New Tunes - Is There An Endless Supply?

[Guest MacPhee]

Consider how many tunes, or melodies, have been produced in the last (say) 100 years.

 

There must be hundreds of thousands of them. So the question arises: can new tunes go on on being produced forever. Or will the supply eventually dry up - in the sense, that no-one will be able to write a tune, that someone else hasn't already written.

 

After all, there are only a limited number of readily-distinguishable musical notes. And these notes can't just be strung together at random. If the notes are to make a "tune", they must have an appealing pattern to them. How many of these patterns can there be?

 

In past years, there were cases when the writer of a tune, sued someone for writing a tune that sounded the same. Like in the famous case of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" getting legally bashed by another songwriter's "He's So Fine".

 

Does that sort of thing still happen nowadays. Or do modern tunes have so many similar predecessors, that no legal case could now be brought.

 

Is it possible to give a scientific estimate of the total number of possible tunes?

[bravox]

Consider how many tunes, or melodies, have been produced in the last (say) 100 years.

 

There must be hundreds of thousands of them. So the question arises: can new tunes go on on being produced forever. Or will the supply eventually dry up - in the sense, that no-one will be able to write a tune, that someone else hasn't already written.

Spotify claims to have millions of tracks. Surely the human ear imposes limits on how much music can be written, but the brain imposes an even lower limit on how much music we can *remember*. You can spend your whole life listening to music and never notice much similarity between two songs, mostly because you can't keep too many tunes in your head.

 

After all, there are only a limited number of readily-distinguishable musical notes.

There is more to music than notes (pitch), there is also tempo, rhythym, harmony, dynamics, and form. All those things affect our perception, changing a single one of them often makes a known piece of music sound completely different.

 

It's hard to calculate how much music can be composed taking all those factors into account, especially since we don't know which combinations work (that is, after all, the job of composers)

 

In past years, there were cases when the writer of a tune, sued someone for writing a tune that sounded the same. Like in the famous case of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" getting legally bashed by another songwriter's "He's So Fine".

It's easier to win the lottery than to compose a piece of music someone has composed before. What happens often is that a composer hears a piece, forgets about it, but their subconscious keeps it. Then one day it reappears in their mind as something original. Happens quite often.

 

Does that sort of thing still happen nowadays. Or do modern tunes have so many similar predecessors, that no legal case could now be brought.

There are specific criteria to consider a piece of music as plagiarism. I can't remember exactly, and I suppose it changes between countries, but it's something like "all notes must match for X number of bars".

 

Is it possible to give a scientific estimate of the total number of possible tunes?

Consider a very simple tune, consisting of four bars of four quarter notes each, and each note being one out of 18 (accounting for two octaves plus two chromatic notes). Mathematically there are 121,439,531,096,594,251,794 (121 quintillion!) of those combinations, and this is a very simple tune. Sure, not all of those are pleasant to the ear, let's say we can only like one out of a million, then we have "only" about 100 trillion tunes.

 

But, remember, those are very simple tunes, we can spice them up by using more or less notes per bar, more or less bars, different time signatures, different harmonies, and so on. Also, the refrain of a song usually consists of four groups of four bars, so that adds up.

 

Based on the above I would guess there are maybe septillions, octillions, or some unspeakable number of possible songs. No reason to worry about running out of tunes :)

Edited March 29, 2012 by bravox

[Qfwfq]

What happens often is that a composer hears a piece, forgets about it, but their subconscious keeps it. Then one day it reappears in their mind as something original. Happens quite often.

Exactly, just like M. René Djam Afame.

 

 

A. K. A. Chant du Ralliment