Stirling Newberry writes: >What we formulate as "principles" are post-hoc exersizes. It isn't that >music is abstract, it is that discussing definitions of it with people who >are bent on making music=sound is basically pointless. I must have missed something here. Are you saying that music is not at least a series of sound effects? If it is then are they not organized in some way. by the composer? Wasn't this organization purposeful (for some purpose) Don't sound effect automatically evoke emotions? One could define music as "the output of a popular art form that is distributed widely on CD, magnetic media, and paper for being heard." I would buy into that definition too. I was searching for a definition that would aid in the "understanding" of music. If my definition or something similar was acceptable to describe even 90% of CM, then we could talk about the nature of sound effects, the nature of organized sound effects, emotion etc. Bill Pirkle