WHAT IS MUSIC??

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.