Just my random ruminations that I hope will entertain someone at some point.
Friday, February 1, 2013
No More New Music??
A couple of years ago I was having a conversation with my cousin, Chris, who happens to know a thing or two about music and I asked him, "Doesn't it seem like we'll run out of music eventually?" He wasn't sure at first so I asked him how many notes there are. I think he said eight but then added something about half notes or something that this music ignorant didn't quite get. So I don't remember the number he told me but let's just say it was 16. That means if you started songs with a different first note, by the time you got to the 17th song, you will have repeated a first note. Your second note would then be another (or the same) of the 16 notes, leaving 16 possibilities after EACH of the first 16 possibilities. So just in the first two notes you would have 16 X 16 possibilities. That is 256 possibilities with just the first two notes. So we realized right away that we would get quite a huge number of possibilities but that given a song of whatever length, there would indeed be a finite number of possibilities.
Then recently I came across a video on YouTube that explained our hypothesis in a slightly different and well expounded upon way (with the same conclusion).
In that video he mentions "Everything is a Remix." Here is Kirby Ferguson's TED Talk version of his remix series. Be warned Bob Dylan fans, Bob gets called out here:
And lastly, here is a fun website that was also mentioned in the first video: Soundsjustlike.com. Who knew that Nirvana sounds like Killing Joke or that Green Day sounds like... Petula Clark?!?!
Terrific blog! [ Brain-]Stimulating and entertaining... two o'my favorite things! The Ted presentation summed it all up nicely... specifically with the Henry Ford quote.
Now, about that Soundsjustlike.com... heheh! Having listened to all of the pairs of songs, most were so "in yer face" blatantly obvious, they were easy to spot. I'm not certain if it was because of the attachment i had toward "The Empire Strikes Back"(a huge fav!) vs "Mary Poppins" (a child hood favorite) but i just couldn't get the "copy". However, I thoroughly enjoyed the unique set-up that allowed the side by side comparisons!!!!
Terrific blog! [ Brain-]Stimulating and entertaining... two o'my favorite things! The Ted presentation summed it all up nicely... specifically with the Henry Ford quote.
ReplyDeleteNow, about that Soundsjustlike.com... heheh! Having listened to all of the pairs of songs, most were so "in yer face" blatantly obvious, they were easy to spot. I'm not certain if it was because of the attachment i had toward "The Empire Strikes Back"(a huge fav!) vs "Mary Poppins" (a child hood favorite) but i just couldn't get the "copy". However, I thoroughly enjoyed the unique set-up that allowed the side by side comparisons!!!!
Good stuffs!