Is it possible to 'run out' of music?

[Miss Zippy]

As there are only a limited number of musical notes, which, presumably, can only be arranged in a finite number of ways, how come we haven't exhausted all the musical composition possibilities yet? Apologies if this is a question a 6 year would ask, but it puzzles me.

[andy hughes]

In theory it is possible to run out musical note forms, but the infinite potential of key changes, tempos, instrumentation and interperetation mean that few people are sued for direct plaigarism. Famous cases like those of George Harrison, and more recently Robbie Wiliams are pretty rare, but similarities are very common. Part of the appeal of msuic to the senses of the listener is a degree of expectation, usually coverd by rhythm and chord changes, but occasionally by actual use of a known music pattern.

[skelly]

I suppose eventualy you will run out of new tunes, but I'm not really sure how long this will take. On the same note, If you locked 100 monkeys in a room with typewriters, eventualy one of them will write a novel! Surely not??????

[Miss Zippy]

Most informative Skelly!! :-)

[xyzzyplugh]

No, skelly. Their are 26 letters, tis true but books are written with Words, not letters. So your comparison is false. Instead of comparing 88 musical notes with 26 letters You should compare them with 400,000 English words; the permutations of that is unfathomable, even by monkeys. And monkeys don't write the music anyway, apart from 'The Monkees' who did write a smidgeon.

[skelly]

I would't worry about it. Status Quo have been using the same musical composition for 30 years!

[sft42]

Well....i think xyzzy asked this a while ago and the answer i gave then seems to have changed very little....while it's possible to run out of a combination of notes with the range of genres of music that these can be applied to along with differing tempos, phrasing and length of the notes should ensure that we don't start repeating ourselves musically for a good while yet....though if you let Oasis run music we'll all be doing rehashed Beatles tunes mixed in with kiddies TV programme themes.

[sft42]

Well....i think xyzzy asked this a while ago and the answer i gave then seems to have changed very little....while it's possible to run out of a combination of notes with the range of genres of music that these can be applied to along with differing tempos, phrasing and length of the notes should ensure that we don't start repeating ourselves musically for a good while yet....though if you let Oasis run music we'll all be doing rehashed Beatles tunes mixed in with kiddies TV programme themes.

[map08]

Try "The Science of Discworld 2", which, although sounding ridiculous, is actually a quite informative science book. It's by Terry Pratchett, and has a good section on the total number of different tunes that can be played using an eight note pattern. Of course, what must be asked is how many actually sound decent!

[Miss Zippy]

Thanks map08 - for a different reason!! I've been meaning to make time to start reading again for ages and you've just reminded me that I have yet to read all the Discworld novels (i've only read Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic).