Music. What is It?

Dr GO

I have been looking at definitions of music. Here they are:

Many Definitions leave out Rhythm
Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.
Fundamentally, music is a combination of sounds, and sound is vibration.
Music is a collection of coordinated sound or sounds.
An organized combination of sound and silent moments.

Wikipedia and Marium-Webster Gets More Specific Regarding Rhythm
Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time.
The science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity
Vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony

So here are my discussion points.
Can sound not have melody, harmony or rhythm and still be music?
Does sound need to be coordinated?
Does sound need to be organized in time?

Discuss... and if you can, give audio or video examples of your examples:

Kehaulani

I can find parts of any of those definitions to argue against. This is futile.

I used to be on a board funded by the Ford Foundation and supported by the Comprehensive Musicianship Project (CMP) and we panel members were creating a CMP curricula for schools. It was subsequently published in three volumes by Harper and Rowe.

One of the things essential in this project was defining music. We couldn't do it and it was a pretty talented group of people. There was no definition we could come up with was without exceptions. I think we might have come up with something just to satisfy the suits, but we weren't satisfied.

One can come up with what it means to you but that doesn't make it universal.

Sorry to stop a conversation when it's just getting started, but I'm not sure there is an answer. If anyone comes up with a definition more power to you . . . but I doubt it.

J. Jericho

This...

is music to my ears. I'd say it has its own melody, the overtones provide harmony, it definitely has distinctive timbre, there is a loose rhythm, and, a quality I consider essential to good music: it evokes a primal, emotional response.

Dr GO

@J-Jericho said in Music. What is It?:

This...
is music to my ears.

This has it all, rhythm, vocals, words, instruments and yes... a car!

Vulgano Brother

"Sound in time."

Shifty

It would take an entire book. A good start is This is Your Brain on Music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Your_Brain_on_Music

administrator

This is one of those fruitless subjects I had to write essays on as a music undergraduate. You have to understand, I have an analytical brain, so ambiguity doesn't sit well with me. So I think I'll just provide a clear answer, regardless of how true it is.

Music is horses. There you go

dupac

What is Music?
Here is the u(l)timate answer:

Kehaulani

@Vulgano-Brother said in Music. What is It?:

"Sound in time."
Everything is in time, is it not?

Tobylou8

Music is in the ear of the beholder. Riddle solved.

administrator

@Tobylou8 said in Music. What is It?:

Music is in the ear of the beholder. Riddle solved.

No.

Tobylou8

@administrator said in Music. What is It?:

@Tobylou8 said in Music. What is It?:

Music is in the ear of the beholder. Riddle solved.

No.

Yes.

BigDub

Music is when a child says, "I hear music"
We, on the other hand are so removed from the simplistic
Innocence of a child that we can’t even figure out what it is any longer.
Try to forget everything the world tries to tell us and let music be what you want it to be. Let everyone else fight and bicker about it.

Dr GO

@BigDub said in Music. What is It?:

Music is when a child says, "I hear music"
Innocence of a child that we can’t even figure out what it is any longer

Innocence, Hell. My granddaughter says "I hear music" when let a fart go! Music? Only if you consider the lower br*-ass a wind instrument!

*back region

Kehaulani

Like I said . . .

Kehaulani

This turned into a very timely topic because I just saw something that I thought was very hip on open-access cable T.V. that defied category, especially because it would challenge some definitions of music. It was what most would cause noise with a nice use of space. The space set off the sound so that you listened to the sound, when it came, more acutely. I don't know what one would call it. It was music to my ears.

Maybe a re-reading of Cage's Silence is due. BTW, the ensemble was a group of local young people, no oldies in the group. Nice to hear such unstructured avant guard still lives.

fels

@Shifty said in Music. What is It?:

It would take an entire book. A good start is This is Your Brain on Music.

This is a great book by the same author who wrote about brain plasticity -- also a rock musician in his youth.

Going elsewhere:

I like to think of potential answers in terms of anthropology - my major in college. The field of ethnomusicology opens the thread to N+ topics. For starters, the purpose or use of most "primitive" (stone to iron age) has been suggested for one or all of the following: religious ritual, sex or sex ritual, and warfare.

BigDub

@Dr-GO said in Music. What is It?:

@BigDub said in Music. What is It?:

Music is when a child says, "I hear music"
Innocence of a child that we can’t even figure out what it is any longer

Innocence, Hell. My granddaughter says "I hear music" when let a fart go! Music? Only if you consider the lower br*-ass a wind instrument!

*back region

Well, that little sprout is only bearing the fruit of that which was put into her impressionable little heart

Pinstriper

This is music. Technically.

Youtube Video

Jolter

This is an interesting topic, and you've all provided insightful comments, but why on earth is this thread in the Classified/Music section?
Mods?