Has all the Good Music Been Played/Copied/Completed?

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ult-right said:
There are still infinite possibilities for good music.
Well, technically, this is wrong. Music has a finite alphabet and a finite set of harmonic rules. We can also limit the duration of a piece of music by, say 5 hours - if we include operas. All in all this is a finite set of possibilities, the more if we restrict time to say 4 minutes of a good song. And we cannot play arbitrary fast, so there is a given limit of possible songs.
 
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every possible one octave melody has been written and copyrighted:

To determine the finite nature of melodies, Riehl and Rubin developed an algorithm that recorded every possible 8-note, 12-beat melody combo. This used the same basic tactic some hackers use to guess passwords: Churning through every possible combination of notes until none remained. Riehl says this algorithm works at a rate of 300,000 melodies per second.
Once a work is committed to a tangible format, it's considered copyrighted. And in MIDI format, notes are just numbers

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain
 
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This is a really weird view. Trap practically didn't really exist a few years ago, it's a recent genre. So clearly new genres of music still come about. That any new music is not "good" is a personal opinion which speaks more to the taste of the person making that claim (some people just like the music they have gotten used to better, so naturally any new music that doesn't resemble it will be perceived as "bad") or perhaps to their ignorance of new music rather than the world having ran out of new music.
 
fresh_42 said:
Well, technically, this is wrong. Music has a finite alphabet and a finite set of harmonic rules. We can also limit the duration of a piece of music by, say 5 hours - if we include operas. All in all this is a finite set of possibilities, the more if we restrict time to say 4 minutes of a good song. And we cannot play arbitrary fast, so there is a given limit of possible songs.
Right, there is a finite set of harmonic rules. In a particular genre of classical music. You'd be hard pressed to find an example of modern music that strictly follows these rules. For all practical purposes it truly is infinite.
 
AndreasC said:
For all practical purposes it truly is infinite.
It is not. This is simply wrong. Notes, duration, and human frequencies to hear are all limited, hence you cannot have infinitely many words over this finite alphabet. Rap isn't music, it's speech. And all pieces which do not follow classical harmonics are basically not popular, e.g. Schönberg.
 
fresh_42 said:
It is not. This is simply wrong. Notes, duration, and human frequencies to hear are all limited, hence you cannot have infinitely many words over this finite alphabet. Rap isn't music, it's speech. And all pieces which do not follow classical harmonics are basically not popular, e.g. Schönberg.
Rap is music
 
Two different issues here - new musical styles vs possible new pieces or songs. For example, is a Bossa Nova or hip-hop version of, say Summertime, new music?

If someone today writes a great motet in Renaissance polyphony or big band swing, nobody cares and would likely not consider this ‘new music’. Questions about the combinatorial limits within a particular style then become irrelevant. Who cares if the potential number of ‘unique’ pieces that conform to the conventions of Baroque trio sonatas is 10^6 or 10^^6?

with new styles you get all the combinatorial possibilities of existing styles - say Mongolian throat singing trip hop - as well as new ones based on subtle changes to rhythm, timbre and/or texture - like Bossa Nova vs Swing or black metal vs death metal. Supposed limitations of harmonic or melodic possibilities become irrelevant, a djent version of Garota de Ipanema (or something else with substantially the same chord progression and melody) becomes 'new music'
 
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fresh_42 said:
Rap isn't music, it's speech.
Sorry, but this is kind of ridiculous. It's like saying "guitarists aren't musicians, they're just scratching strings" or "drummers aren't musicians, they are simply banging on metal and membranes".

Also this isn't just about rap. Anyone who has studied classical harmony knows that most modern music breaks its rules all the time. Hell, even classical music broke the standardised rules frequently enough, but modern music barely follows the rules at all. Which is, you know, why it doesn't sound the same, and why music changes over the years. By your use of the word "harmonics" I can tell that you are probably not a musician and not educated in music theory, so please don't make statements such as "rap isn't music", they are pretty offensive to many people and akin to statements like "theoretical physics isn't REAL physics because it's all about theories".

As for it not being TECHNICALLY infinite, well, yeah, I guess if you have a million musicians working 24/7 to churn out music until we go extinct you might manage to cover every "unique" piece that could conceivably be considered music ever, idk. It doesn't matter all that much. For all practical purposes, it is infinite.
 
