Are we running out of possibilities?

[JimK]

The thread about supergroups got me to thinking: are we running out of possibilities with music? After all, there's only 12 notes in western music, so there's only so many things that can be done with them. People say that all the good band names have been taken. Has all the good music been written? Will there be no more supergroups because there's no music left to support them? Opinions please.

[Franknputer]

Actually, with 20-20k hearing range, you have about 10 octaves to work with, with 11 notes per octave. That would give you roughly 110 notes that you can harmonize with any other note; with 111 notes, (10 octaves +1 to close the last octave) that would give you somewhere around 12,210 possible two-note pairs. Adding a third note brings you up to 1,343,100 possible triads. Moving to a second triad would allow you 1,803,917,610,000 possible combinations; adding a third chord brings the total up to 2.422841741991e+18 possible three-chord progressions. And, of course, everyone knows that you only need 3 chords to make a rock song... :D

[Tedster]

There has been a lot of repetition. Here's an example...the first several notes of "Your Smiling Face" by James Taylor are nearly identical to "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" by Burt Bacharach. But, you take those several notes and put 'em in the middle of something different, and you've got, well, I guess, a different song. There's a tune out recently I hear that reminds me of the Flintstones theme "Flintstones, meet the Flintstons" (that part)...only a guy's just singing Ohh..oh oh ohhh... So, there is repetition. Maybe one of these days, we'll run out. Perhaps we already have, but no one remembers the 1860s songs that we're repeating. :D :D :D Hey, speaking of which, I just wrote a new song called "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"...hahahaha...

[JimK]

Well, I knew someone would do the math :) . But, isn't there 12 notes per octave? A,A#,B,C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#.

[JimK]

Oops, double post.

[Franknputer]

yeah, guess so :D - I was thinking of 7 scalar notes per octave...hey, I'm a musician, not a mathematician. :D so - 10 octaves x 12 notes +1 = 121 notes; 121 notes x 120 other notes = 14520 harmonies; (assuming you progress to a different note than the 1st one) 14520 harmonies x 120 3rd notes = 1,742,400 triads; 1,742,400 triads x 1,742,400 triads = 3,035,957,760,000 chordal movements; 3035957760000 chordal movements x 1742400 3rd triads = 9.21703952050422e+24 3-chord progressions. So - isn't that inspiring?? :freak:

[Tusker]

And that's within the Western scale. There are lots of Eastern scales we could get into that have 20 note per octave or more. You'd think with all this so called World Music we'd see a lot of that... but no. At present there is more exporting of the Western scale to developing country cultures than vise versa. We may destroy microtonality before we come to grips with it, as 3rd world musicians learn our harmonic languages and eschew their scales. I think the issue is genre homogeneity. We had previous periods of homogeneity and new forms of music busted them up. Let's say I could play those thousands of permutations but will anyone want to listen? I think we have run out of possibilities within the cultural definitions of pop music (3 minute song, 3 chords, verse-chorus, etc.) Not the larger constraints of the physics of the ear. But nobody's come up with a reason for people to migrate out of that codified, comfortable cloud of possibilities we call pop music. I'd like to make the cloud larger, but without a dramatic/social/moral reason for it....it's just twiddling.... more experimental rubbish. That's the dilemma of our present situation. Do I want to be an uninteresting musician or a dabbler? Tough choice. There has to be a third way. Jerry

[Botch.]

On a less microscopic level: Years ago I wrote a letter to Frank Zappa and proposed a new hybrid music, I knew his was one of the few bands who could pull it off. I go absolutely nuts when I hear a hot swing beat coming from a jazz drummer, that old 40's big band jazz will get my toe tapping like no other music. Secondly, even though I'm a keyboardist I love the sound of a fat, fuzzy, distorted guitar; what a great powerful sound. Well, I would love to hear those two elements put together; for lack of a better term call it "Swing Metal". I think that'd be great. Frank never replied, he never released anything sounding like swing metal, then he went and died on me. My current drummer swings like a, um, well he don't swing, so we're not going to be the pioneers. Anyone else like to give it a try?

