Music Without Limits

[b0b]

Some people say that everything as already been played, that you can't really come up with a new chord progression, lick or melody. That's total BS.

Lets just assume a few small limitations and do the math. Suppose we want to stay with one scale, within an octave span. Our first note is 1 of 8 or it can be a rest - 9 options total. Let's say, for the sake of this exercise, that it can be one of 4 lengths: half note, dotted quarter, quarter or eighth. So we have 36 options (9x4) for the first note.

The 2nd note also has 36 options, so with just two notes you have 36x36 or 1296 choices.

My calculator ran out of digits after I reached 7 notes. With the simple limitations I put on this experiment (one scale in one octave, 4 timing values), there are 78,364,164,096 possible seven-note licks. That's over 78 billion. And it doesn't include any of the little embellishments, slides and pedal glisses that we make in everything we play.

So next time you hear someone say that it's all been played, say "I call BS!" For all practical purposes, music is infinite. The only limits are in your own imagination.

[Ian Rae]

Edgard Varèse regarded music as totally plastic and infinite, and felt trapped in the chromatic scale to which so many instruments are confined. The steel guitar would not have interested him but it's a shame he didn't live to hear the brutal sustain of Terry Kath.

(Varèse's Wikipedia link refuses to embed so if you want more, paste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Varèse. Something to do with the accent, by the look of it.)

[Curt Trisko]

Food recipes are also infinite, but that doesn't mean people will want to eat it all.

[Charlie McDonald]

There goes my excuse.

[Jerry Overstreet]

Interesting...I particularly like this statement.

So next time you hear someone say that it's all been played, say "I call BS!" For all practical purposes, music is infinite. The only limits are in your own imagination.

[Donny Hinson]

Interesting supposition. But regardless of the numbers, there's no real way to know what combinations have already been used. You may disagree, but I'd guess that a vast percentage of all the music that's been played down through the centuries has never been annotated or recorded.

So...if someone plays something that no one else hears, and it's not recorded or documented...and they die, how can we prove it was ever (or never) played?

Food for thought, anyway.

[Godfrey Arthur]

The Big Bang..every pitch that ever existed, String Theory notwithstanding.

Chromatic scale will evolve to polychromatic.

As Bach is kindergarten to Weber, chromatic scale is kindergarten to polychromatic. 12 tones/octave to 100's/octave

When we were introduced to microtones on the big screen.
I got "high" when I first saw and heard this:
https://youtu.be/AphKxQ2NsQo



Haken Continuum Fingerboard

H-Pi Instruments Tonal Plexus


The Seaboard


Intro to polychromatic instruments:
https://youtu.be/ZMRUm_CoW-I

[Fred Treece]

Maybe it’s all been done for “Pop” music. In fact, maybe it was all done for a long time ago. But a new generation wants to listen to anything other than what their parents did, so what’s old gets rehashed with a new face on the cover and maybe different instruments making the noise. And maybe more bad words are allowed in lyrics now.

[Godfrey Arthur]

Maybe it’s all been done for “Pop” music. In fact, maybe it was all done for a long time ago. But a new generation wants to listen to anything other than what their parents did, so what’s old gets rehashed with a new face on the cover and maybe different instruments making the noise. And maybe more bad words are allowed in lyrics now.

Music is being compromised. Instruments are being used that take away from virtuosity so talent is hidden from the dumbed-down and brainwashed.

The Millennials were brainwashed. Entitled, spoiled and uninspired.

Entire class applauds as millennial opens canned food:
https://youtu.be/QC35FAJDFpY


Gen Z is learning from what the Millennials went through to not repeat history.

Here's someone's view on what's going on in pop music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

[Fred Treece]

[Entire class applauds as millennial opens canned food:
https://youtu.be/QC35FAJDFpY


Gen Z is learning from what the Millennials went through to not repeat history.

Here's someone's view on what's going on in pop music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

This is hilarious and brilliant! I’m at 8:00 in the pop review, and so far I have learned that we need to arrest a guy named Max Martin and charge him with musical treason.

