Music, and the learning associated with it, is more than just a hobby that one learns for thirty minutes a week, assuming the opportunity is there to take music lessons.

Music, accurately put, is an education. An education not simply limited to music itself, but rather one that incorporates all sorts of things that would be taught at school, only under different banners.

Music, for example, is a study in science. It is exact and specific, and demands exact acoustics. Think of a conductor of an orchestra, and imagine the score of the music played, a graph indicating frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony, all at once, and with exact control of time.

Music is math. It’s rhythmically based upon the subdivision of time into fractions, done instantaneously. It can be done mentally, or calculated on paper.

Music is language. Whether in our own English, or in the traditional music languages of Italian, German, and French, music is a series of symbols that represent ideas and meaning, the semantics of which stand as a universal language, having nothing to do with the country of origin. Music, as well, is a cultural thing, with cultural differences giving us the full flavour of what it means to be human.

Music is another form of physical education. It requires an incredible coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles, in addition to secondary involvement of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles. Our bodies respond to sound that the ear detects and the way in which the mind interprets it,

And music is, of course, art. It allows us to represent or create emotion, something that mere science cannot create. It allows us to represent the vast reservoir of what it means to be human, complete with feelings and emotion.

Music is, in other words, everything.