There are two main forms of music: vocal music sung by human voice and instrumental music played by musical instruments. There are many ways to combine both vocal music and instrumental music, such as solo, chorus, duet, solo, concerto and symphony. The two can also be mixed, vocal music is accompanied by musical instruments, or vocal music is mixed with instrumental symphonies, and so on.

first, vocal music

vocal music is a form of music performed by one or more singers, whether accompanied by musical instruments or not, and human voice is the focus of the work. Music containing human voice but not focusing on it is generally called instrumental music (such as female chorus without lyrics in gustav holst's Planet Suite). Chorus without instrumental accompaniment is usually called cappella.

For vocal music, quite a few vocal music works (partially or completely) imitate other sounds or pure content abstraction, and use nonverbal syllables or even noise. However, most people pay special attention to the use of lyrics. Short and small vocal music works with lyrics are often called songs.

Vocal music is perhaps the oldest form of music, because it doesn't need any musical instruments, just human voices. There is some form of vocal music in all kinds of music cultures. Although language and music have different purposes, they all have the same musical factors.

human voice is divided into the following parts due to gender, range and sound quality: soprano, Mezzo-soprano, alto/contralto, tenore/tenor, baritone and bass.

second, instrumental music

compared with vocal music, instrumental music is music that is completely played with instruments without human voice or human voice being in a subordinate position.

The musical instruments played can include all kinds of stringed instruments, woodwind instruments, brass instruments and percussion instruments. Some instrumental music also uses some voices, generally without lyrics, but some composers sometimes add some voices. For example, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony also adds the chorus part Ode to Joy, but correctly speaking, most symphonies are made for instrumental music and less for vocal music.

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Elements of music

Different combinations of musical elements constitute the unique character of each piece of music, so that people can understand its structure and expression when listening to different music, and try to know which nationality, region, era and type of music it is. The official definition of musical elements varies from country to country, but some elements include:

1. Pitch (melody, chord)

2,? Rhythm (speed, beat, cohesion)

3. Tone sounds with different frequencies are emitted at different times to form melodies; Sounds of different frequencies are emitted at the same time or in a very short period of time, forming a chord. The speed of the beat constitutes the speed, the regular strong beat and weak beat form the beat, and the coherence between notes is called cohesion.

Common pitches form scales and tonality; If we want to enrich the texture of music, we can borrow counterpoint and harmony. Counterpoint is to make multiple different melody lines play harmoniously at the same time, while harmony is to discuss the continuous collocation of multiple chords. These two techniques are relative to some extent.

there are three main types of music textures. Monophony music is the simplest music texture, which has only a single melody line and only contains two elements: melody and rhythm.

if there is a dominant theme with different chords, it is Homophony. If there are more than two independent melody lines intertwined, it is Polyphony.

Finally, each musical instrument and each human voice has its own unique timbre, and the combination of musical instruments with different timbres endows music with unique acoustic effects, emotions and symbolic meanings. Arranging the combinations of these instruments is called orchestration.