And the Millenial WHOOP! 🤠

[Charlie McDonald]

Here's someone's view on what's going on in pop music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

... aka The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

I've seen this before. It's true. Driving home yesterday the radio was on and Pat Benatar was singing Love is a Battlefield. I became entranced trying to figure out whether
the downbeat or backbeat was dominant, and which one my left foot couldn't keep from kicking. It's an irresistible track. Some temporal cleverness in the intro
allows the changing dominance of the beats, supports the ambivalence and caused me to think about reggae and the two traditions of kicks. Inspirational.

It was followed by its opposite in terms of the empowerment of the young, the in love, and, of course, women. It was simpy, if that's a word, and more than anything else
used pitch correction to... to do what? Why did the singer or her producer would want a machine voice? I had to turn it off. It was awful.
Young listeners have no idea that they've been dumbed-down. It's a long way between the two songs, and apparently we've lost ground in the battlefield.

[Godfrey Arthur]

Here's someone's view on what's going on in pop music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

... aka The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

I've seen this before. It's true. Driving home yesterday the radio was on and Pat Benatar was singing Love is a Battlefield. I became entranced trying to figure out whether
the downbeat or backbeat was dominant, and which one my left foot couldn't keep from kicking. It's an irresistible track. Some temporal cleverness in the intro
allows the changing dominance of the beats, supports the ambivalence and caused me to think about reggae and the two traditions of kicks. Inspirational.

It was followed by its opposite in terms of the empowerment of the young, the in love, and, of course, women. It was simpy, if that's a word, and more than anything else
used pitch correction to... to do what? Why did the singer or her producer would want a machine voice? I had to turn it off. It was awful.
Young listeners have no idea that they've been dumbed-down. It's a long way between the two songs, and apparently we've lost ground in the battlefield.

Insightful Charlie. Ironic you pick Benatar's song. In learning the background you will find that a similar formula of writer/producer as in "The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful" was done on not only with Pat's material but many of the hits that came from around the world. Benatar's song figures song writer Holly Knight, producer Mike Chapman and guitarist/producer Neil Girlado who later became Pat's husband and produced Love Is A Battlefield. I liken the Love Is A Battlefield to another song Turn The Beat Around. But take note of the title of the song first released by Vickie Sue Robinson while many might remember the Gloria Estefan version that came almost 17 years later.

Not easy to dissect the social engineering system in place amidst the every day living of artists who are inducted into the engineering, whether wittingly or unwittingly and how it translates to 2019.

The thread is not short by any means.

Reggae, in order to link it with the masses, Eric Clapton covered I Shot The Sheriff, written by everyone's fave rasta-vibrayshun, Bob Marley and gave reggae the shot in the arm.

Music genres are being used to delete from the psyche played out patterns as was also done by The Beatles when George started dabbling in Indian sitar music. For lack of a better explanation, it's the reset button.

Let's add that when you "turn the beat around" it is done for an effect and if music is the opium of the masses, what better way to follow the laws of cause and effect.



It's also important to note that with the advent of music videos when it went full bore, Benatar's Love Is A Battlefield, MTV treatment done by advertising's multi-award winning guru/teacher Bob Giraldi, within Banatar's video and Charlie's lament on the beat, viewing the official video, for lack of an easier way to describe the video treatment and without stepping on PC toes, the phrase we grew up with living in New York in the 50's Lucy, I'm home comes to mind. Including an ever so subtle inclusion of another engineering agenda weighing in on society in 2019.


A picture is worth a thousand words


The music was done, including the guitar solo by Benatar's husband, Neil as producer for Jessie's Girl, harkening to Thoughty2's lament..

https://youtu.be/Z2Fs9rYNRa4

As a guitarist, I like Giraldo's work.
Back when guitar was king.

Fred said:

I’m at 8:00 in the pop review, and so far I have learned that we need to arrest a guy named Max Martin and charge him with musical treason.

[Charlie McDonald]

Thumbs up on arresting Max Martin.

The young have no concept of the weight of the musical... thing that is the inheritance.

So I took Giraldo and the band around Tulsa lots of years ago looking for a vintage/old instrument shop,
but that has nothing to do with the topic or anything and I'm ashamed to have mentioned it.

[Jim Cohen]

Sure, b0b, but most of those melodies suck. I'm just sayin'...

[Donny Hinson]

Sure, b0b, but most of those melodies suck...

Unless...you play them backwards!