To explore the aesthetic features of folk music, this paper takes the radial basis neural network model as the basis and takes the zither piece “Flowing Water” and “Spring River Flower and Moonlight Night” as the examples, and unearths and analyzes the examples to understand the harmonious beauty, unique beauty and contextual beauty under the aesthetic characteristics. The results show that among the harmonious beauty, the average percentage of the characteristic vocabulary tranquility of the zither piece “Flowing Water” is 80.34% after learning by the radial-based neural network model, and the remaining percentages are 69.56%, 85.35%, 80.27% and 86.30% respectively, which shows that the radial-based neural network-based model can well resolve the characteristic vocabulary in the music through training and learning This shows that the radial basis neural network-based model can, through training and learning, well parse out the characteristic words in the music, and then explore the aesthetic features of the music. From the viewpoint of unique beauty, the musicalization of poetry and the poetization of music have been the main themes from ancient times to the present, with changes of 838% increase and 74.91% decrease, respectively, which also shows that the current degree of our attention to national music is not as much as that of the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties, and we should strengthen the excavation of national music and create a unique humanistic environment. From the perspective of the beauty of the context, 67.81% of those who listened to “Spring River Moon Night Song” thought that the rhythm and context were full, and 79.48% thought that the theme melody and performance method were eye-catching, but there were still voices of dissatisfaction. Therefore, with the radial basis neural network model, we can intuitively see the aesthetic characteristics of folk music, and we can improve folk music according to its shortcomings so that folk music can be further renewed through a new interpretation.