What is music?

1. What is music?

2. Do you consider this song as music? “Threnody To The Victims of Hiroshima”by Krzysztof Penderecki

3. What about this song? “4’ 33”by John Cage

4. 4'33" John Cage's most famous musical composition is called 4'33". On the one hand, as a musical piece, 4'33" leaves almost no room for the pianist's interpretation: as long as he watches the stopwatch, he can't play it too fast or too slow; he can't hit the wrong keys; he can't play it too loud, or too melodramatically, or too subduedly. On the other hand, what you hear when you listen to 4'33" is more a matter of chance than with any other piece of music -- nothing of what you hear is anything the composer wrote. "I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry as I needed it" -- John Cage

5. Do you consider this as music? “Kirisute Gomen”by Trivium

6. Is this music? “Stars And Stripes Forever”by John Philip Sousa

7. What is music? Maybe your definition completely changed,slightly changed or didn’t change at all.

8. What does the dictionary say? mu·sic    [myoo-zik] noun 1. an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color. 2. the tones or sounds employed, occurring in single line (melody) or multiple lines (harmony), and sounded or to be sounded by one or more voices or instruments, or both. 3. the written or printed score of a musical  composition.

9. Music is more than meets the ears directly. Just as no sound exists in a vacuum, every space sculpts the sound within it. Like a site-specific equalizer, reflections, absorption, and resonances combine to give each venue a unique acoustic stamp. A subway tunnel is “live” space, rich with reverberations that trap and reflect sound in a well of hard tile. True to their name, “dead” spaces do nothing: The only sound heard is what travels directly from instrument to ear. An open field is the ultimate dead space.

10. As you the following wandering riff, listen to the changes wrought by environment. Distance is also a factor here—the sound you hear is recorded from the camera’s vantage. Which spaces sound live? Which sound dead? Do the acoustic changes affect the feeling of the music? http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/movies/space_hi.html

11. “—Joseph Griffin, Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, University of California at BerkeleyStepping is rhythmic movement that uses the hands and feet as an instrument. Known best among African American fraternities and sororities, stepping draws on a long African tradition of using the body to make music. Synchronized movement and chants are coordinated by the leader, or step master. Sometimes improvising, always cultivating their own distinctive moves and rhythms, step teams reflect and reaffirm both the unity and the unique style of their group. http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/movies/stepping_Hi.html

12. http://www.steppersusa.com/video-pages/yt1.php