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If you think music repeats itself and that some songs sound exactly the freaking same, there could be a reason for that (well, other than piss poor artists being gobbled up by the machine): there’s a finite limitation on how different songs can be. There is? Yep, says MATHS.
The thinking is that there are a finite number of tones our ears can distinguished and a few notes in common in different songs can make the song sound similar. So will we ever reach a point where every melody has been recorded already? Watch the video and let maths figure it out for you. [YouTube]
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I opened the video, he just reminds me of an Apple user, he mentioned iTunes, I switched off lol. Apple users on Youtube all just have the same mannerism’s and sound the same, they always look gay too lol.
That’s offensive to gays, suggesting they looks like Apple users!
Oh dear. lol indeed!
Um hes an educational presenter, thats what they all sound like, and he was using iTunes as an example; he then also used others.
I guess you are an idiot, idiots always dismiss things quickly.
I remember thinking about this when I was young, and had just learnt of the interconnectedness of music and math. These days I just figure that soon enough, to be “different”, new music will have to be a series of random notes with no attempt made to be pleasing to the ear, rather than just sounding that way.
I think it could be said that in today’s music “no attempt made to be pleasing to the ear” applies to a fair amount of it. Looking at you, dubstep
But it is pleasing on the ear, just not in the way you desire – the Beatles, Stones, Zepplin were all tarred with the same brush in the past – yet few say that today, why? Because music is constantly evolving and changing while humans tend to get stuck and fixated on what was current then they were a teenager, which leads to the conclusion that we shouldn’t judge others standards by our own limitations.
I recall thinking about this also as a kid, and I said to some old music type that the world will run out of music and he just laughed at me – the issue is music isn’t static, you play today’s fav song to someone 100 years ago and they wouldn’t get it – this is just regarding tune, forgetting tone, beat, tempo, etc. And this purely based around western scales of music that are technically redundant in a digital age – far more to discover than we have already.
But there are a limited number of tones and durations and unless the human race changes quite considerably we aren’t going to learn to enjoy the totally random mixtures of these which make up the bulk of the possible combinations, so we will run up against the wall at some point. Fortunately, the rate of recycling in music has risen in correlation to the drop in musical talent displayed by chart musicians so we aren’t using up this resource as fast as we were.
I understand what you are saying, and I generally agree with the wisdom of Darrell Jones. But if you just look the single note C across 1 bar you have anything from 1 whole bar of a C note to a bunch of demisemiquaver and anything and everything between, demisemiquaver on then demisemiquaver off. Then you also consider the whole evolution of music going from scales with 5 notes to 8 notes in a few hundred years I really don’t think we have started to explore the possibilities and limits of scales. I think each generation has these thoughts about all things reaching limits, music, film, technology, fashion – I’d actually say fashion is more devoid of ideas right now than any creative output is – this is the only time in history you can go out wearing something from 5 years ago and still look the same as everyone else – very odd.
“I generally agree with the wisdom of Darrell Jones” – That way madness lies.
well, of course. we can see almost identical melodies in many tunes as it is. combine that with limited musical talent with many bands and artists. for example how many can only use a few chords to make riffs. how many just use basic 4-4 etc.
get some real musicians in playing poly-rhythms and you can stretch it out a fair bit more.
May I refer you to Quinn’s Symphonic Conundrum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton) which covered this subject from an IP point of view some years ago. A while back I calculated that the capacity to store every single octave melody possible would only require storage in the yottabyte range, so we are getting feasibly close.
Hang on, couldn’t you just have a longer melody or change tunes using different timings and rhythms, won’t sound as nice but until there is a limit applied to time there cant be a limited number of songs.
I think I’ve seen this video before…