Surviving the (Musical) Elements!

What is Music?

It’s fascinating to do a search online and read all of the different definitions of music. Some are very good, but all of them seem to come up short, at least to me. No words seem to define music sufficiently. You may ask, “Everyone knows what music is, so why bother?” We love music, we practice and perform music, and we listen to music. But I believe it is important also for musicians to stop and think about music. So, if you decide to look up a definition of music, try to write one of your own first. Then you’ll see how difficult it is to come up with a definition that is satisfactory. On being asked, “What is Jazz?,” Louis Armstrong replied, “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”

Music, like so many other things, is much more than the sum of its parts. Still, we have to get a handle on what musical parts are before we can truly begin to ponder the deeper aspects of musical meaning. These parts or musical elements as we sometimes call them, are the ground zero of music, so to speak, and they are what we tend to focus on in music theory.

The Elements of Music

Before we go any further, let’s list the elements of music (click image to enlarge):

There are seven primary elements. All music contains all of them to a certain degree. When discussing these musical elements, it is difficult, if not impossible, to talk about one element without referring to another. For example, pitch cannot be separated from time, because pitch happens in time! You can’t have a melody without some type of rhythm.

To put it another way, music is irreducible beyond these elements. By that I mean, you cannot remove one of the above elements and still have music. Even music made up of all unpitched percussion instruments has pitch, it’s just not easily perceivable. We separate music into these elements for the sake of teaching and discussion. But in actual music, all of the elements function together as one.

In future lessons, we will discuss these elements in more detail and define some of the corresponding terminology. Stay tuned!