Future of music.

[urbanleg]

Hi,

Ive heard that some reaserchers found that music (chords , notes) is actually

math based - in other words:

melodies that actually sounds good are following a certain patterns (of chords and notes). that idea fit's well in my opinion since not anyone who takes a guitar and starts fretting can make any "pure" melody that pleases the ear.

 

now for my question:

 

since music* is math based - and therfore there are finite ways to make real music, and since every song is finite** in time

isn't it inevatable that in lets say 100,000 years*** from now - there wouldnt be any way to create new music that hasnt been created before?

 

* by music i actually refereing to all songs that actually based on "nice" chords \ notes that "pleases" the human ear

 

**nowdays a song is 4:00 in average i think

 

*** assuming ofcourse the human race still exist and creating music

[Sisyphus]

"Some researchers" = Pythagoras, btw

 

Anyway, yes, if you put constraints on the number and duration of notes and on duration of melody, then there are a finite number of possibilities. Finite but ridiculously large. We're not going to run out. And if we did, it wouldn't really matter, since what's on the page is just the bare outline of any musical performance. Plus, it's not like it's remotely possible for any one person to hear every possible melody in a lifetime, so finding the good ones is still a worthwhile pursuit.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It's not just about the melody -- it's about the arrangement of instruments, the lyrics, the beat, the improvisation, and the performance itself. There's a ludicrously huge number of possible combinations of each.

 

Of course, lyrics seem to be the endangered ones. There aren't many identical sets of lyrics around, but a lot of songs do seem to talk about exactly the same basic topics. But the Beatles solved that problem long ago: use gibberish!

[cameron marical]

Plus new instruments in the future.

[insane_alien]

In a 3 minute song(recorded at 44.1kHz sampling and in stereo, the same as redbook cd) there are 15,876,000 samples each of these samples is a 16 bit number.

 

there are 65536 (2^16) possible values for each sample and 65536^15876000 (2^254016000) possible combinations for a 3 minute song.

 

this is an astoundingly massive number. and while most of it will be random noise, there is still an amazing amount of room for music of some description.

 

i don't think we'll run out in the lifetime of the universe. especially considering songs can be of lengths much longer than 3 minutes which increases the options exponentially. adding on a single sample increases the possibilities by 65536.