What is music?
Hmm... tricky one this...
- Music can be defined as organised sound, but this is not
strict enough, because not all organised sound is music.
- Most people would agree that the regular throb of a motor
or a drill is not music. Something which has a
regular beat could be used as
part of the rhythm
in a piece of experimental music, but this
does not make it music in its own right.
- I define the boundary line as being between a simple
beat, which is not music,
and a rhythm, which is a
very simple form of music. You and others may disagree.
- The most general definition of music is any set of organised sounds
which has been planned (and usually notated) so that the
sound produced is largely consistent every time it is performed (this
definition would however exclude some experimental music which uses
chance or random events).
- The theory of music
tends to concentrate on the notated form of music, because the notated
form reflects the underlying structures (or theory) of music.
- Even if a piece of music is not written down, the underlying
structures of the music in the piece still exist, and
the terms used to describe the structure would be the
same ones used in the notated form of music.
- By "underlying structures", I mean things like
key, chords,
and harmony.
- Over many centuries, a standard method of notation has grown up,
which is inevitably linked quite closely with the way in which
sounds are produced and organised in the music.
- Here I am referring to "western" traditions which have developed
over the last thousand years in the Western hemisphere.
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