What is Music? [debate]

As we, open-minded civilized citizen who can access of Internet, all know what is music, right? However, to define the exact meaning of this word and to tell what is music and what is just a bunch of noise is hard to generalize. People from different countries and of different cultures have different tastes, opinions and reactions to different kinds of music.

E.G.: Pierre Schaeffer's works caused a lot of debates. For his strange and non-rhythmical music design, many people do not consider them as an "appropriate" musical oeuvre.

So, here is the question:
What is music to you?
What are the fundamental characteristic of music?

I'm very open minded. But when I youtubed Pierre Schaeffer's works, I was totally disgusted. Looks like I have a limited acceptance. I think I can't take any of this guy's work. There is no pattern, so melody, and the sounds are distressing. I don't understand what happened to the mind of this guy. XD

I think I can't find anything else that is more exotic than Pierre Schaeffer's works. They are indeed real masterpieces.

There are other kinds of music that I found weird. Like Dr. Jeffrey Thompson's "Dreams In The Mind's Eye promo" Our anything else that are alike. They are kind of hypnotic... o_O

I think there is nothing more bizarre and amazing than John Cage's 4′33″.
A true masterpiece!

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It is a tree movement composition composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements (the first being thirty seconds, the second being two minutes and twenty-three seconds, and the third being one minute and forty seconds). Although commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence", the piece actually consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Over the years, 4′33″ became Cage's most famous and most controversial composition. (wiki)

John cage is so weird... XD
I've just youtube him and found "Water Walk". You really need to see his movement in order to appreciate this composition. XD

In 4’33"
As the animator who explained in the video, the piece consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is preformed. In an interview that I saw, Cage said the way that he sees music is just sound. Music doesn’t have to be anything, doesn’t have mean anything. So, music doesn’t have to be psychological. All he cares is the activity of the sound; that is the volume, the pitch, the duration, and he is satisfied with only these, i.e.: not the massage, nor emotion. As Immanuel Kant, a philosopher said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything in order to give us deep pleasure: one is music and the other one is laugher. What he really likes is the experience of silence. During his time, silence is just the sound of traffic. What is interesting about traffic is that it is different every time we hear it. E.G.: if you hear a concert of Beethoven or Mozart, it’s always the same. But traffic, is always different for time to time. So, 4’33” is a very interesting composition because it is always different each time it is played - and anyone can play it.

Definition of music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses."

The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts," music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art. There is also a strong connection between music and mathematics.

To many people in many cultures music is an important part of their way of life. Greek philosophers and ancient Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound." Musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez summarizes the relativist, post-modern viewpoint: "The border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus ... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be."

Music noun
[mass noun]
1 vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form , harmony, and expression of emotion:
couples were dancing to the music
baroque music
the art or science of composing or performing music:
he devoted his life to music
a sound perceived as pleasingly harmonious:
the background music of softly lapping water
2 the written or printed signs representing vocal or instrumental sound:
Tony learned to read music
the score or scores of a musical composition or compositions:
the music was open on a stand

basically, we can say that any something is music if we consider it as music. if no one recognize a piece as music, even if the composer intended to make music, it is not music. e.g.: andrea polli's Hurricane Bob wasn't massively recognized as music, thus it not something that is directly categorized as music.

We can also consider something as music if the creator intend it to be music. If there is human intention, instantly there must be musical traits in the composition. Hurricane Bob can be considered as background music or "pain music".

I don't think there is a definite limit to music. There are to many factors that we have to take in consideration. Music is a culture, so its definition depends on the cultural tradition and time. In western country, if we go ask a random person "what is music?", he'll probably say something like "any auditive art that has a beat and an harmonious melody". The definition will change if we ask someone in Africa, for example.

Music is also depends on each individual's taste. Some people consider silence or/and noise musical. Other might only think what we hear on the radio is music (i.e.: pop, rock...)

There might exist factors that are necessary for something to be music. But it's difficult to say whether it is a global invariant because new style and ideas keeps coming out. Music can actually be anything.

Hi! Recently, I've make a thematic soundtrack with the LMMS computer software. This might not be the best place to post this, though. But I'd like to share with you all my ultimate masterpiece. keke~


Basically, the goal of making this is for my Humanity course project. What I found interesting about composing with computer is that the number of timber that you can have is almost unlimited. I think I've used more than 100 different timber, which is pretty cool. If you think of an orchestra, you have to have a large number of people in order to preform piece of music that demands many different timber. An human being generally control one kind of instrument, sometimes we add the vocal. But the computer can play so many stuff at the same time. People can also easily compose music that is not playable for ordinary human beings. Thus, computer allows us to transcend.

I didn't go that far. Actually, I just mix a bunch of sounds together. LMMS already provides a pack of sound sample when downloaded. So, don't think that I programed all the sound waves. Some sound effects are only sample provided by LMMS.

Osh, i like that! it makes me think of fractals and steam of consciousness.

but if you only used the sample given by the software, isn't that a little kind of "cheating"?

No, because you don't need copyright for using the sound samples, it's like a resource. There are many other website that give you free and copyright-free sounds and tracks that you can use them for remix or anything. I think as long as you don't sell your master pieces, it's no problem.

Notice that composing is just rearranging sounds. Composing for any kind of music is just a design of the pattern of the sound, an reorganization of sounds - sounds that are available for a certain type of music. E.G.: If you compose a piece for piano, you just arrange the sounds that a piano can make: one kind of timber with a variation on pitch, rhythm, dynamic and with the use of pedal. That is all you can ply with. For digital music, because computer is unlimited for what timber it can produce, and any timber can be varied with dynamic, rhythm, and generally pitch. A music software without sounds pack requires you to put your own sounds in it, or use other people's sounds. A music software that is programed to create sound waves might not need to have a sounds pack. But LMMS is a simply program of sounds mixing. Like I said, composing is sounds mixing, not sound waves creating - sound waves creating is preforming. The sounds pack in the software is the sounds that are available for the composition. But a computer transcends any instrument, and therefore you can add other sounds to the software. The basic idea is that, if the software is an instrument, then the sound pack is sounds that it can make. So, no copyright needed for this!