MapQuest

MSN, Yahoo! and Google have competing services such as Google Maps, MSN Maps and Yahoo! Maps. Many current music festivals celebrate a particular musical genre. MapQuest Mobile is a service providing maps and driving directions to any Web-enabled Mobile phone or Personal Digital Assistant. For example, the US-American bluegrass style contains elements from Anglo-Irish, Scottish, Irish, German and some African-American instrumental and vocal traditions, and could only have been a product of the 20th Century. Other services include a world atlas, and MapQuest Mobile. As world cultures have been in greater contact, their indigenous musical styles have often merged into new styles. A MapQuest-branded Yellow Pages service is provided by AOL. Some works, like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, are claimed by both jazz and classical music.

MapQuest provides street level maps and driving directions for the following countries:. While most classical music is acoustic and meant to be performed by individuals or groups, many works described as "classical" include samples or tape, or are mechanical. For a while, MapQuest had satellite images, but later removed them. Genres of music are as often determined by tradition and presentation as by the actual music. Later the company was renamed to MapQuest to leverage the brand popularity. (In academic circles, the original term for the study of world music, "comparative musicology", was replaced in the middle of the twentieth century by "ethnomusicology", which is still an unsatisfactory coinage.). That code was adapted for use on the internet to create the web service. The term world music has been applied to a wide range of music made outside of Europe and European influence, although its initial application, in the context of the World Music Program at Wesleyan University, was as a term including all possible music genres, including European traditions.

The map creation software was originally developed by GeoSystems to generate maps for customers. There is often disagreement over what constitutes "real" music: Mozart, Stravinsky, serialism, Jazz, rap, punk rock, and electronica have all been considered non-music at various times and places. MapQuest is a free Web Map Server, owned by AOL. Among the larger genres are classical music, popular music or commercial music (including rock and roll), country music and folk music. United Kingdom. As there are many definitions for music there are many divisions and groupings of music, many of which are caught up in the argument over the definition of music. Switzerland. Music history itself is the (distinct) subfield of musicology and history, which studies the history of music theory.

Sweden. Different cultures emphasized different instruments, or techniques. Spain. Popular styles of music varied widely from culture to culture, and from period to period. Netherlands. Music has influenced man, and vice versa, since the dawn of civilization. Luxembourg. The history of music in relation to human beings predates the written word and is tied to the development and unique expression of various human cultures.

Italy. Speculative music theory, contrasted with analytic music theory, is devoted to the analysis and synthesis of music materials, for example tuning systems, generally as preparation for composition. Germany. Musical set theory is the application of mathematical set theory to music, first applied to atonal music. Haiti. Theory, even that which studies music of the common practice period, may take many other forms. France. What is most commonly taught in beginning music theory classes are guidelines to write in the style of the common practice period, or tonal music.

Dominican Republic. More broadly it refers to any study of music, usually related in some form with compositional concerns, and may include mathematics, physics, and anthropology. Denmark. Music theory is the study of music, generally in a highly technical manner outside of other disciplines. Belgium. If we acknowledge that sound is not organized and conceptualized (that is, made to form music) merely by its producer, but by the mind that perceives it, then music is uniquely human.". Austria. In the opinion of Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990), "in the last analysis, it is a human being who decides what is and is not musical, even when the sound is not of human origin.

Canada. As George Herzog (1941) asked, "do animals have music?" François-Bernard Mâche's Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion (1983), a study of "ornitho-musicology" using a technique of Ruwet's Language, musique, poésie (1972) paradigmatic segmentation analysis, shows that birdsongs are organized according to a repetition-transformation principle. United States. Zoomusicology is the study of the music of non-human animals, or the musical aspects of sounds produced by non-human animals. Within the quantitative Quadrivium, music, or more accurately harmonics, was the study of rational proportions. In Medieval times, the study of music was one of the Quadrivium of the seven Liberal Arts and considered vital to higher learning.

The study of music of non-western cultures, and the cultural study of music, is called ethnomusicology. Research in musicology has often been enriched by cross-disciplinary work, for example in the field of psychoacoustics. In contemporary scholarship, one is more likely to encounter a division of the discipline into music theory, music history, and ethnomusicology. The earliest definitions of musicology defined three sub-disciplines: systematic musicology, historical musicology, and comparative musicology.

Many people also study about music in the field of musicology. Meanwhile, western schools are increasingly including the study of the music of other cultures such as the Balinese gamelan, of which there are currently more than 200 in America. Western style secondary schooling is increasingly common around the world, such as STSI in Bali. The incorporation of music performance and theory into a general liberal arts curriculum, from preschool to postsecondary education, is relatively common.

