Future of music (part 1)

[ll_billym]

Mathematically there is a finite amount of different combinations of musical notes and there is a much less amount of of notes that sound good together.  Will there be a time when all the different tunes have been used up? And if so, any idea when this will be?

[ezapf]

Great question! I love to hear new music because I am always amazed that someone was able to come up with something new (and I get tired of the same old stuff for the last 30 years).

Sorry I can't answer your question but I hope someone will.

[newtron]

I wouldn't be surprised if the all of the different combinations of notes have already been used.  If you listen to any modern pop music, all the riffs being used  are definitely not original.  Fornunately, there is much more to music than just a sequence of notes.  There's beat, different instruments, different styles of playing those sequences of notes, etc.  So I think music will keep evolving, which is good because I love to hear new music.  One thing I've noticed is that if you listen to just one style of music over a long period of time, the music does start to stagnate and sound the same.  I personally like music that incorporates different styles of music into one song, resulting is some wierd crazy combos - very cool!   

[Gav1122]

Yeah, I've thought about this before. Dave Navarro, when questioned in an interview about similarites between his song, and another said 'Theres only 12 notes so alot of things are gonna sound similar'. I'm sure the combination of notes used in simple melodies ran out shortly after the concept of music was devised. But this isnt really that important.

The central focus of music, most popular music anyway is the voice. And, in a glorious affirmation of the beauty of humanity, there is no limit to what a voice can sound like or convey. This cannot be reigned in, or mathematically calculated, and two people are alike, so no 2 voices are alike, so we'll never have heard everything. 

As for music itself, it seems to progress as technology progresses. So now, when we're most definitely in a computer age, a vast amount of chart music has an electronic element in it somewhere. Maybe as technology reaches a plateau or whatever, musical ideas and genres will stop progressing.

Sorry, I seem to have rambled.

[BillyBB]

Around 1992