Music education in the western world often emphasizes musical literacy, the ability to read musical notation fluently. But this is not always an easy task – even for professional musicians.

From pre-historic times to the present day, music has been constantly developing. BBC Culture picks eight moments that changed the course of its history.

And Indian classical music, including raga, creates colour between notes far beyond the limited 12 notes heard in Western music. Indonesian gamelan also uses a different scale. And there are of course ...

To many people, minor chord progressions in music “sound sad” while songs in a major key “sound happy”. But for researchers who study how people respond to music, it has always been ...

Western Music Expert Doug Green Revisits The Era Of The Singing Cowboy Green wrote a book on singing cowboys and is featured in Ken Burns' new PBS series about country music. He says he fell in ...