Native American music is another form of music in the United States. Among the Pueblo, songs are monophonic, sung by groups and accompanied by a single drum. Their songs are a way for them to communicate with the spirits and their ancestors. Songs accompany all ceremonies. Drumming is important and represents the heartbeat of the deities.
Rattles represent rain and the two combined create the tempo.
The music is always sung and is almost always used as an accompaniment to dances. The first truly American form of music is the psalmody of the Protestant Calvinist churches developed by the colonists. The unique method that they developed for notating their psalms developed out of efforts to teach entire congregations to read music. This technique came to be known as shape-note singing. The notes that were used in notation were in the shape of triangles, circles, squares and diamonds, with each shape representing a step in the solfege system.