Music Theory and Elements

Music is an art and science whereby sounds are combined in a pleasant and creative manner that is appealing to the ear. It is an art because it involves creative combination of sounds to produce a rhythm that is unique. It is also a science because it involves both music theory and practice. Organization of sound to form music is done in relation to time. Music is part of the literature such that it is intended to convey important information to the listener.

listening to music involves emotional participation in both the style and the content of music. If music does not convey some feeling and message, then it may lose its meaning and such cannot serve the function of music to the listener. Example is a song sang in a foreign language that the listener does not understand at all and the song does not convey emotions or feelings to the listener.

Elements of Music

Music has for major elements namely; sound, time, tune and harmony. they are discussed below.

Sound

Sound is the medium of music. Production of sound is caused by vibration of air and other instruments like guitar strings and drums. These regular vibrations leads to production of pleasant sounds which is called music while irregular vibrations produces unpleasant or non-musical sounds. Characteristics of sound include pitch, tone, intensity and duration. Pitch is the highness or lowness of a musical tone. Pitch is determined by the frequency of vibrations. When the frequency is faster, the pitch goes up and vise-versa.

Tone is the quality of musical sound. it depends on the time of vibrations and objects that produce it. Tone can be enhanced by using resonators like a guitar to produce quality timbre (quality of musical sound produced by an instrument). Intensity is the loudness or softness of a musical sound. Duration refers to a period for which a musical sound can be sustained.

Time

When a song is sang, the throbs mark the pace of the song. Due to stress of some beats, they arrange themselves in duple, triple or quadruple. The organization of beats in this manner is called time of music.

Tune

Tune is formed when musical notes follow one another in a singable manner. In a tune, all musical notes progress systematically implying that there is a relationship between the tunes.

Harmony

It is the simultaneous combination of different sounds that are sung at the same time. When different musical notes are sounded, they form harmony, for instance, when singing in alto, soprano and tenor, these sounds tend to agree. This results into harmony.

In a nutshell, not all music involves singing and not all songs are musical. if a song does not fall under the above elements of music, then it is not musical.