Music is an art and social practice involving the organization and experience of sound through time. It may employ voices, instruments, electronic systems, or combinations of these, and often involves patterned relationships among pitches, durations, accents, and tone colors. Music accompanies activities ranging from ceremonies and dancing to private listening and public entertainment. Although musical practices occur in every known human society, their purposes, boundaries, and conventions vary across cultures; no single definition fully encompasses all traditions.
Elements and organization
Common analytical concepts include pitch, the perceived highness or lowness of sound, and rhythm, the organization of durations and accents. A beat supplies a recurring pulse, while meter groups beats into recurring patterns. Neither a regular pulse nor a fixed meter is required in all music.
Melody describes a succession of pitches perceived as a coherent line. Harmony concerns relationships among simultaneously sounding pitches and, in some traditions, their progression over time. Musical systems differ in their scales, tuning, and treatment of consonance and dissonance. Western equal temperament divides the octave into twelve equal steps, but many traditions use other interval systems or flexible intonation.
Timbre, or tone color, helps distinguish sounds produced by different voices and instruments, even when pitch and loudness are similar. Dynamics concern degrees and changes of loudness; tempo concerns speed. Texture describes how musical parts interact, ranging from a single melodic line to several independent lines or melody with accompaniment.
Musical form concerns organization on larger timescales. Repetition, contrast, variation, and development can connect phrases and sections. These concepts are useful analytical tools, but their importance and interpretation depend on the tradition concerned.
Making and transmitting music
Music can be vocal, instrumental, or both. A musical instrument produces or controls sound for musical purposes. Instruments are commonly classified by how sound is generated, including vibrating strings, air columns, membranes, and the body of the instrument itself. Electronic instruments generate or process signals that become audible through loudspeakers.
Composition involves creating musical material or structures, while improvisation involves generating material during performance. The distinction is not absolute: composed works may leave decisions to performers, and improvisers may draw on established formulas, repertories, or formal plans.
Music is transmitted through listening, imitation, memorization, teaching, written documents, and recordings. Musical notation represents selected musical information visually. Staff notation commonly indicates pitch and duration, whereas tablature specifies instrumental actions or positions. No notation captures every aspect of performance; timing, articulation, ornamentation, and tone often depend on learned conventions.
Historical evidence
Music predates written history. Surviving prehistoric instruments, including bone flutes from Upper Paleolithic contexts, demonstrate early instrumental practice, but cannot establish when singing or music first emerged. Archaeological interpretations must distinguish identifiable instruments from objects whose possible musical use remains uncertain.
Images, instruments, and texts document music in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Ancient Mesopotamian sources include instructions concerning tuning and examples of musical notation, although reconstructing their sound involves interpretation. In ancient Greece, music was associated with poetry, education, drama, and mathematical investigations of intervals.
Other societies developed distinct musical institutions and theories. Chinese traditions connected music with court ceremony, cosmology, and ethical thought, including Confucianism. South Asian traditions developed sophisticated frameworks for melodic and rhythmic organization. Across regions, migration, conquest, commerce, and religious exchange carried instruments and practices between communities.
Traditions and genres
Musical traditions are often distinguished by social setting, repertory, transmission, and performance conventions. Categories such as classical, folk, and popular are historically situated rather than universal divisions. “Classical music” may refer to Western concert traditions or to cultivated traditions elsewhere, including those of South Asia.
In Europe, sacred and secular repertories developed alongside institutions of religion, courts, and cities. During the Renaissance, polyphonic composition flourished, and printing expanded the circulation of written music. Later developments included opera, orchestral repertories, public concerts, and changing approaches to tonality and musical form.
Jazz emerged in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century from African American musical practices and interactions with other traditions. It encompasses diverse approaches to improvisation, ensemble playing, rhythm, and composition. Popular music likewise includes many changing genres shaped by local scenes, commercial institutions, and media. Genre boundaries overlap and are frequently contested.
Technology and circulation
Sound recording made performances repeatable independently of their original occasion. Mechanical recording, electrical microphones, magnetic tape, and digital audio successively altered production and distribution. Editing and multitrack recording also made the studio a site of musical creation rather than merely documentation.
The computer supports synthesis, notation, sequencing, recording, and sound processing. Through the internet, music circulates by downloads, streaming, and direct sharing. These systems influence discovery, access, payment, and the relationship between musicians and audiences. A musical composition and a particular recording are distinct objects and may carry separate legal rights.
Social roles and study
Music contributes to worship, celebration, mourning, work, dance, storytelling, and collective identity. Participation may involve specialized professionals or an entire community. Listening practices also vary: attentive concert listening is only one setting among domestic, ceremonial, participatory, and everyday uses.
Musical education ranges from informal learning within families and communities to apprenticeships, schools, and conservatories. Musicology studies music through historical, analytical, and other scholarly approaches. Ethnomusicology emphasizes music in its social and cultural contexts, often using fieldwork. Research also examines musical perception, acoustics, movement, and memory, while aesthetics addresses questions about musical expression, meaning, and artistic value.