Informal Music Making and Well-Being

Abstract

In order to define the nature of informal music, specifically music making and its multidimensional connections with one’s well-being, a brief history of how music making is understood is first offered in order to delineate associated research and music-learning models. It is hoped that this will provide some detailed definition of the contemporary context of music making, so that the approach of “Universal Design,” among others, in the making of music might be understood as a paradigm shift that might have benefits for well-being. Informal music making is in short defined as categorically separated from formal music making, but their overlapping and dynamic relationship is nonetheless recognized and also further expanded upon. Informal music making is also aligned to understandings of the intuitivist and rationalist composer.