Are we going to run out of songs?

[jeremy c]

Twist and Shout and Louie Louie the same?

I think not.

 

Twist and Shout

|:I IV|V :|

and don't forget where it holds on the V chord while everyone goes ahh...ahh...ahh

 

and yes the Beatles had the hit, but it's an Isley Brothers song.

 

Louie Louie

|:I IV|Vm IV:|

The hit was by the Kingsmen, but of course we all know that Richard Perry wrote it. I hope you've read the book, those of you in the great Northwest know that all the bands played it, including:

The Wailers (a local Seattle area band)

Little Bill Engelhart & the Bluenotes

and Paul Revere & Raiders

 

Louie Louie: The History And Mythology Of The World\'s Most Famous Rock \'n\' Roll Song...

 

Now if you had said Twist and Shout and La Bamba I would have let you get away with it.

 

Don't they teach history in the schools anymore?

[TShakazBlackRoots]

Toots & The Maytals have a brilliant Reggae version of Louie Louie. I think it's being used in the Citroen ads.

[bruiser_dup2]

Originally posted by jeremyc:

Now if you had said Twist and Shout and La Bamba I would have let you get away with it.

 

You took the words right out of my mouth. Or my fingers, in this case.

 

At a jam a while ago, the guitar player launched into a tune and I jumped in, thinking, "Ah, La Bamba, I know this." After an instrumental verse, he started singing "Well, shake it up baby, now," and I was startled but didn't miss a lick.

 

Bruiser

[groovyjazzyfunky]

Originally posted by zachg:

even some punk songs will recycle progressions though i can't think of any off hand.

I hope you're joking (about not being able to think of any). The trick is trying to find 2 punk songs that *don't* sound the same. There are only so many progressions you can come up with using the same 3 chords.

 

(sorta)

[Wonderdog]

Charles H. Duell, who headed the US Patent Office, made this statement in 1899 - "Everything that can be invented has been invented.",. after which, he made a concerted effort to have the patent office closed. Reflect on this statement from our 105 year advantage, and you can see the natural arrogance of man played against our extremely miniscule and narrow exploration of our free will and intelligence up to this point.

 

Even using a very limited range of available outcomes in a statistical population, such as 2 octaves, I would venture to say that we haven't even scratched the surface of "possible songs",.

 

My $.02

 

Wonderdog

[AlChuck]

As some have already pointed out, the issue of time (rhythm, note lengths, rest lengths) makes the possibilities quite infinite.

[Yogi]

Originally posted by Bruiser:

Your friend needs to do a little more reading-- most of Led Zeppelin's songs were "borrowed" from earlier blues artists, often without credit.

Man, is this caveat still out there? While you have a point with stuff from their early catalog (especially all the blues covers/mutations), I have a hard time imagining Willie Dixon writing "Kashmir" or "The Song Remains The Same" or "Achilles Last Stand" or "Fool In The Rain" or heck, even "Stairway To Heaven." Yeah, Zep borrowed a lot, and yes, even stole from some of the blues masters, but they also wrote a lot of truly original material that was uniquely theirs. No one's excusing their history of not crediting some of their influences, but I think it's unfair to dismiss ALL of their prodigious catalog because of it.

[The Guy]

I think that the ultamite point is that music is not limited by the number of notes available, but simply the minds that seek to create it. If musicians stay within 'the box' then so will the songs, but if musicians can move outside the box, you have more potential.

 

my $0.02

Rock on

Mark

[musicalhair]

I've seen this thread floating around the top of the page now for like half a week. Each time I start to post then change my mind.

 

I saw a singer/songwriter named Catherine Moon last Wednesday where she performed a bunch of songs off previous recordings and played two brand new songs. The two new ones were easily the best of the evening and maybe the best things I've heard in a long time, I'm still knocked out.

 

If she ain't running out of songs then ......

 

draw your own conclusions.

 

Even if things might seem a little derivative, music must be taken in it's context. A baroque or pre-baroque melody that is similar to say a romantic ear melody is going to be treated very differently when it is performed, so style has as much to do with the way a song develops. We won't run out of "songs" even if every melodic idea is being duplicated in some sense. There is just way too much to "songs" than these limiting factors would suggest.

 

Melody, harmony, rhythm and texture: these are the four elements of music in the "theory of compensating elements" or whatever it is called in composition-- right? The endless ones are rhythm and texture, and I'm not so sure that when you get down to it that melody and harmony are anywhere tapped out. Besides both melody and harmony seem to be ingnored in a lot of music of all kinds lately.