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AndreasC said:
As for it not being TECHNICALLY infinite, well, yeah, I guess if you have a million musicians working 24/7 to churn out music until we go extinct you might manage to cover every "unique" piece that could conceivably be considered music ever, idk.
This is the theoretical limitation, hence finiteness. The real possibilities are much more limited, if we restrict ourselves to reasonable constraints: Say we want to write a standard pop song. Then we have about 3 octaves, 7 scales, 5 values and all in 4/4, 20 seconds for the motive, 40 seconds for the refrain, 4 minutes total. This is what we really have for a composition. And I guess the scales don't even count as being different at court.

This is very far from infinite.
 
BWV said:
Rap is music
People trying to support OR deny this are missing the meaning of "Rap".
 
symbolipoint said:
People trying to support OR deny this are missing the meaning of "Rap".

And this shows you don’t understand the meaning of “music”
 
BWV said:
And this shows you don’t understand the meaning of “music”
WRONG MEANING! Whether it is or is not music is not the purpose of Rap. To classify as or not as being music completely misses the point.
 
symbolipoint said:
WRONG MEANING! Whether it is or is not music is not the purpose of Rap. To classify as or not as being music completely misses the point.

not aware that the point of hip hop was being somehow beyond any definition of music. Rap musicians from what I have seen consider themselves musicians and make music.
 
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BWV said:
not aware that the point of hip hop was being somehow beyond any definition of music. Rap musicians from what I have seen consider themselves musicians and make music.
I cannot stop thinking that the Catholic Church is rapping since centuries.
 
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fresh_42 said:
This is the theoretical limitation, hence finiteness. The real possibilities are much more limited, if we restrict ourselves to reasonable constraints: Say we want to write a standard pop song. Then we have about 3 octaves, 7 scales, 5 values and all in 4/4, 20 seconds for the motive, 40 seconds for the refrain, 4 minutes total. This is what we really have for a composition. And I guess the scales don't even count as being different at court.

This is very far from infinite.
Well good thing music isn't restricted to a single genre then!

But even within that genre, let's reexamine if it really is that restrictive.

I'll (maybe) give you 3 octaves for the vocals only. But there is no such restriction for the music.

7 scales? I don't understand, in what sense are there 7 scales? I really don't know where that number comes from. You can pick one of 12 possible major scales for starters. Well, alright, they won't sound all that different because if you make a melody in C major and the same melody in D major, there won't be any significant difference, it's going to be the same thing but higher. Regardless, you can shift to a different tonality mid song, in fact many pop songs do that. You don't have to use a major scale either. Maybe you want to use the pentatonic minor (very common in blues/rock influenced stuff). Or maybe you want to use the aeolian aka natural minor mode (common choice for sadder songs). Or maybe you want to raise the 7th degree of the aeolian and get the harmonic minor to get a darker/more "eastern"/more classical colour (it was the most common minor in classical music), again a somewhat common choice even in pop, you can hear that in some Billie Eilish songs. Or maybe you want a brighter minor scale, like the dorian, I heard it in a pop song very recently, don't remember who it was from. Santana famously used it frequently. Maybe you want to use mixolydian, which sounds similar to the major scale but maybe a bit bluesier. Maybe you want something even darker and use phrygian, or maybe phrygian dominant to get that flamenco sound. At times some people go really crazy and use some more exotic scales like the double harmonic major/Arabian scale to really give it an "Eastern" sound. You can even throw in a brief whole tone scale passage in there to make it dreamy/disorienting, and you can have one of these scales for your verse and a different for your chorus, or even for the bridge.

5 values? I'm not sure what you mean by that either. Are you saying that you can only have whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes? That's not exactly true, there are also 32nds and I've even encountered 64ths. There are also triplets and quintuplets of quarters, 8ths, 16ths and even halfs sometimes. I have also seen 7-tuplets and 11-tuplets. You can also combine any value with other values any way you want. And sometimes people play things completely out of time to create a specific feel.

4/4? Why does it have to be in 4/4? I've heard many, many pop songs in 3/4, 6/8, etc. I've also heard pop songs in 9/8, or 7/8, or 5/4. I've heard many pop songs that change time signature half way through, or change tempo half way through.

20 seconds for the motive? Why? That's not necessary.

