How and when did music begin? This is a difficult question with a complex answer. In a way perhaps music was not created but discovered. It must have always existed in a nascent form which took its own a shape in different cultures across the world at different times in their development. This explains why the diatonic scale is the same in any form of music that developed anywhere in the world, be it in the East or the West at different times.
Music certainly predates the written word and may even predate language. The trill of a bird, the rhythm created by the knocking on a tree trunk by a monkey and the rise and fall of the wind in the trees were perhaps the first musical sounds that man heard. Human musical sounds may have begun as been a result of imitation. Most certainly as in the animal world they were an early means of communication – the jungle beat.
The music of any culture is a reflection of several aspects of that culture and does not bloom in isolation. It is a nurtured by social, economic, historic and emotional circumstances prevailing at the time of its composition. The attitude towards music and its players, the situations in which it was played or listened to and the emotions it expressed all varied according to the place and times. Certainly the music of a land is influenced by its weather and often inspired by it.
Every note of music we listen to has its overtones or other notes that go with it. It is this that helps us differentiate between the sounds of the piano or the flute playing the same note .It is said that the three universal notes, namely the octave, fourth and fifth notes and their three strongest overtones can cover the entire range of diatonic notes –Doh Re Mi …or Saa Re Ga … By weeding out the weakest of the overtones we get the pentatonic scale
The earliest known song was written 4000 years ago using diatonic scale. The oldest musical instrument found is a 45,000 year old ‘flute’ made from the femur bone of a bear. It was hollow and had four symmetrical holes at equal distances from each other one end.