What Is Music?
Music can mean many different things to different people: entertainment, expressing emotions and communicating through song. Not to mention its often beautiful aesthetic qualities!
Music has long served to unite groups and nations through work songs, war songs, lullabies, and national anthems. Studies show its positive effects on health and exercise.
Origins
Music’s source remains contentious. Some scholars contend that its development arose out of language itself; others see music as having more specific functions.
Early humans created music through beating sticks together or vocalization or various percussion instruments, often religious in origin and lasting several centuries or more. Some of the oldest melodies known include religious chants that may date back millennia.
Professor Richard Parncutt from the University of Melbourne suggests other theories concerning the origins of music include emotional-genetic effects and gestural-sonic vocabulary among mothers and infants, among other theories. According to him, increased brain sizes led to earlier births with fragile infants that necessitated tighter maternal bonds for these newborns.
Beginning around 1808, Western classical music introduced organized melody into our lives. Composers began experimenting with various genres like Jazz-Classical, New Wave and Folk-Rock music as well as using synthesizers in Classical compositions.
Functions
Music may have originated as a source of enjoyment and relaxation, yet it also serves as a means for socialization and cultural development. Music has been used to protest wars or political or social establishments and drive societal and cultural movements such as punk rock and hip-hop music.
Researchers have explored the functions of music through open surveys, questionnaire studies, cluster or factor analysis and cluster or factor modeling. While findings have often been varied and sometimes contradictory, most studies have been able to narrow potential functions down into discrete dimensions such as emotional expression, cognitive or self-related functions and arousal-related functions – with many studies finding people experiencing musical enjoyment as being a combination of these components.
Techniques
Music’s techniques allow artists to craft melodies, harmonies and rhythms that elicit emotions and tell narratives through sound. Mastery of these techniques helps musicians produce three dimensional works that endure throughout time.
Musical techniques vary depending on the genre of music being performed; however, certain elements are universal across instruments, including tuning and musical intervals (major and minor scales), fundamental patterns of notes such as triads, sevenths formula patterns or arpeggios and tuning techniques.
Other musical techniques include hocket and instrumental call and response. Hocket is an old tradition in medieval polyphonic vocal music as well as instrumental call and response; here a leader instrument or group plays rhythmic patterns while others respond. Sequences can also be used to expand motivic material within harmonic frameworks; this often manifests itself in fugues or other contrapuntal textures.
Styles
Music can be defined by an array of styles, from rhythm and melody to harmony. Music styles vary across time, place and culture and influence both its aesthetic quality and expressive qualities.
Musical styles have developed through interaction between musicians and their audiences. Utilizing specific scales, chord progressions, instrumentation techniques or scales that identify pieces with particular genres or cultural traditions.
Styles delivered a performance filled with subtleties like soft layers of low harmonies and small vocal accents, as well as his adept ability to pacing, using slow drum beats and fingerpicked guitar loops before unleashing his trademark fiery choruses. His show demonstrated why so many fans see him as a serious artist regardless of his past membership in One Direction.
Influences
Music can have many positive influences on us: from improving health and productivity at work, to helping us sleep more soundly, reduce pain and anxiety and boost intelligence – but it can also encourage unhealthy habits like overeating, drug use and aggressive behaviors.
Music often serves as an expression and marker of culture. For instance, African traditions like work songs and spirituals had a huge influence on jazz and blues music styles like those created in jazz clubs; its rhythms helped form rock & roll and rap styles as well.
Artists exert a profound impact on their listeners. Fans feel connected with artists and trust them like friends, often listening to albums and purchasing merchandise even though they might not understand its full significance. Later, fans share favorite songs or artists with their own followers.