Music is made up of many different elements including melody, harmony, texture and structure. Each musical genre places a different emphasis on these elements and combines them in a distinct way. For instance, classical music tends to emphasise harmony, orchestration and structure while other forms such as hip hop work primarily with rhythms, textures and lyrics.
While each world music tradition is effectively its own musical style, in the vast majority of traditions the emphasis falls heavily on melody. Traditional music is often at its core essentially solo — for a single melodic instrument or voice. While you can sometimes hear the music in full band arrangements, or played on large, non-portable, polyphonic instruments, it's important to remember that, at it roots, this is music that can be played by one person, ideally with an instrument that can be slipped into your pocket or slung over your back.
In many cases traditional music is used to accompany dance, and instrumental tunes are often tightly bound to a particular dance type. This is particularly true of the Indo-European tradition and you might hear a tune referred to as a reel (Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, the US), horo (Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Israel), bourée (France), or tarantella (Italy). Each of these traditional tunes has a unique structure and rhythm, designed to accompany a specific type of dance.
Because of their connection with dance, traditional tunes are often quite repetitive and feature relentless melodic movement. The lack of accompaniment also adds to this sense of endless repetition. While other melodic forms such as classical, pop and rock often intersperse sections of busy and sparse melody to provide variation, and to create space to allow the accompaniment to come to the fore, in traditional forms the melody is expected to do all the work, all the time. Traditional tunes also tend to be very rhythmic with the rhythm generally completely integrated into the melody, rather than provided as a separate element by percussion.
Traditional music can also use unique musical scales, quite different to the standard Western scale, which may sound strange to the unaccustomed listener. The equal-tempered scale involves a number of tuning compromises so that instruments can play equally well in different keys, but since much traditional music is restricted to a small number of keys, equal tempered scales are not necessary. While most music students are familiar with major and minor scales — and most Western music is considered to be built from these two musical palettes — traditional musicians draw from a much broader palette of modal scales, such as dorian, aeolian, lydian and phrygian.
Many traditions take this variation further and break away from the limitations of the semitone, using notes that are lost between the cracks of a piano keyboard including Indian, Arabic and some Swedish music. These traditions make use of microtones: intervals less than a semitone. In Bali, each gamelan orchestra uses its own distinct scale — instruments for each orchestra need to be made as a set, which can't be mixed and matched.
Even Australian bush music can play with slightly non-standard scales. Traditional players (if their instruments allow them) often avoid the modern equal-tempered scale and use older ‘natural’ tunings. This is commonly interpreted by listeners outside of the tradition as being ‘out of tune’, whereas it's really just music using a different tuning system.
