What Is The Point Of Music?

Music is the artistic craft of arranging sounds from varying acoustic media in time in relation to each other in harmony, melody, tone, and rhythm. It’s one of the more universal aspects of all human cultures. Many general definitions of music include common musical elements like rhythm, melody, timbre, and consistency of texture and timbre. But what is music?

Music spans many disciplines and genres. For example, Classical music differs from Western music due to the quality of its structure, which is built on a verse-verse cycle that repeats throughout the piece (hence the term “classical”). Another example is Jazz, which is characterized by the improvisation of a single rhythm by adding an instrument or vocalist. Hip hop and pop music fuse traditional music structures with freestyle experimentation and complex vocal polyphony. Modern music is a more abstract form that derives from many influences including classical, jazz, rock, Romantic, folk, pop, and new wave.

When you take the word “harmony” literally, it means the combined result of two or more tones that cannot be heard separately. This is why classical music, which is composed entirely of pure or clear tones, is considered the most harmonious. Additionally, when two or more instruments are used in conjunction, it creates a harmonic progression (also referred to as the harmony of two voices). Furthermore, harmony can also refer loosely to the tendency of one instrument to cancel out the others. This is known as polyphonic composition.