[D. Gauss]

[quote]Originally posted by Botch: [b] , I would love to hear those two elements put together; for lack of a better term call it "Swing Metal". I think that'd be great. [/b][/quote]perhaps you might want to buy an early rev. horton heat record, or listen to "infested" by curse of the empire. -d. gauss

[JES]

Please don't take this the wrong way, it's not meant as a flame, but don't take the limits of your own imagination for limited possibilities. There's a famous story that I'm going to misquote about a guy who quit the U.S. patent office like in 1850 (could well have the year wrong by a couple decades). Why? Because he thought there was nothing else useful to invent. I don't have the "next big thing" but my advice . . . don't quit the patent office. --JES

[Chip McDonald]

[quote]Originally posted by Botch: [b] Frank never replied, he never released anything sounding like swing metal, then he went and died on me. My current drummer swings like a, um, well he don't swing, so we're not going to be the pioneers. Anyone else like to give it a try?[/b][/quote]Man, I tried doing this back in the mid 80's when I went through a "discovering modern jazz" phase... wait a sec... Hmm. I have some things I backed up from some bad 4 tracks tapes when I started out... pretty sketchy quality, pretty sketchy and silly... Let me make this an MP3... Now let me make a quick web page.. Hmm.. Ok, try this: http://www.geocities.com/rubenshakkamacher/Random.html Click on the button with the arrow on it... [i] You have to imagine this on horns; and with the right bass line, I don't know where the bass line went, I can remember doing it for this but.. "?" Remember, this is from 1986 and I'd been playing guitar for about 2 years at this point, so it's pretty juvenile and reckless, and it wasn't meant to be heard by anybody... I don't know what happened to the more worked out things I did - I remember there were about 4 pieces that I actually arranged out and did a "working" recording of, but this is all I have on the computer right now... Which is just a "hit record while fooling around to save the idea" deal. I really wanted to pursue this concept at one time. I envisioned a whole swing band but of technical guitar players, etc.. but it was impossible to convince anyone to do it; no one understood the concept at all. Oh well. Now I'm sure someone WILL do it, and once again I'll.. oh well. I'll take this down in a few days, it's pretty embarassing on all counts (playing, maturity, sound quality).. Check it out and laugh[/i]

[thisDude]

Okay, sorry this is a little off thread but, Does anyone know what those Asian guys are called who can produce between 3-6 different notes in their throats and harmonize with themselves? If you've never seen them you'd probably think I was trippin right now, but they're awesome. One guy can sound like a humming guitar harmonic and they breath in through their noses while they breath out of their mouths, which meanns they never have to stop to catch a breath. Anyways, I've searched and can't find anything on them. Maybe someone else knows.

[Tedster]

[quote]Originally posted by thisDude: [b]Okay, sorry this is a little off thread but, Does anyone know what those Asian guys are called who can produce between 3-6 different notes in their throats and harmonize with themselves? If you've never seen them you'd probably think I was trippin right now, but they're awesome. One guy can sound like a humming guitar harmonic and they breath in through their noses while they breath out of their mouths, which meanns they never have to stop to catch a breath. Anyways, I've searched and can't find anything on them. Maybe someone else knows.[/b][/quote]There was a guy on this forum who was into that. His name was Steve Sklar, and the stuff you're talking about is "Tuvan Throat Singing". Do a search through the archives and you'll find some of his posts.

