Are all melodies taken?

[canadianlight]

Some MIT prof back in 2001 drew a lot of fire for suggesting that we have almost exhausted all possible melodies under the 12 tone system. I think he defined a unique melody as something that can not be derived through applying the accepted structural manipulations on another already known melody.

What is the general consensus among musicians? Are most of the stuff written today based on old themes? Albinoni's adagio is an example, if the guy hadn't admitted that he saw Albinoni's fragments he could have passed it off as his own.

[Esgalachoir]

They've all been taken, so far...
I'm a Bach player(organ pieces and inventions) so I'll probably never, ever come up with anything original...

[canadianlight]

They've all been taken, so far...
I'm a Bach player(organ pieces and inventions) so I'll probably never, ever come up with anything original...

Actually Bach only used a very small subset of tunes known by his day. And even then most of his themes were copied from somewhere else as was the custom at the time. So even by his time people were running out of new ideas, so they had to take old ones and elaborate on them.

The problem is that good melodies tend to be simple, so that really eliminates a lot of possibilities. So the number of possible GOOD melodies is much less than what a random generator can output, therefore you don't have to sort through an astronomical amount of garbage like you do with monkeys on typewriters.

[randyandyvandaman]

They've all been taken, so far..

Try writing a catchy lyric and then tell us otherwise.

I guarantee my melodies will not sound like anything Bach, Puccini, verdi or others have written.

Why ????

Because they weren't lyric writers.

Cheers

[tapper mike]

There's nothing you can do that can't be done. No song to sing that can't be sung. It's easy.

Even if a melody has been done there is no saying that you can't bring something new to it. It's also a great leap to say that all the melodies are taked because they could have. Mathematics.

What the mathemathician failed to realixe is that melody occupies three spaces time harmonic motion and expression/technique. Some days I think that nothing will ever be new in the blues and then some artist comes around the corner with a new take on an old lick.

[anomandaris1]

Here you are an excerpt from "How music really works" by Wayne Chase: "How many possible tunes are there? To get an idea, consider the number of
combinations you have to choose from. Suppose you start with some conservative
restrictions, such as:
A compass of 19 semitones, the pitch range of The Star Spangled Banner
A note value no longer than one bar in duration (four beats in simple
quadruple meter)
A note value no shorter than one-eighth of a bar in duration
Almost anyone could sing any tune you might create within these parameters.
At the beginning of bar one, you have a choice of 20 notes (19 semitone intervals
= 20 notes) or a rest, for a total of 21 note possibilities, if you think of a rest as a silent
note. Each note (or rest) can have one of eight duration values.
So, off the top, you have 21 notes x 8 duration values = 168 choices.
Select one.
Now that you ve made your first choice, you again have 168 choices for the
second note (or rest). The first note (or rest) you selected does not in any way affect
your selection of a second note (or rest). Therefore, the number of two-note
combinations is 168 x 168 = 28,224.
Continuing on, by the time your tune reaches eight note-rest combinations, the
number of possibilities has grown to (in round numbers) 634,600,000,000,000,000.
That s 634.6 quadrillion possible melodies (at least in America and Canada, but not
in the UK, France, or Germany, where quadrillion means something different; but
who s counting?).
Most tunes have way more than eight note-rest combinations. So the number of
possible combinations of singable songs is vastly greater than a mere 634.6
quadrillion.
The number of possible tunes that could be composed in only a few bars is so
enormous that, even if only a tiny fraction of them would sound appealing to human
ears, humanity would have to exist for many millions of years for songwriters to get
around to composing and recording all the possible great melodies.
In other words, most of the world s brilliant tunes are still up for grabs, waiting
to be composed ..."

[canadianlight]

What the mathemathician failed to realixe is that melody occupies three spaces time harmonic motion and expression/technique. Some days I think that nothing will ever be new in the blues and then some artist comes around the corner with a new take on an old lick.

His position has been refined by others over the years by restricting the definition of a unique melody to it's formal/musicological structures.

So here is the same distinction you are making, that interpretations may be infinite, but the techniques are getting exhausted. The development of atonal music testifies to this fact.

[Timfonie]

What do you consider a melody? How long is a melody? Sure all 2-note melodies and probably all 3-note melodies are 'taken'. When only considering the melodies which sound pleasing to the ear, most melodies up to, say, 16 notes are taken.

Longer melodies offer plenty of options of originality though. Yes, people will allways recognize a few notes in a row as familiar, reminding them to some other song. That's not to say a new and complete melody line can not be both pleasing AND original. It can if the chunks are large enough.

Then play with different sound textures, rythms, etc. and there you go ... no reason not to be original.

[wrench45us]

I guess that explains all the controversy about everyone from George Harrison to Coldplay et al lifting somebody else's tune.
If there's scientific evidence that melodies have been exhausted -- well coyright law will just have to follow the science eventually.
Fortunately sampling litigation will fill that void.

[Loki Fuego]

That s 634.6 quadrillion possible melodies

Of which, about 80% would be complete unlistenable rubbish. 80% of those remaining would be the same melodies transposed to another key. 80% of the remaining would be copies of other melody different by a note or a rest. And so on.

[Doug1978]

I make dub reggae, and so I was about to say that melody to me isn't that important (just give me bass and some echoey drum hits).
It then occurred to me that dub reggae is the perfect way to create new melodies out of existing ones, with some different delays zinging off into the background.

Sometimes I get lucky with my answers.


(Also, to be serious, there is a lot of beautiful melodic dub out there by people like Harry Mudie, for instance 'Roman Dub').

[narz3000]

Jimmy Page invented all the greatest riffs. He stole them all!

[jancivil]

What is the general consensus among musicians?

[jancivil]

The problem is that good melodies tend to be simple, so that really eliminates a lot of possibilities.

You start to state something ['The problem *is*] as if a fact, then you qualify it by 'tends to'. So. "eliminates" there is what's known as a non sequitur.

[jancivil]

a unique melody as something that can not be derived through applying the accepted structural manipulations on another already known melody.

What are "the accepted structural manipulations"? He sought to insist an overarching thesis but limited it arbitrarily by a phrase standing for a premise that has no meaning particularly, if you are representing this accurately. So. Anyone that derives a melody by unaccepted structural manipulations, is going to be what, the exception that proves the rule?

Did this professor ever offer proof of concept? That's a rhetorical question by the way. This is one of the most stupid ideas I have ever encountered