40 seconds for the refrain? Again, why? And why does there have to be a single refrain? There is even some pop songs with two or three choruses. I don't remember which song it was but I remember a My Chemical Romance (although that's not really a pop band for most people) song that had like 3 or 4 different sections that seemed like choruses, it is pretty unusual but it's not impossible to conceive of a song like that, even one that is shorter than 5 minutes (which is the only real restriction here).

You also say nothing about all the different timbres you can pick, or the different tempos, or the different ways you can combine melodies, or the ways you can add flourishes that don't belong in the scale you picked, or the drum beats, or the sound effects and loops, or spoken word passages, or rapping, or any of these things.

So as you can see there is plenty of room to play around. Sometimes stuff does sound very similar, but that is only because most music during any given time period in any given culture tries to conform to what is most popular at that time, so the same stuff gets repeated a lot. But you can only do that for so long before people get bored, and then someone comes and adds a new element that no one had thought before or had thought before people were ready for it, and music moves on in ways that can't be predicted.

If you have any doubts about any of that I can find examples of pop songs utilising any of these aspects pretty easily.
 
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fresh_42 said:
Have fun with your music!
This is silly. John Cage was deliberately trying to push the limits of what can be considered music. In a sense he was trolling the audience. Rap being music isn't controversial, only people who don't understand music and snobs still disagree.
 
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symbolipoint said:
WRONG MEANING! Whether it is or is not music is not the purpose of Rap. To classify as or not as being music completely misses the point.
I've heard of people saying rap is music. I've heard of people saying it isn't. But I've never heard anyone say it is in some sort of superposition of the two states. Certainly not rappers!
 
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AndreasC said:
I've heard of people saying rap is music. I've heard of people saying it isn't. But I've never heard anyone say it is in some sort of superposition of the two states. Certainly not rappers!
They might not have said it, but Gangster's Paradise is definitely a superposition. :cool:
 
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I haven't heard GZA from Wu Tang Clan's opinion on the issue though, he has an interest in physics so I imagine he might have an opinion.
 
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DennisN said:
Interesting calculations! (I haven't checked your calculations). It looks like you only included possible melodies. If you add the fact that each note can be a part of different harmonies, the possibilities of variations ought to dramatically increase.

As an example, an A note (flat, e.g. 440 Hz) can be combined with various chords and harmonies, e.g. D major, D minor, A major, A minor, F# minor etc, since A is a note in these chords. There are also various further chord variations that can be made in addition to the basic chords, by adding different notes.
The pitch 'A natural' is 440Hz ##-## 'A flat' is 415.330Hz ##-##one semitone below.
 
fresh_42 said:
Well, technically, this is wrong. Music has a finite alphabet and a finite set of harmonic rules. We can also limit the duration of a piece of music by, say 5 hours - if we include operas. All in all this is a finite set of possibilities, the more if we restrict time to say 4 minutes of a good song. And we cannot play arbitrary fast, so there is a given limit of possible songs.
Congratulations, @fresh_42 ##-## by your definitions that make music finite, you've just implicitly invented ##\mathbb R \text {eal}## music!
 
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PeroK said:
we've seen so much that it's really difficult to do something now that is truly revolutionary.
Hi Perok:

I mostly agree with you, but there is a subtle detail that is a bit different for me.

The emphasis for contemporary creativity is to create something stylistically different. The old great stuff had an important additional goal: to also be beautiful art. My personal idiosyncratic taste is that almost nothing after 1970 is beautiful. The last of beauty was the Beatles.

Regards,
Buzz
 
Buzz Bloom said:
My personal idiosyncratic taste is that almost nothing after 1970 is beautiful. The last of beauty was the Beatles.
Well you may have that opinion but it's not because artists no longer try to make something beautiful, it's just that you, personally, don't find what they make beautiful. Or maybe you just aren't aware of a lot of new music, that's also frequently the case with people with a blanket distaste of music after a certain period.
 
Buzz Bloom said:
The last of beauty was the Beatles.
C'mon, Queen and ABBA were at least as innovative and easy listening.
 
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sysprog said:
Congratulations, @fresh_42 by your definitions that make music finite, you've just implicitly invented Real music!
Well, we could take the Circle of fifths (see below) and assign complex numbers to the different keys.

600px-Circle_of_fifths_deluxe_4.svg.png

Melodies with only the notes A and Eb could thus be considered real, while melodies with only the notes C and Gb could be considered imaginary. More complex melodies would be considered complex. :smile:
 
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