Introduction
Music! What is its essence, and how can we break it down into its essential elements? We have touched on this topic before in blog posts such as The Fundamentals of Art & How Art Evolved Consciousness, but before we break music down into its foundational components, let’s have a look at how music has been defined and described throughout the ages.
vocal or instrumental sounds combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion
the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity
the art of producing pleasing or expressive combinations of tones, especially with melody, rhythm, and usually harmony.
Looking at these very foundational definitions of music found on Google & Merriam Webster, we can already find some of Music’s foundational elements very clearly, but for the purpose of depth and this article, I’ve contemplated what other elements constitute music. This might be insightful for you whether you’re a musician, a percussionist, a vocalist, a DJ or simply a music lover. Let’s have a closer look.
Picture: a soundwave containing ‘elements’
29 Elements of Music
So here it is, a list of 29 components that make up the totality of music. This list is something I came up with, and if you think or feel that there is a foundational element missing to this list, number ‘30’, feel free to let me know what it is for you by shooting me a message, I’d appreciate that, curious. Without further ado, here’s the list in no particular order of importance.
Harmony
The structure of music with respect to the composition and progression of chords.
Multiple tones, frequencies, vibrations, amplitudes and/or sounds coming together.
The combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce a pleasing effect.
melody
A progression of frequencies, pitches & silences through the ether transmitting an emotional story. A sequence of single notes; pitches; often with the intention of being musically satisfying; a tune. A rhythmic succession of single tones organized as an aesthetic whole.
excitement
A feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness. Something that arouses a feeling of excitement. Something that calls to activity, energizes, stimulates and/or arouses an emotional response or awareness; something that creates a magnetic field in. Something that raises to a higher energy level.
rhythm
The aspect of music comprising all the elements (such as accent, meter, and tempo) that relate to forward movement. An ordered recurrent, often repeated, alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech and music. The elements that make up the foundational essence relating to forward temporal movement, also adding to the musical illusion of linear time. Drive; pace, beat; cadence. The effect created by the elements in a play, movie, or novel that relate to the temporal development of the action. Biorhythm.
resolution
Music’s firm determination to return or resolve back home emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically, tonically and/or entirely. Music’s property of determining, solving & answering. The passion or progression of a chord or voice from dissonance to consonance. The point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out. The separating of a chemical, musical or spiritual compound or mixture into its constituents.
fulfillment
To make full; to complete. The meeting of a requirement, condition, or need. The achievement of something desired, needed, willed, promised or predicted. The fulfilling, polarizing, balancing and/or centering of emotional, spiritual, physical, directional, mental or other psychospiritual human needs, desires, lack or deficiencies.
liberation
The act of setting free. Music’s desire, ability or act to set someone, including itself, free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression; release. Freedom from limits on thought or behavior.
transition
The process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.
Something that links one state, subject, place, etc. to another. A connecting part or piece. A change or shift from one state, subject, place, etc. to another. A period or phase in which such a change or shift is happening. Passage, metamorphosis, alchemy; a bridge in time. A passage linking two dramatic scenes or sections of a piece of music in which a certain shift is effected.
CONFINES
Music is often boundaried, limited, defined and/or surrounded energy, light or love; confined to a certain amount of internal & external influences. A point of balance between or on too open & too closed. The expressive flow of light, vibration, sound, color, meaning, passion, being and/or frequency outwards through a whole of (un)(super)consciously (un)determined confines.
Note to Self: openness as an incomplete electrical circuit; not allowing the flow of electricity. Exposed or vulnerable to attack or question. Completely free from concealment.
Note to Self: closed as enclosed. Ending in a consonant. Confined to a few. Forming a self-contained unit allowing no additions.
inception
An act, process, or instance of beginning (something). The establishment or starting point of an institution or activity. Birth, dawn, origin. The fuzing or planting into something and/or itself. The establishment or starting point of an institution, movement, flow or activity.
surrender
To stop resisting. To yield to the power, control, authority or possession of another upon compulsion or demand. To give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another. To give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner. To give (oneself) over to something (such as an influence). To become one.
transmission
The action or process of transmitting something, such as an idea, feeling or meaning. The passage of frequency, vibration, waves or energy, such as psychospiritual energy, in the space between a transmitter and a receiver. Transfer, channel, mediation, message.
intention
Aim, plan, purpose. The intention behind music. What it or one intends to do or bring about. A determination to act, be or express in a certain way. Concept; something conceived in the mind. Sense of resolve or determination. The healing process of a wound.
suspense
A state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. Mental uncertainty with a chance of leading to the most pleasant excitement, harmonious resolution & absolute completion.
centering
Harmonizing, perfecting and/or transcending the point around which a circle or sphere is described. To give a central focus or basis. To adjust (things, such as lenses, emotions or perspectives) so that the axes coincide. To bring closer; to pull, to push; to bring further. To balance, source, focus, align; to remind, to refeel.
Note to Self: the Concept or Feeling of Centerless (Food)
sexuality
The colliding, fuzing & uniting of the masculine & the feminine; internally; externally.
