What kinds of sounds qualify as music?

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Music can be thought of as sound used as musical material, regardless of where that sound comes from or how it’s produced. When you adopt this broad view, almost any produced sound—whether it’s a conventional tone or a random noise—can count as music if it is treated, arranged, or presented as musical work. This inclusivity is what allows found sounds, field recordings, electronic noises, or everyday environmental noises to become music in modern and experimental contexts, as long as the maker or listener recognizes and organizes them as musical. The other descriptions don’t capture this idea: one describes a physical event without tying it to musical use; another centers on perception rather than what kinds of sounds can be music; and a final option reduces music to physical properties like amplitude and frequency rather than the nature of the sounds themselves.