The name of the lowest sound, huangzhong also implied musical correctness.

The Oxford Companion to Music describes three interrelated uses of the term music theory.

The first is the rudiments, that are needed to understand music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars views on music from antiquity to the present; the third a sub-topic of musicology that seeks to define processes and general principles in music.

The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built.

Because of the ever-expanding conception of what constitutes music (see Definition of music ), a more inclusive definition could be that music theory is the consideration of any sonic phenomena, including silence, as they relate to music.

This is not an absolute guideline; for example, the study of music in the Quadrivium liberal arts university curriculum that was common in medieval Europe was an abstract system of proportions that was carefully studied at a distance from actual musical practice.

However, this medieval discipline became the basis for tuning systems in later centuries, and it is generally included in modern scholarship on the history of music theory.

The development, preservation, and transmission of music theory in this sense may be found in oral and written music-making traditions, musical instruments, and other artifacts.

For example, ancient instruments from Mesopotamia, China, 4 and prehistoric sites around the world reveal details about the music they produced and potentially something of the musical theory that might have been used by their makers (see History of music and Musical instrument ).

In ancient and living cultures around the world, the deep and long roots of music theory are clearly visible in instruments, oral traditions, and current music making.

Many cultures, at least as far back as ancient Mesopotamia and ancient China, have also considered music theory in more formal ways such as written treatises and music notation.

Practical and scholarly traditions overlap, as many practical treatises about music place themselves within a tradition of other treatises, which are cited regularly just as scholarly writing cites earlier research.

Etymologically, music theory is an act of contemplation of music, from the Greek, a looking at, viewing, contemplation, speculation, theory, also a sight, a spectacle.

A person who researches, teaches, or writes articles about music theory is a music theorist.

University study, typically to the MA or PhD level, is required to teach as a tenure-track music theorist in a US or Canadian university.

Methods of analysis include mathematics, graphic analysis, and especially analysis enabled by Western music notation.

Comparative, descriptive, statistical, and other methods are also used.

Music theory textbooks, especially in the United States of America, often include elements of musical acoustics, considerations of musical notation, and techniques of tonal composition ( harmony and counterpoint ), among other topics.

See for instance Paleolithic flutes, Gd, and Anasazi flute.

Further, All the Mesopotamian texts about music are united by the use of a terminology for music that, according to the approximate dating of the texts, was in use for over 1,000 years.

They include more than 2800 words describing theories and practices of music pitches of the time.

The bells produce two intertwined pentatonic scales three tones apart with additional pitches completing the chromatic scale.

Twelve refers to the number of pitches on which the scales can be constructed.

The Lshi chunqiu from about 239 BCE recalls the legend of Ling Lun.

On order of the Yellow Emperor, Ling Lun collected twelve bamboo lengths with thick and even nodes.

Blowing on one of these like a pipe, he found its sound agreeable and named it huangzhong, the Yellow Bell.

Ling Lun cut his bamboo pipes to match the pitches of the phoenixes, producing twelve pitch pipes in two sets: six from the male phoenix and six from the female: these were called the ll or later the shierl.

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