Wait,what? So who is Jonathan Peters (a dj, re-mixer, and producer) to tell us what music is? Excuse me, but I happen to think my air conditioner is making a kind of music. The dude works with Mac Quale (American Horror Story) , and Quale seems to think sounds and textures are music. Also- can we please move beyond this "universal language" thing? What is universal about sounds and contexts? For example, the 12 tone scale is western, while other cultures enjoy microtones but these sounds sound "out of tune" to the average westerner. Steve Reich thought the utterances of a victimof race riots was music as evidenced by his piece "Come Out". John Cage showed that chance ambient sound is music with the famous 4'33"... and well, there are hundres ofexamples. Why can't we reach for a more culturally and intellectually and conceptually expansive defenition of an artform here on Hacker News? What "emotion" was John Cage going for in his prepared piano pieces? What about Richard Serra, the sculptor? I read stuff like this time and again by truly intellectual people on HN and I am always surprised at how behind the developments in artistic thinking are here.And really, it is 2017-- how can anyone think "music" is a universal language. As a composer myself, this defenition of music shoves me into a time machine and thrusts me back to old Vienna where I'm having tea with Brahms and Clara Schuman! Please! I need my modern brain, modern concept of the history of music and art, and my ability to redefine the parameters of my artform! How would you like program in COBOL all day for the rest of your life, denying the existence of modern coding languages? By the way, do yourself a favor and listen to "come out"---- drop in at some middle or later point innthat composition or even anywhere in Reich's "clapping Music" and tell me what emotion one is meant to feel... get back to us on that please.

I'm just going to weigh in here and say ... your comment could be taken the wrong way.

I am a noise musician, among other things. It's an entire career. And whether music is about conveying emotion ... I don't know if that covers all the edge cases.

My favorite definition of music is "sound arranged over time."

However, I totally agree with what you are getting at. Learning music is really about learning conventions and common language, which allow you to communicate emotions and mental states, especially at the beginning.

> Your air conditioner, for example, has a rhythm and a pitch to it's sound, but no one would ever call it music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJwoQlYUVTk

And the way you convey emotion is to learn how to play music so you can use the features of music, rhythm, harmonies, melodies. Thats at least how I have been doing it the +30 years I have been playing, composing and performing.