[Cowfingers]

[quote] Okay, sorry this is a little off thread but, Does anyone know what those Asian guys are called who can produce between 3-6 different notes in their throats and harmonize with themselves? If you've never seen them you'd probably think I was trippin right now, but they're awesome. One guy can sound like a humming guitar harmonic and they breath in through their noses while they breath out of their mouths, which meanns they never have to stop to catch a breath. Anyways, I've searched and can't find anything on them. Maybe someone else knows. [/quote]would you not need 2-3 vocal chords for that?!? how the hell? :freak:

[Tusker]

Chip: Swell idea. I hope you develop it. You might need an 80 year old bloke comping for you on a battered upright piano to complete the imagery....but it swings just fine the way it is. :D Jerry PS: going off topic.... My new idea last year was to try a different kind of world fusion. So I made up some ethnic drum parts and used western rock orchestrations with it. The only thing I would do different is that I played it sloppy like a bar jam. If I had to do it again, I'd do it with a dance track feel instead. http://www.tuskerfort.com/TheIslesShallWait.mp3 Next I want to dabble in importing some true ethnic rhythms into dance style music... rather than having them as counterpoint against a precision machine beat.

[offramp]

Back to JimK's topic: I wonder about this same thing a lot; made mention of something very similar, here, a few months back, and was scoffed at by Lee, so I dropped it, but I do wonder about this all the time. It seems, sometimes, that production is all we have left in order to make material 'click' with listeners.

[JimK]

Ok, time to chime in on my own topic. I don't believe we're out of possibilities. As the math shows, we're far from it. Of course, not every possibility is something worth listening to. I do believe, however, that there's too much follow the leader going on in music today. And record companies make this worse. They just want to sell music to the masses. They're not interested in taking chances on what could become the next "new thing". Recently I read a recording engineer's comments on how all the big studios were using the same equipment/tools/approaches, and that it had sterilized music. All the recordings are sounding too alike, and too good. He was saying that it's important to find a different sound; your own sound.

[Botch.]

[quote]Originally posted by Chip McDonald: [i] You have to imagine this on horns; and with the right bass line, I don't know where the bass line went, I can remember doing it for this but.. "?" Remember, this is from 1986 and I'd been playing guitar for about 2 years at this point, so it's pretty juvenile and reckless, and it wasn't meant to be heard by anybody... I don't know what happened to the more worked out things I did - I remember there were about 4 pieces that I actually arranged out and did a "working" recording of, but this is all I have on the computer right now... Which is just a "hit record while fooling around to save the idea" deal. I really wanted to pursue this concept at one time. I envisioned a whole swing band but of technical guitar players, etc.. but it was impossible to convince anyone to do it; no one understood the concept at all. Oh well. Now I'm sure someone WILL do it, and once again I'll.. oh well. I'll take this down in a few days, it's pretty embarassing on all counts (playing, maturity, sound quality).. Check it out and laugh[/i][/QB][/quote]YES! That's very close to what I was hearing in my head, Chip! Just add some power chords that crack yer ribs and it'll be what I'm hearing. By the way, if you were doing that after just two years of playing guitar, I'd like to buy a CD of what you're up to now! Awesome! And thanks for the suggestions, D. Gauss, I'll check them out!

[Mr. Downchild]

We're limited only by our imagination. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, but no one is worried about running out of expressive possibilities anytime soon. Although a lot of us [i]do[/i] like to repeat ourselves ;)

[Tusker]

[quote]Originally posted by JimK: [b]I do believe, however, that there's too much follow the leader going on in music today. And record companies make this worse. They just want to sell music to the masses. They're not interested in taking chances on what could become the next "new thing". [/b][/quote]This relates to what someone said about music becoming a business. In marketing 101 you identify a target group of people and try to aim as closely as you can to their concentration of taste.... so you can "harvest" the product against the market to the greatest extent. In some other marketing class you might learn that continuously "harvesting" from the market without "developing" is a good way to destroy the market. But the music industry appears pretty much fixed on the reap now sow later model. :( Jerry

[Roto]

[quote]Originally posted by Tedster: [b]There has been a lot of repetition. Here's an example...the first several notes of "Your Smiling Face" by James Taylor are nearly identical to "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" by Burt Bacharach.[/b][/quote]Then there's Under Pressure by Queen/Bowie and Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. So many possibilities! :D