What is music? It’s what comes out of the speakers when we play a CD
on our stereo. It’s what we hear on the radio. Music is singers singing and
musicians playing. Music is a sound that we enjoy hearing.
Is this a proper answer to the question “What is music?”?
If I asked “What is a car?”, you could answer by pointing at a large
object moving up the street and saying “It’s one of those.” But this may
not be a satisfactory answer. A full explanation of what a car is would
mention petrol, internal combustion engines, brakes, suspension, transmission
and other mechanical things that make a car go. And we don’t just want to
know what a car is; we also want to know what a car is for. An explanation
of what a car is for would include the facts that there are people and other
things (like shopping) inside cars and that the purpose of cars is to move
people and things from one place to another.
By analogy, a good answer to the question “What is music?” will say
something about the detailed mechanics of music: instruments, notes, scales,
rhythm, tempo, chords, harmony, bass and melody. This matches up with
the mechanical portion of our car explanation.
“What is it for?” part of the question. A simple answer is that music is
enjoyable—it makes us “feel good”. We could expand on this a bit and say
that music creates emotions, or interacts with the emotions we already feel
and, sometimes, it makes us want to dance.