One night during college, I was in the mood to create. I lit some candles and incense and turned off the lights. I sat at my old Kimball piano and struck a single note—soft, lingering. I leaned into the body of the upright to hear the sound waves and harmonics. I was simply exploring sound. I played the same note over and over and let it ring for probably 30+ minutes before feeling like I understood something. I wasn’t working with melody, harmony, or rhythm. Just one sound and natural acoustics. And somehow, it carried something. I felt it. I was open and relaxed. This was an instant of pure communication—no language, no images, no reference point. Just sound.
And somehow, that sound meant more than words could have.
This raises a question: How does that work? How can something as abstract as a single pitch or music—a sequence of vibrations in air—make us feel something so real?
During that session, I more or less wrote a piece, not so surprisingly based on the harmonic series. Here’s that piece:
The Ladder of Abstraction
To find an answer to this “how does music communicate?” question, I started by attempting to sketch out the main points of how communication evolves.
At the lowest level of abstraction, we point. We hold up an object, gesture toward a thing. “This.” It’s immediate. Literal.
Next, we mimic: a gesture, a sound, a face. We act out the meaning. Slightly more abstract, but still tethered to physical context.
Then, we draw: a picture, a symbol, a mark. Now we’re two steps removed. We’re representing a thing, not the thing itself.
Next, language: sounds or letters assigned to represent ideas. The word “tree” is not a tree. It’s a shared code.
Then come metaphors and figurative language. “Her voice is sunlight.” We’re now comparing unlike things to capture something deeper.
And finally, we arrive at music—perhaps the most abstract form of all. It doesn’t represent anything specific. It doesn’t point to an object. It rarely says what it means. And yet it moves us. Deeply. And like spoken communication, music is transitory.
Language is a marvel of communication. It names things, describes events, conveys thoughts. But music doesn’t name or describe—it bypasses the detour of explanation. It just is.
And somehow, because of that, I believe it can deliver more. Music may lack a certain precision that words are able to capture, but the depth and instantaneous and more or less universal nature of sound makes up for that.
The Paradox of Musical Meaning
This is the paradox. Music is supremely abstract—it doesn’t depict, define, or describe. And yet, it communicates. It evokes. It stirs emotions that even words can’t reach.
If metaphor is a way to deepen meaning by making a leap—by saying, “this is like that”—then maybe music is the ultimate metaphor. Not for something else, but of experience itself.
Where words explain, music expresses.
Where language refers, music reveals.
Where sentences are processed, music is felt.
Music doesn’t need to translate feelings into language. It delivers them directly.
The Anatomy of Sound—and Meaning
Even within sound itself, not all elements carry the same emotional weight. If we break music down to its core components—pitch, volume, rhythm, phrasing, and form—we begin to see that some elements communicate more directly than others.
Take timbre, the texture or color of a sound. A single note can be played by a trumpet, a violin, or a child humming—and each evokes something entirely different. The same melody sung by a mother or a stranger can feel either safe or unsettling. Timbre, perhaps more than pitch or rhythm, carries the emotional DNA of sound. It reveals the player’s touch, the instrument’s soul, even the space in which the note was born.
This means that even a simple tone—if shaped with care—can be rich in meaning. That lingering note I once played at my piano wasn’t just a frequency. It had weight, resonance, fragility. And that’s why I felt something, even without melody or harmony.
From there, music builds complexity: patterns of pitch, rhythm, melodic contour, harmonic tension, formal arcs. But the emotional power often starts at the bottom, in the raw material of sound—in the friction of a bow on string, the breath in a phrase, the decay of a final note.
This layered complexity—this web of sound—is what gives music its vast expressive range. And unlike language, which often requires interpretation, these building blocks reach us before we have time to think. We just feel them. A shriek shocks us into action in a way that reading the word “alert” does not.
The Breaking Point
As I explored this topic I was thinking about music that becomes so abstract that it’s difficult to feel anything about it. It’s too difficult to decipher, there seems to be no emotional element tied to it…it just has people lost. So, perhaps abstraction isn’t infinite – or at least infinitely mining the depths of communication. There’s a breaking point. Lose connection with what you are trying to communicate in the music and I think you lose contact. The signal dissolves into noise with little to no communication. (To be clear, I’m not referring to “noise music” because I believe there is something that can be unlocked when listening to this genre of music.)
I always pick on Milton Babbit, a serialist composer who wrote some music deemed “paper music”. That means it is more viable to be “read” or “imagined” in someone’s head through their eyes rather than played (though challenging, the music is playable! See the clip below). If the music is only “heard” in one’s head, I actually think this takes a step back on the abstraction level because now it is experienced through reading (like text) not sonically. This is for sure more abstract than language, but perhaps not as abstract as sound. Though, as a music theorist, Babbit’s music may be intellectually interesting I think it pushes abstraction to a point where most people find it difficult to sit through.
This can happen in literature and language as well. The texts get pushed too far and so specialized or obscure they isolate rather than connect. Visual art pushed too far can become so minimal or chaotic it no longer invites engagement.
So where is the line? Why does one abstract phrase crack open our hearts, while another falls flat?
The answer, I believe, lies in balance.
The Sweet Spot
If your goal as an artist or creator is to communicate something about humanity or the universe then I believe somewhere between the literal and the unintelligible is a sweet spot. It’s where communication becomes not just functional, but meaningful. Where metaphor resonates. Where a melody breaks your heart. Where a single word—”home,” “forgive,” “stay”—lands with the weight of a life behind it.
In this space, abstraction works not because it obscures reality, but because it distills it. It removes the clutter of specifics to make room for the universal. It gives the listener space to bring their own story to the moment.
I’ve come to believe this is where music lives.
It doesn’t need to say what it means.
It creates a space where meaning can emerge—personal, unspoken, true.
That’s why music often means more than words—because it doesn’t talk about the feeling. It is the feeling.
This is especially true when we give ourselves permission to listen openly to what is offered, rather than bringing judgment.
Other Realms of Abstraction
This pattern—of deeper meaning emerging through more abstraction—shows up in other domains too. In mathematics, for instance, abstraction doesn’t reduce clarity; it deepens it. As equations grow more abstract—imaginary numbers, non-Euclidean geometry, quantum mechanics—they often probe closer to the hidden structures of reality. The abstraction helps us touch truths we can’t see.
In spirituality, symbols and rituals gain power not because they are literal, but because they point beyond themselves—to ideas and feelings too vast for words.
Abstraction, done well, isn’t an escape from the real. It’s a doorway into it.
Final Thoughts…For Now
Abstraction, when skillfully used, is not a detour away from meaning. It’s a path into the interior—into what cannot be said directly. But only when there’s enough shared context, enough human resonance, to make the leap.
Strip away too little, and you say nothing new. Strip away too much, and you say nothing at all. But hit the right note—the right word, the right tone—and you don’t just communicate. You connect.
Each communication method has its time and place. If you want to point out which fruit to pick, you probably don’t want to communicate that via a novel or concerto – just point! I’m not saying music is the “best” form of communication, but what I’m saying is:
Music, in all its abstraction, finds the space between language and emotion.
And in that space, it often says what words cannot.That’s the art.
That’s why music means more than words.
I’ve written a short book for composers that explores how music is organized and the roles it can play across the globe. The book is called Formative Forces in Sound. If you are interested, it’s available on Amazon here for $0.99 www.amazon.com/formativeforcesinsound