855-855-6777

When you discover a song that speaks directly to you, it evokes an intense emotional response – leaving you wanting more and eager to share it with friends and family alike.

Music is an engaging and beguiling phenomenon. It activates several brain networks associated with well-being, learning, cognitive function and quality of life.

Origins

Music’s origin remains an ongoing source of debate. Many experts, such as musician and professor Jeremy Montagu, contend that music was part of human evolution before any language even emerged; rock art provides proof that people sang and played instruments in prehistoric times.

Ancient Greeks such as philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras revered music, which they combined with mathematics. Music may have been one of the first art forms to incorporate numerical and scientific concepts such as vibrations, wavelengths, pitches and frequencies into its repertoire.

Musical expression entails manipulating elements like pitch (inflection, vibrato etc), duration (tempo fluctuations, accent and tremolo), and timbre (tone colour). Sometimes noise or randomness is used; examples of this include works by 20th-century composers like John Cage.

Purposes

Music plays an integral part in social change and cultural revolution, evidenced by genres such as punk rock or hip-hop which address race, class and gender issues. Furthermore, it can easily blend in with other forms of art such as dance, ritual and drama.

Sound, pitch, rhythm and harmony are the core elements of music. Musicians create harmony through organizing sounds into notes which then form chords to convey various emotions based on their arrangement.

Music study helps develop self-discipline, expression through sound, technical motor skills development and problem solving abilities. Many also gain a greater appreciation of other cultures and a sense of history through being involved with musical world. Furthermore, music can also be used therapeutically to assist patients suffering from psychiatric disorders, physical disabilities or sensory impairments.

Techniques

Musical techniques are indispensable to understanding and creating music. As the core foundations of basic music training, they help musicians improve their coordination and accuracy through repetition. Musicians can practice specific musical techniques by performing short technical pieces known as etudes to familiarize themselves with them.

Music production utilizes various techniques to add effects and alter the sound of tracks or albums, such as pitch shifting which alters vocal speed without changing pitch, time stretching which slows playback of an audio file, which can help sync drum breaks to tempo, pitch shifting and time stretching (to name just two of many examples) which are all techniques employed for altering its sound and creating effects that alter its original tone.

Staggered Melody is an often neglected compositional technique. This approach allows melodies to be accompanied by different instruments in three ways – only accompaniment, melody and accompaniment or all three together (“tutti”). Staggered Melody can also be found commonly used in free improvisation and jazz music.

Instruments

Musicians utilize various instruments to produce sound. They may also incorporate other sounds into their work, such as chanting or singing. Although the precise date of musical instrument invention remains disputed, with its first known appearance likely having been an ancient flute.

Some instruments can be divided into the categories of string, woodwind or percussion instruments depending on how they produce sound. For instance, cello is part of the string family while drum belongs to percussion; other hybrid instruments, like piano and celesta can fall anywhere between those categories.

Studies show that children who play instruments possess greater spatial-temporal skills necessary for the study of math and science. Music can also benefit the brain by strengthening focus, memorization and encouraging creative thought processes.

Musicians

People who play music professionally are known as musicians, which includes singers, instrumentalists and songwriters. Individuals studying to become professional musicians typically attend postsecondary programs in universities and colleges that specialize in this particular profession such as conservatories. Or alternatively they may take an all-inclusive curriculum approach.

Many attempts at defining music include the concept that it must include pitched sounds with melody, harmony and rhythm – an element which humans find meaningful. Yet similar sounds produced by non-human organisms such as waterfalls or birds do not qualify as music in the same sense that human-produced musical sound does.