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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. 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 humans.

Greek philosophers and medieval theorists defined music as tones ordered horizontally (as melodies) and vertically (as harmonies). Music theory, within this realm, is studied with the presupposition that music is orderly and often pleasant to hear. However, in the 20th century, composers challenged the notion that music had to be pleasant by creating music that explored harsher, darker timbres.

20th century composer John Cage disagreed with the notion that music was pleasant melodies. Instead, he argued that any sounds we can hear can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound,"[1]. 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.... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be."

The composer Anton Webern expressed in his legendary statement With me, things never turn out as I wish, but only as is ordained for me-as I must stating the underlying generative process of music. The German philosopher Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe stated the nature of patterns and forms as the basis of music by stating that "architecture is frozen music". By this he meant that any natural stimuli that has underlying structural-patterns is musical in form.

Other definitions of music list the aspects or elements that make up music. 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. In this example, sound, a common element, is excluded, while physical gesture, a less common element in definitions of music, is given primacy.