Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Amateur musicians compose and perform music for their own pleasure, and they do not attempt to derive their income from music. Professional musicians are employed by a range of institutions and organizations, including armed forces, churches and synagogues, symphony orchestras, broadcasting or film production companies, and music schools. As well, professional musicians work as freelancers, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings.

Someone who performs, composes, or conducts music is a musician. Musicians perform music for a variety of reasons. Some artists express their feelings in music. Performing music is an enjoyable activity for amateur and professional musicians, and it is often done for the benefit of an audience, who is deriving some aesthetic, social, religious, or ceremonial value from the performance. Part of the motivation for professional performers is that they derive their income from making music. Not only is it an income derived motivation, music has become a part of life as well as society. Allowing one to be motivated through self intrinsic motivations as well, as a saying goes "for the love of music." As well, music is performed in the context of practicing, as a way of developing musical skills.

Many cultures include strong traditions of solo or soloistic performance, such as in Indian classical music, and in the Western Art music tradition. Other cultures, such as in Bali, include strong traditions of group performance. 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.

Chamber music, which is music for a small ensemble with no more than one of each type of instrument, is often seen as more intimate than symphonic works. A performer is called a musician or singer, and they may be part of a musical ensemble such as a rock band or symphony orchestra.

People who practice composition are called composers. Useful skills in composition include writing musical notation, instrumentation, and handling musical ensembles (orchestration). The definition of composition has broadened to include extended techniques such as musical montage, preparing instruments, and using non-traditional objects or methods of sound production.

Compositional techniques are the methods used to create music. In discussing the structure or organization of a musical work, the "composition" of that work is generally called its musical form. These techniques draw a parallel to art's formal elements. Sometimes, the entire form of a piece is through-composed, meaning that each part is different, with no repetition of sections; other forms include strophic, rondo, verse-chorus, etc. Some pieces are composed around a set scale, where the compositional technique might be considered the usage of a particular scale. Others are composed during performance; techniques are sometimes used, however, in this case also.

Professional musicians in some cultures and musical genres compose, perform, and improvise music with no formal training. Musical genres where professional musicians are typically self-taught or where they learn through informal mentoring and creative exchanges include blues, punk, and popular music genres such as rock and pop.

Undergraduate university degrees in music, including the Bachelor of Music, the Bachelor of Music Education, and the Bachelor of Arts with a major in music typically take three to five years to complete. These degrees provide students with a grounding in music theory and music history, and many students also study an instrument or learn singing technique as part of their program.

Melody:

A Melody is a series of pitches sounding in succession. In Western music, the notes of a melody are typically created with respect to scales or modes. The rhythm of a melody is often based on the inflections of language or the physical rhythms of dance. It is typically divided into phrases within a larger overarching structure.

Pitch:

Musical sounds are composed of pitch, duration, and timbre. Pitch is determined by the sound's frequency of vibration, such as the note A which at modern concert pitch is defined to be 440 Hz. Tuning is the process of assigning pitches to notes. The difference in pitch between two notes is called an interval. The most basic interval is the octave; a note and another note with twice its frequency form an octave, and if the pitch with frequency 440 Hz is A, then the pitches with frequency 880 Hz, 1760 Hz as well as 220 Hz, 110 Hz, and 55 Hz are also A's. Notes can be arranged into different scales and modes. Diatonic notes of a scale may be considered avoid tones. In western music theory, the octave is divided into 12 notes, each called a half-step or semitone. Patterns of half and whole steps (2 half steps, or a tone) make up a scale in that octave. The scales most commonly encountered are the major, the harmonic minor, the melodic minor, and the natural minor.

Rhythm:

Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds in time. Meter animates time in regular pulse groupings, called measures or bars. The time signature or meter signature specifies how many beats are in a measure, and which value of written note is counted and felt as a single beat. Through increased stress and attack (and subtle variations in duration), particular tones may be accented. There are conventions in most musical traditions for a regular and hierarchical accentuation of beats to reinforce the meter. Syncopated rhythms are rhythms that accent unexpected parts of the beat. Playing simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature is called polymeter. See also polyrhythm.

Harmony:

occurs when two or more pitches are sounded simultaneously, although harmony can be implied when pitches are sounded successively rather than simultaneously (as in arpeggiation). Two simultaneous pitches form a diad. Three or more different kinds of pitches sounded simultaneously are called chords, though the term is often used to indicate a particular organization of pitches, such as the triad, rather than just any three or more pitches.