Kat: I still maintain that there is some finite number of songs, albeit an extremely large number. Let's take a bar of 4/4 time music. If you are going to fill it with just quarter notes, the number of possible combinations =

12 x 12 x 12 x 12 = 20736

That's really not so many. Even when you start to add different kinds of notes to fill that four beats, while the number becomes ridiculously high, it is still a number. When you look at the centuries upon centuries upon millenia that people have been writing, singing, playing, even humming tunes. I think the mathematics are truly against any of us being original. So why would we even try to write another piece of music? I do it because I like it.


Hey Jon: I agree that that doesn't sound like music to me, but it could be a cultural thing. I've heard that some African countries differentiate their sounds by quarter-tone, instead of semi-tone; hence the usage of the "blue" notes on the third and seventh in the blues. Your creation doesn't sound like music to us because of our standards of chord structure. But hey...I could've sworn that I heard that on an old Charlie Parker record.


Gargoyle: I couldn't agree more. There's been many a time that I've written a song, then realized that it sounded exactly like one of my favourites. Change an interval here, a note or two there, a rhythm someplace else, and Praise Jesus! An original composition!

Paul