The Problems is a collection of questions on a host of different topics, each provided (sometimes rather tentatively) with an answer or answers. Questions belonging to the same general area are grouped together in ‘books’, two of which are relevant here. Book XI addresses problems to do with the production and reception of sound, particularly vocal sound, and Book XIX considers questions on the subject of music (there is inevitably some overlap). It seems likely that the work was compiled by students in the Lyceum during and after Aristotle's time, mainly in the late fourth century and the early third, both as a record of research and as an aid to further enquiry. The way in which the solutions to the puzzles are expressed seems exploratory rather than doctrinaire, and though the question-and-answer format is similar, the tone of the collection is quite different from that of the pedagogic ‘catechisms’ of later antiquity, exemplified in harmonics by the writings of Ptolemaïs (see 9.10–9.12) and Bacchius. Even within one book, the arguments and explanations presented are not all from the same hand. Sometimes we are offered alternative explanations for the same phenomenon. Often the theories put forward in answer to one question are incompatible with those suggested in the context of another.

Many of the problems discussed in Book XI are closely related to Aristotle's investigations of the way vocal sounds are produced, and how the pitch of a vocal utterance is physiologically determined.