Music has probably been important since the first humans lived on Earth. They made musical instruments from everyday objects. Music might have been discovered unintentionally when musical tones were created by accidentally hitting a tree trunk or a rock. Or the wind might have created music when it blew through a shell, a reed, or a piece of bamboo. Music is still important to us today.
We can make music with our voices or with instruments. We can also dance to it or just listen to it. Music brings pleasure and joy to life. Gentle, quiet music soothes us. Loud music excites us and gives us energy. We can create or find music to express all of our moods. Indeed, for many musical instruments it is only within the past few years that musical acoustics has achieved even a reasonable understanding of the basic mechanisms determining the tone quality, and in some cases even major features of the sounding mechanism have only recently been unravelled.