Music listening has long been one of the primary activities that consume our time and resources, prompting considerable speculation as to its origins and purposes.
Researchers have identified various musical functions, some directly tied to mood and arousal management and others related to self-related needs. Some studies have used statistical methods that identify basic distinct dimensions among all these functional aspects.
Origins
Music’s history and relevance to society and culture are constantly shifting and changing, yet its creation remains mysterious and often driven by social forces such as economic development or revolution. Punk rock was developed as a form of rebellion against authority; and hip-hop quickly emerged as a way for African-American communities to express themselves freely while creating community cohesion while driving popular culture trends.
Plato (428-348/347 BC) saw music as a reflection of ideal and gave it symbolic meaning, while Confucius (551-404 BC) acknowledged its vital place within moral universes and stressed emotion’s role in its interpretation.
Functions
Over time, scholars have advanced various functions that listening to music might serve, which often have little to do with its presumed evolutionary roots. Such diverse suggestions have given rise to extensive empirical work involving questionnaire studies; and have resulted in a diverse assortment of musical functions with attempts made at distilling these into basic dimensions.
Schafer and Sedlmeier collected 17 musical functions derived from surveys and factor analysis that they categorised into three functional dimensions, such as managing arousal/mood, self-relatedness and social bonding.
Forms
Musical forms provide the skeleton upon which melodies, harmonies and rhythms can be draped to give music its overall balance and character, creating expectations and inducing emotions in listeners.
Musical structures are sometimes easy to identify, particularly with familiar genres of music. Listen for repeated sections, key changes, melody/harmony changes, texture changes and any potential adds/subtracts/timbre changes in a song to detect its structure.
Practice identifying smaller sections of music using letters and primes as labels. For instance, songs in strophic form use an interleaving of verse and refrain sections, each distinct from one another.
Techniques
Singers and musicians employ different techniques to add musical expression to their performances, such as phrasing (adding space between notes), vibrato (which may include vocalists as well as some instruments, such as guitars or violins), dynamics (changing the loudness by increasing or decreasing it), or tempo fluctuations (such as ritardando and accelerando).
Tuning, which is essential to most instruments; articulation – which refers to pronouncing individual notes or chords correctly – and repetition are among several music composition techniques essential for crafting songs that both sound good and engage their listeners. These skills must all come together when crafting something truly memorable for listeners.
Styles
Music can be composed in various styles that differ based on cultural traditions and historical periods, which can be distinguished by factors like tempo, rhythmic patterns and chord structures as well as overall aesthetics and expression.
Calypso is a genre of Caribbean music combining Caribbean mento and calypso with African and American jazz/rhythm and blues styles, while country music varies across its genres and styles, from Nashville pop to grittier Bakersfield sound. Additionally, many genres possess particular timbral characteristics due to the type of instruments utilized or vocal techniques employed.
Audiences
Music permeates all cultures and has long been used to alter human emotions. Music can be found everywhere from religious rituals, rite of passage ceremonies, celebrations and funerals, through to modern media like television, film and the internet; musicians include composers, songwriters, singers instrumental performers music critics/journalists.
Recently, classical and popular music were clearly separated; classical was performed at concert halls and churches while popular was popularly heard in bars, nightclubs, and theatres. Recently however, this distinction has begun to blur, with some musicians merging high and low cultural aesthetics into their sound.
Even children as young as two can be adept listeners, able to differentiate musical dynamics and tempo, as well as demonstrate through movement the nuances of their favorite styles.