A question about music....?

Question:

A question about music....?

Has anyone wondered that, since there are so many bands or groups or artists who create so many different types of music, that soon there will be no more unique melodies or beats to create? Is that even possible?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: That's not possible. There are so many factors involved in what a song sounds like that the potential combinations of rhythm, harmony, melody and timbre are effectively infinite. It just seems like we could one day run out of ideas because most of the music we hear is composed with the same scales (minor, major and pentatonic scales are responsible for 99% of Western music), the same chords, the same rhythms and the same instruments. The problem isn't running out of ways to play, it's running out of ideas on how to play.

But it really is infinite. A melody played over a 4/4 rhythm will sound totally different played over a 6/8 even if the notes are in the same order because the rhythm will accent different notes. If the melody is played over different chords, they'll sound totally different. If the melody is played at a different tempo, it can sound different. Notice all this is true even though we're talking about the same melody, but in real life we don't all play the same melody.

Not to mention, a guitar player can play the same note many different ways based on how they finger the note, how they hold it, how long they hold it, where they play it on the guitar and how they pick it (if they pick it at all). That's basically true for every musician, no matter what instrument they play: There are tons of ways to play any single note. So even if there are only so many notes on an instrument, there are tons of ways to play each of them that will sound different.

The trick is to find new ways of thinking about music, but that happens all the time. A musician nowadays sounds totally different from a musician in the 60's because they have totally different ideas about what music should be and how it should sound. And both of their ideas are totally different from how a classical composer would view music. That's because ideas change with time and will continue to do so.