It is also common for people to take music lessons, short private study sessions with an individual teacher, when they want to learn to play or compose music, usually for a fee. In Bali, everyone learns and practices together. For example, Indian training traditionally take more years than a college education and involves spiritual discipline and reverence for one's guru or teacher. Sometimes this training takes the form of apprenticeship.

Other cultures have traditions of rigorous formal training that may take years and serious dedication. Many people, including entire cultures, compose, perform, and improvise music with no training and feel no need for training. Audiences can also become performers by using Karaoke, invented by the Japanese, which uses music video and tracks without voice, so the performer can add their voice to the piece. Sometimes, live performances incorporate prerecorded sounds; for example, a DJ uses disc records for scratching.

In industrialized countries, listening to music through a recorded form, such as sound recording or watching a music video, became more common than experiencing live performance, roughly in the middle of the 20th century. In many cultures there is less distinction between performing and listening to music, as virtually everyone is involved in some sort of musical activity, often communal. Recording, even of styles which are essentially live often uses the ability to edit and splice to produce recordings which are considered "better" than the actual performance. Some musical styles focus on producing a sound for a performance, while others focus on producing a recording which mixes together sounds which were never played "live".

Live music can also be broadcast over the radio, television or the internet. The music that composers make can be heard through several media; the most traditional way is to hear it live, in the presence, or as one of, the musicians. Also, Chris Buck, a violinist virtuoso and New Zealander, has recently lost his hearing. In more modern times, Evelyn Glennie, who has been deaf since the age of twelve, is a highly acclaimed percussionist.

Deaf people can experience music by feeling the vibrations in their body; the most famous example of a deaf musician is the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who composed many famous works even after he had completely lost his hearing. Concerts take many different forms and may include people dressing in formal wear and sitting quietly in the rows of auditoriums, drinking and dancing in a bar, or loudly cheering and booing in an auditorium. Music is experienced by individuals in a huge variety of social settings ranging from being alone to attending a large concert. The field of music cognition involves the study of many aspects of music including how it is processed by listeners.

Any musical event comprised of elements can be considered a "composition.". Even random placement of random sounds, often occurring in musical montage, occurs within some kind of time, and thus employs time as a musical element. The Italian term, meaning "free time," does not mean "without rhythm," but rather that the tempo or time of the piece changes dynamically. When a piece appears to have no time, it is considered rubato.

A universal element of music is time or more generally rhythm. An understanding of music's formal elements can be helpful in deciphering exactly how a piece is made. What is important in understanding the composition of a piece is singling out its elements. Study of composition has traditionally been dominated by examination of methods and practice of Western classical music, but the definition of composition is broad enough to include spontaneously improvised works like those of free jazz performers and African drummers.

The music can be performed entirely from memory, from a written system of musical notation, or some combination of both. Music can be composed for repeated performance or it can be improvised; composed on the spot. Methods of composition vary widely, however in analyzing music all forms -- spontaneous, trained, or untrained -- are built from elements comprising a musical piece. Musical composition is a term that describes the makeup of a piece of music.

Music which contains elements selected by chance is called Aleatoric music, and is most famously associated with John Cage and Witold Lutosławski. Music can also be determined by describing a "process" which may create musical sounds, examples of this range from wind chimes, through computer programs which select sounds. Composition does not always mean the use of notation, or the known sole authorship of one individual. See also, precompositional.

Improvised music virtually always follows some rules or conventions and even "fully composed" includes some freely chosen material. However, many cultures and people do not have this distinction at all, using a broader concept which incorporates both without discrimination. Many, but fewer, cultures also include the related concept of interpretation, performing material conceived by others, to the contrasting concepts of improvisation and free improvisation, which is material that is spontaneously "thought of" (imagined) while being performed, not preconceived. Most cultures use at least part of the concept of preconceiving musical material, or composition, as held in western classical music.

To perform music from notation requires an understanding of both the musical style and performance practice expected or acceptable. Generally music which is to be performed is produced as sheet music. Written notation varies with style and period of music, and includes scores, lead sheets, guitar tablature, among the more common notations. This is referred to as musical notation, and the study of how to read notation involves music theory.

If the music is written down, it is generally in some manner which attempts to capture both what should be heard by listeners, and what the musician should do to perform the music. Different musical traditions have different attitudes towards how and where to make changes to the original source material, from quite strict, to those which demand improvisation. Such music, especially that which has no known individual composer, is often classified as "traditional". Music is often preserved in memory and performance only, handed down orally, or aurally ("by ear").

