicians typically give to the octave.
  
  For the past several centuries, the preferred underlying pitch structure in Western art music has been the diatonic scale. This scale consists of seven tones related by a total of five whole-steps and two half-steps, arranged in the sequence from C to C of the white keys of a modern piano or organ. Depending on the pitch relationships among whole-steps and half-steps, scale systems are referred to as either major or minor, or as a specific kind of ecclesiastical or church mode.
  


• Scale:
  
  A great deal of Western folk music, along with much folk music and art music around the world, conforms to a five-tone, or pentatonic, scale. The best-known form of the pentatonic scale contains no half steps. Instead, it is made up of three whole-steps and two step-and-a-half intervals. The black keys on a modern piano or organ keyboard produce a pentatonic scale.
  
  In music, a scale is a group of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work. Scales are ordered in pitch or pitch class, with their ordering providing a measure of musical distance. Scales differ from modes in that scales do not have a primary or "tonic" note. Thus a single scale can have many different modes, depending on which of its notes is chosen as primary. The distance between two successive notes in a scale is called a "scale step." Composers often transform musical patterns by moving every note in the pattern by a constant number of scale steps: thus, in the C major scale, the pattern C-D-E ("doe, a deer") might be shifted up a single scale step to become D-E-F ("ray, a drop"). This process is called scalar transposition. Since the steps of a scale can have various sizes, this process introduces subtle melodic and harmonic variation into the music. This variation is what gives scalar music much of its complexity.
  
  Scales are typically listed from low to high. A scale is octave-repeating when every pitch in the scale appears in every possible octave. An octave-repeating scale can be represented as a circular arrangement of pitch classes, ordered by increasing (or decreasing) pitch class.
  
  For instance, the increasing C major scale is, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-[C], with the bracket indicating that the last note is an octave higher than the first note. Or C-B-A-G-F-E-D-[C], with the bracket indicating an octave lower than the first note in the scale.
  
  This single scale can be manifested at many different pitch levels.
  For example a C major scale can be started at C4 (middle C) and ascending an octave to C5; or it could be started at C6, ascending an octave to C7.
  
  Scales may be described according to the intervals they contain. Scales can be abstracted from performance or composition. They are also often used precompositionally to guide or limit a composition. Explicit instruction in scales has been part of compositional training for many centuries. One or more scales may be used in a composition, such as in Claude Debussy's L'Isle Joyeuse. Below, the first scale is a whole tone scale, while the second and third scales are diatonic scales. All three are used in the opening pages of Debussy's piece.