[Jimbroni]

I'm capable of doing the math. It's pretty simple.

 

For note 1, you have 88 choices. For note 2, you have another 88 choices. So your two-note choices are 88*88, or 88^2. And so on, that works out to 88^1000 note choices.

 

88^1000 is more than 3*10^1944. For the non-math-inclined, that number is a 3 followed by 1944 zeros.

 

Granted, in that large number of "songs" are many songs that are just the same note over and over again, of a lot of songs that jump around by many, many octaves.

 

So let's just take two octaves, where you change a note every time (you still might just go back and forth between two notes). That's still 24*23^999, which is more than 5.5*10^1359. Or 55 followed by 1358 zeroes.

 

There's still a lot of songs, and there are certainly an unfathomable number of potential songs once you add in rhythms and such.

hmmm? Care to explain how you come up with 1000 as the maximum number of choices you could use. The problem with you're theory is that when you throw in rythmatic variation in the mix your equation goes to infinity. (think all the different notes themselves 1/4, 1/8, etc. and then all the time sigs) Especially, when you get in to the subtleties like playing in front or behind or on top of the beat. Then you can add all possible words in our vocabulary to the mix. Because well folk singers write new songs all the time with the exact same chords ( one example I can think of is Talkin John Birch Blues and Bear Mtn Picnic by Dylan) Exact same progression totally different songs Ones about succumbing to peer pressure and the other is about McCarthyism. Of course new instruments are created all the time, which no one can account for. With electronics and sampling you can then add all possible noises to your calculation as well. How many ways can you scratch a record?

[_Sweet Willie_]

Thanks, A-Train! I enjoyed the mathematics.

 

Originally posted by Jimbroni:

hmmm? Care to explain how you come up with 1000 as the maximum number of choices you could use.

Originally posted by his sweetness:

Is anyone capable of doing the math that would calculate the total number of melodies (forget harmonies/chords) that could be generated from the 88 keys of a piano using up to, but not more than, say, 1000 notes? (1000 is chosen pretty much arbitrarily, but it would allow you to compose up to 250 bars of 4 quarter notes each.) Then take into account all the rhythmic configurations possible?

Originally posted by Jimbroni:

The problem with you're theory is that when you throw in rythmatic variation in the mix your equation goes to infinity. (think all the different notes themselves 1/4, 1/8, etc. and then all the time sigs)

Originally posted by Adamixoye:

There's still a lot of songs, and there are certainly an unfathomable number of potential songs once you add in rhythms and such.

Peace.

--s-uu

[Jimbroni]

Actually I enjoyed the math as well. I guess I missed the caviat about it being melody related and not including rythmn.

 

So peace back at ya

 

I guess I get funny about this topic, because I have an ongoing argument with one my buddies on this topic. He is one of these people who thinks everything has already been done, by someone else.

He just won't accept the fact that he is wrong. There are songs/rythmns that I've played that he or I have never heard prior, but he'll say I'm sure someone out there's done it. And maybe they have. So what. How many people have used the word "The"

Damn Plagarist's

[Adamixoye]

Yeah, as S-Dub points out, I was only doing the math given his constraints. They're fairly restrictive constraints, but you still have a huge number of songs you could make.

 

That's not to say all of them would be any good, mind you, but once you add in rhythm and *gasp* harmony, you are into territory that's absolutely crazy.

[BleedingBass]

i wouldn't be so quick as to diss Metal. your're probably going by the Mainstream stuff that people have branded as "Metal," but in reality true metal has some of the most awesome guitars i have ever heard (although bass tends to be lacking, sigh*), not the single note stuff you hear mainstream. most of the underground metal bands really are quite talented, but sense metal doesn't sell to well they never really get quite big.

[zachg]

jeremeyc, trust me i know who the kingsmen are!!! regardless of anyone's preconceptions of my knowledge (based on the fact that i am new to the forum)i am very learned in music trivia. you seemed to have looked over my point that both songs use similar chords. i couldn't think of la bamba at the time , good call.

 

Discombobulation i agree about the punk music(well really "pop punk" or "emo"). i would have listed some, but i try to stay away from that noise . . . .(no offense to anyone lol)

[bruiser_dup2]

Originally posted by Yogi:

Originally posted by Bruiser:

Your friend needs to do a little more reading-- most of Led Zeppelin's songs were "borrowed" from earlier blues artists, often without credit.

Man, is this caveat still out there? While you have a point with stuff from their early catalog (especially all the blues covers/mutations), I have a hard time imagining Willie Dixon writing "Kashmir" or "The Song Remains The Same" or "Achilles Last Stand" or "Fool In The Rain" or heck, even "Stairway To Heaven."