A performer is called a musician, a group being a musical ensemble such as a rock band or symphony orchestra. What is called chamber music is often seen as more intimate than symphonic works. All cultures include a mixture of both, and performance may range from improvised solo playing for one's enjoyment to highly planned and organized performance rituals such as the modern classical concert or religious processions. Many cultures include strong traditions of solo or soloistic performance, such as in Indian classical music, while other cultures, such as in Bali, include strong traditions of group performance.

Performance is a method for musicians to share music with others. Someone who performs, composes, or conducts music is a musician. A great deal of music is produced by amateurs. The music industry is that which creates, performs, and promotes music.

Common terms used to discuss particular pieces include note, which is an abstraction that refers to either a specific pitch and/or rhythm or the written symbol; melody, which is a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord, which is a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord progression which is a succession of chords (simultaneity succession); harmony, which is the relationship between two or more pitches; counterpoint, which is the simultaneity and organization of different melodies; and rhythm which is the organization of the durational aspects of music. By 'music-making,' I intend not only actual performance but also how music is heard, understood, even learned." ⁶. According to Dane Harwood, "We must ask whether a cross-cultural musical universal is to be found in the music itself (either its structure or function) or the way in which music is made. A pulse is sometimes taken as a universal, yet there exist solo vocal and instrumental genres with free, improvisational rhythms with no regular pulse;⁵ one example is the alap section of a Hindustani music performance.

The debate often hinges on definitions, for instance the fairly common assertion that "tonality" is a universal of all music may necessarily require an expansive definition of tonality. It is often debated whether there are aspects of music that are universal. John Cage considers duration the primary aspect of music because it is the only aspect common to both "sound" and "silence.". For instance, melody and harmony are often considered to be given more importance in classical music at the expense of rhythm and timbre.

As mentioned above, not only do the aspects included as music vary, their importance varies. Silence is also often considered an aspect of music, if it is considered to exist. Other commonly included aspects include the spatial location or the movement in space of sounds, gesture, and dance. ⁴ These aspects combine to create secondary aspects including structure, texture and style.

A more comprehensive list is given by stating the aspects of sound: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. The traditional or classical European aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color/timbre, and form. The platonic ideal of music is currently the least fashionable in the philosophy of criticism and music, because it is crowded on one side by the physical view - what is the metasubstance of music made of, if not sound? - and on the other hand by the constructed view of music - how can one tell the difference between any metanarrative of music and one which is merely intersubjective? However, its appeal, finding unexpected mathematical relationships in music, and finding analogies between music and physics, for example string theory, means that this view continues to find adherents, including such critics and performers as Charles Rosen and Edward Rothstein. In this example sound, a common element, is excluded, while gesture, a less common element, is given primacy.

Molino (1975: 43) argues that, in addition to a lack of consensus, "any element belonging to the total musical fact can be isolated, or taken as a strategic variable of musical production." Nattiez gives as examples Mauricio Kagel's Con Voce [with voice], where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments. Often a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music. In support of the view that music is a label for a totality of different aspects which are culturally constructed. By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be.".

According to musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990 p.47-8,55): "The border between music and noise is always culturally defined--which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus... John Cage is the most famous advocate of the idea that anything can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound," though some argue that this somewhat fascistically imposes the definition on everything. Music theory, within this realm, is studied with the presupposition that music is orderly and often pleasant to hear. Traditional philosophies define music as tones ordered horizontally (as melodies) and vertically (as harmonies).

In this view, there are observable patterns to what is broadly labeled music, and while there are understandable cultural variations, the properties of music are the properties of sound as perceived and processed by people. The definition of music as sound with particular characteristics is taken as a given by psychoacoustics, and is a common one in musicology and performance. Broadly, here are some groups of definitions:. .

Music is an art, entertainment, or other human activity which involves organized and audible sound, though definitions vary. ISBN 0195115392. Oxford University Press. Music Theory Resource Book.

Owen, Harold (2000). ISBN 0691027145. Translated by Carolyn Abbate (1990). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music (Musicologie générale et sémiologue, 1987).

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1987). 17:37-62. "Fait musical et sémiologue de la musique", Musique en Jeu, no. Molino, Jean (1975).

ISBN 0195146816. Oxford University Press. Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Johnson, Julian (2002).

3:521-33. "Universals in Music: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology", Ethnomusicology 20, no. Harwood, Dane (1976). Harwood, 1976: 522.

Johnson, 2002. Owen, 2000: 6. Molino, 1975: 43. Nattiez, 1990: p.47-8,55.

Molino, 1975: 37. Those that seek a platonic or quasi-platonic ideal of music which is not rooted in specifically physical or mental terms, but in a higher truth. Those that label it as an artistic process or product, with the related psychological phenomena. Those that label it, according to context, as a social construction or subjective experience.

Those that define music as an external, physical fact, for example "organized sound", or as a specific type of perception.