WHAT IS MUSIC?

Learning something new can be difficult. I don’t remember how many times I fell trying to ride my bicycle without the training wheels. I didn’t know how it felt to be in balance with the machine.

With determination, you keep trying until, perhaps for a moment, you feel the balance. Perhaps you fall again, but you get back up and give it another go. You find that “sweet spot” again and sustain it even longer than last time. Before you know it balancing a bike in motion becomes as easy as breathing.

The bottom line is, if you want something badly enough, you keep trying–getting back up, learning from your mistakes and adding your successes to your body of knowledge and experience until you achieve your goal. Quitters never win and winners never quit.

The same is true of anything you wish to do in life. The same is true of music.

When I want to learn something new I first try to define my subject. I believe Aristotle said (paraphrase) that knowing the right questions to ask gets you most of the way to understanding what you want to know.

Let’s begin. What is music? If you can’t answer that question succinctly then it’s quite possible you don’t know what you’re trying to do.

Music is what we humans call “Art.”

Dag! It seems before we can define music we must first define “Art.”

What is “Art?” Let’s see what Wikipedia says. This is the first sentence from the Wikipedia article on “Art:”

“Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, usually involving imaginative or technical skill.”  (Wikipedia)

In my humble opinion, Art is self-expression. “Technical skill,” can be achieved by anyone with enough drive; there are many “technical” “artists,” and they are often very popular. However, the crux of Art is not in the “technical” but in the “imaginative” or creative aspect of it.

Of course, it’s easy to think in the here and now: Art is not necessary for survival; we could certainly live without it–you can’t eat Art!

But can we live without it? Self expression comes from the depths of our beings, in tune with the events, human and natural, that occur in the time in which we exist. In that way alone all works of Art are unique and can’t be duplicated.

Many artists have emulated Monet, but only Monet had the creative inspiration and temporal background to do what was uniquely his. Said emulators may attain mastery over Monet’s style to the point of their work being almost indistinguishable from the original. But are all such artists “creators” or “recorders?” Monet’s work came from deep within his being, influenced by the social and physical milieu in which he lived. How could anyone actually reproduce his art?

So, Art is the expression of the human condition, its fears, joys, hopes, and dreams. I feel, in this way, Art drives human civilization, setting the goals for the more “technical” minded individuals. For example, look at some ancient “Art.” You won’t have to look too long before you find angels and demons, horses even, with wings. It seems, perhaps, man wanted to fly like the birds. First comes the dream, then the reality. Consider the “transporter” in Star Trek. Will that become reality? I’m certain it will; it’s only a matter of time.

An in-depth study of Art can easily take several lifetimes and that is not my purpose.

For my purpose I determine Art to be self-expression. Indeed, not all self-expression is Art, but all art is self-expression.

Music is Art, therefore music is self-expression. There are many “technical” musicians. If you want to reproduce someone else’s music you can do it perfectly well with a recording!

The true artist creates his/her own expression, something new and unique, never before revealed. Great technical expertise is not necessary to produce great Art. However, we must note here that “technicality” is one of the artist’s tools and, the better the tool, the wider the range of creative expression available to the artist. Just having good tools, though, is not enough.

In music we develop “technicality” by practice and hard work. “Creativity,” however, is a gift that comes from deep within the human psyche; it comes with the human package and can’t be obtained. I have yet to meet a normal human being who does not possess this gift in greater or lesser degree in one form or another.

So, music is art, an abstract concept defining human expression. But what exactly is music? What is the physical reality of it?

There are two primary physical aspects of music. Can you guess?

One is sound. The other is time. Music is the linear Art of sound in time. All other aspects of music: harmony, timbre, pitch, counterpoint, intensity, rhythm, etc., fall into place under those two headings.

For these reasons I like to answer the question: “What is music?” by saying, “Music is audio-temporal art.“