Okay, maybe I overstated the case. Although I started out as a Led Zep fan, they lost me when they quit doing the blues-based stuff. I never bought another Zep album after Black Dog. Most of the rest was too weird, too ethereal, too out there for me. I learned that there were better guitar players out there than Page, and less screechy singers than Plant, so I listened to those guys instead.

 

At a certain point I lost respect for them as songwriters and quit listening. I never heard about their plagiarism of the blues guys until years later, but I wasn't listening anymore, anyhow.

 

But to hear the Zep described as the source of all songs written since then kind of ticked me off. A lot of people have listened to the blues and been influenced by it, without being influenced by Led Zep.

 

Bruiser

[rockinredneck69]

Yet another very cool thread that makes ya think. A friend at work recently asked me how music could possibly keep progressing and why has it for the very reason that the subject of this thread states. I had to reach down and think on it for a bit, but was able to give an answer that went something like this...Music is sorta like math, infinite equations with equally infinite answers to each mathmatical question. The thing that most people don't take into account is that with each genre of music comes a style that translates into the way a note is played multiplied by the rythym kept. Stacato vs. sustained and clean vs. maximized gain or feedback and other effects. It's an argument that has validity and shows how new instruments such as the electric guitar (and electic bass, of course) have contributed to the expansion of the art of music. Ya gotta love that!

[Dave Brown]

A couple of points about the math....

 

No matter how large the number, it is still finite.

 

And the bigger issue, the vast majority of these mathematical possible melodies would make little melodic sense.

[Jimbroni]

A couple of points about the math....

 

No matter how large the number, it is still finite.

 

And the bigger issue, the vast majority of these mathematical possible melodies would make little melodic sense.

True and Truer.

 

However, I don't think there is a number one can come up with which in essence defines the amount of music that can be created. Why? Because new instruments and sounds and minds and a whole lot of other stuff are born every day, which alter our perception of what western music actually is. Think of things/people like shakti, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, to name a very few who are promoting world beat, also, our fascination with Reggae, which is doing what? Changing western music to a broader horizon making the amount of variables grow.

 

I do agree that most of the mathmatical possiblities probably won't make musical sense, but that maybe because we are not ready for them. An example of that, Imagine hearing Oh I don't know Slayer in the twenties, the people would have thought this is it the apocalypse.

[rockinredneck69]

Originally posted by Jimbroni:

I do agree that most of the mathmatical possiblities probably won't make musical sense, but that maybe because we are not ready for them. An example of that, Imagine hearing Oh I don't know Slayer in the twenties, the people would have thought this is it the apocalypse. [/QB]

Thats sorta what I was meaning, differant instruments, technology and approach to the same notes is part of what makes the scene change and therefore bring us new songs. Try listening to just vocals from differant eras and genres and it obvious that what makes a song, any song at all, something original is the instruments and technology not the notes themselves.

[Lawnmower8]

New technologies will help.

I mean, nobody predating the electric guitar and electric amplifier could imagine heavy metal back before the 20th century, even if the notes were already there, because they were limited to acoustic instruments.

They had their own kind of "heavy metal" through the use of cacophony and dissonance, but it was written to be that way and was not achieved through a distortion effect.

As we make new techinical revolutions in the types of instruments we can create, we will see new types of "music" appear on the landscape.

Think about the difference in the types of music played by tribesmen (drums and wooden flutes) compared to classical music (strings and organs) to jazz (brass, horns, and drumsets) to rock (electric instruments) to rap and techno (keyboards and samples and turntables).

The key is the technology which then allows you to write the same kinds of notes and make them sound different and new.

[Adamixoye]

Originally posted by Dave Brown:

No matter how large the number, it is still finite.

A number doesn't have to be infinite for a limit to not exist in a practical sense. If the question is "are we going to run out of songs?" then we might want to consider if the world will end before we write all those songs.

 

Originally posted by Jimbroni:

I do agree that most of the mathmatical possiblities probably won't make musical sense, but that maybe because we are not ready for them. An example of that, Imagine hearing Oh I don't know Slayer in the twenties, the people would have thought this is it the apocalypse.

Yes, I agree. Dave, you were right that a lot of them would make much sense, but we're talking 1000 quarter note melodies. But add ANY sort of rhythmic variations, harmonies, or change the length of the song and the numbers are back up in the stratosphere. And then add Jim's point...who says these songs have to make sense to us now?