Music theory must try to deal with emergent qualities, such as contour, texture, timbre and tone semantics, and this necessitates recognizing musical objects as holistic entities. Representations by shapes can be useful here, as shapes are inherently holistic. The idea of shapes is seen as applicable to several aspects and modalities at work in musical imagery, providing images at various levels of resolution of both the unfolding sounds and the sound-producing actions. The paradigm of shapes is seen as well supported by several contemporary domains of thought, but in need of extensive development as an alternative to more abstract approaches in music theory.