Perception of sound and thus music is inherently a pattern-recognition process. A pattern is created in the relationship among two or more elements. Patterns emerge as we compare one element with another, becoming aware of similarities and dissimilarities.

Patterns may range from easily observed repetition of single ingredients to highly complex (chaotic) arrangements beyond our capacity to readily perceive underlying organizing principles. Our brains themselves have evolved from initially simple and successively more complex molecular and cellular patterns which shape our perceptions. Nothing we experience can be devoid of some kind of patterning.

Traditional Western European music as developed along lines which favor fairly readily perceivable organizing principles, with a preference for balancing factors of unity and variety. Given this direction, all us are more or less conditioned to respond more positively to patterns we can quickly describe, 4-beat measures, 4-measure phrases, etc. Inherent in this approach is the necessity to control the various elements. The means by which sonic elements may be controlled determines the style of a piece of music and may come to be associated with a specific composer. The logical extension of control to its limits led composer/author Eric Salzman in his book on 20th-century music to refer to composers like Milton Babbitt as "ultra-rationalists."

Musical experimentalists on the other hand have throughout history tended to explore patterns which are harder to perceive or to describe. Often, though not always, this approach has led to abandoning control as we normally think of it, in order to allow for spontaneous and seemingly random events to occur. Eric Salzman refers to John Cage as a leading proponent of this direction and refers to him and his followers as an "anti-rationalists."

Whatever your particular predilection may be, your experience of music in all its variety is shaped by your grasp of the way one sound relates to another. Music is patterns of sound, ranging from simple to complex and everything in between.