Sound arts

Music theory, equal temperament, and digital audio sampling

What are the audio arts?

The audio arts encompass music and sound created and organized as art — composition, performance, and recording — building on the physics of sound waves covered in the Acoustics article but focused on how sound is deliberately organized into meaningful, expressive art.

The elements of music

Music is generally built from a few basic elements. Melody is a sequence of single notes played one after another, forming a recognizable musical line. Harmony is the sound of multiple notes played together, supporting and enriching a melody. Rhythm organizes music in time, through patterns of beats, accents, and duration. Combining these elements in different ways is what gives different pieces and styles of music their distinct character.

Reading and writing music

Musical notation is a standardized system for writing music down so it can be read, learned, and performed accurately by others, using a staff of horizontal lines with notes placed on or between them to represent pitch, and various symbols to represent rhythm and duration. This notation system lets a piece of music be preserved and performed accurately across time and by musicians who never met the composer.

Recording and reproducing sound

Sound recording captures audio and stores it so it can be played back later, a capability that transformed music from a purely live, one-time experience into something that could be preserved, distributed widely, and listened to repeatedly. Modern recording uses microphones to convert sound into an electrical signal, which is then stored digitally and can be edited, combined with other recorded parts, and reproduced through speakers or headphones.

Why the audio arts matter

The audio arts have been part of virtually every human culture throughout recorded history, used for entertainment, emotional expression, ceremony, and storytelling, and modern recording and production technology has made music more widely accessible and shareable than at any previous point in history.