The expression of sexual receptivity or interest especially when excessive. The capacity for sexual feelings; arousal; of, relating to, or associated with sex or the sexes.
time
Duration; ascension. Bringing us to a state of timelessness. Music has the potential of bring us to a time from which its origins are not recognizable.
surprise
The feeling caused by something unexpected or unusual. An unexpected or astonishing event, fact or thing. Something that surprises; astonishment; something extremely surprising or impressive; amazing. The feeling caused by something unexpected or unusual. The ringing of sets of church bells or handbells in a constantly varying order. An attack made without warning; a taking unawares. (Bastard Latin: see surplus & prize with the side notion: no competition, no comparison, while the creative circle of ‘Chaz’ is the finish & the start)
progression
the process of developing or moving gradually towards a more advanced state or in this case the succession of musical tones or chords, the movement of musical parts in harmony. A succession of repetitions of a sound, melodic phrase or harmonic pattern each in a new position. A continuous and connected series; an advancement; the action or process of progressing. A sequence of numbers in which each term is related to its predecessor by a uniform, given or mysterious law.
receptivity
Music is a lot about receiving and receptivity; to be able or inclined to receive. The willingness to consider or accept new suggestions and ideas. To be fit to receive and transmit stimuli, the openness and responsiveness to innovative ideas, rejuvenating impressions, higher intelligence, deeper emotions or fulfilling suggestions.
release
Music’s ability to set free from restraint, confinement, or servitude; its ability to relieve from something that strains, burdens, or oppresses. Music has the potential to enable the escape from mental confinement; spiritual imprisonment and emotional captivity; music can liberate the spirit into more profound and meaningful spheres of existence
feeling
Music has the potential to capture and share feeling & emotion, to transcend to a higher, deeper and more profound place of feeling, sensing & emoting; to induce an emotional state or reaction that was previously unknown, undiscovered & foreign. Music has the ability to shift, mold and transcend the overall quality of one's awareness, to induce a sympathetic aesthetic response; to activate, animate and enlighten the soul, spirit and thus the body. A feeling; an idea or belief, especially a vague or irrational one.
BEAUTY
The combination of qualities, such as timbre, tone, frequency, melody or rhythm that pleases the aesthetic senses. Music’s qualities that give pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit; loveliness. Music particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality allowing to paint, enlighten and colors one’s experience. The brilliant, extreme, or egregious example or instance of being creatively human. It is also said that beauty is a fundamental quark that accounts for the existence and lifetime of life and upsilon particles and has an electric charge of −¹/₃ and a measured energy of approximately 5 GeV, including the flavor characterizing this particle.
exoticITY
The discovery, creating or fuzing with of certain music can be like an exotic journey. The characteristic of being exotic; foreignness. Music’s liberating potential quality of being strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual. The joy & excitement that comes from certain stimulation.
sensORY
Music’s ability to convey nerve impulses from the sense organs to the nerve centers, allowing music to literally induce, transmit or shock certain energies, frequencies and vibrations into one’s nervous system, chakra centers and thus personal relative experience.
ALCHEMISTICAL
Alchemy; the medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir. Also see Amrita. The potential of music to transmute one’s inner state of being into gold. The discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life; a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. Music’s potential to be inexplicably or mysteriously transmuting.
leadING
To guide on a way, especially by going in advance; to direct on a course or in a direction; to serve as a channel for; to go through. To begin, to open; to lie, run, or open in a specified place or direction; to direct the operations, activity, or performance of; leadership. To serve as an example, to initiate, to introduce.
DEEPNESS
Extending far from some surface or area: such as extending far downward or extending well inward from an outer surface. Having a specified extension in an implied direction usually downward or backward. Having a penetrating intellect; wise, mysterious. Extending well back from a surface accepted as front, extending far laterally from the center. High in saturation and low in lightness, having a low musical pitch or pitch range. To a great depth; a vast or immeasurable extent.
EXPOSURE
Sharing music comes with the real and/or illusionary risk and phenomenon of exposure; the fact or condition of being exposed: such as the condition of being presented to view or made known, the condition of being subject to some effect or influence. The state of having no protection from something harmful. The act or an instance of exposing; disclosure of something secret, the treating of sensitized music or music videos to controlled amounts of radiant energy.
PASSION
Intense emotion; intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction; an outburst of anger; worship, ardent affection; love; a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept, sexual desire, an object of desire or deep interest; the state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces. Also; the ‘sufferings’ of ‘Jesus Christ’ between the night of the Last Supper and his death.
RESTRICTIVE
Music’s possible act of restricting and its condition of being restricted into a certain configuration of sounds, meanings & movements. A limitation on the use or enjoyment of life, the ability to mold, shape, shift life and the generation of humanity. Also see restriction fragment length polymorphism: variation in the length of a DNA fragment produced by a specific restriction enzyme acting on DNA from different individuals that usually results from a gene mutation and that may be used as a genetic marker. Any of the various enzymes that cleave DNA into fragments at specific sites in the interior of the molecule, the entity or the unity.
SERVICE
Music’s occupation or function of serving; the work performed by one that serves; help, use, benefit; contribution to the welfare of others; a form followed in worship or in a religious ceremony, an administrative division, a facility providing maintenance and repair, the materials used for serving a ‘rope’, which is something music often resembles for many.
UNITING
Music’s ability to realize a state of unity and oneness, both internally, interpersonally, collectively, planetary and universally.