will we ever run out of new tunes?

Answer 1

We are currently in the procees of running out of new tunes..
There are more and more instances of overlapping melodies.
A huge amount of new songs contain a multitude of borrowed (deliberately or indeliberately) notes from different melodies.
You can't blame the songwriters for this. Anything they write will have melodic overlap. If you must blame something, blame
the oversaturation of melody-based songs and music pieces we as mankind have created over the ages.

The songwriters nowadays must rely on rhythm-based music(Rap, Techno, Trance, Electronic etc...). Having a minimalist melody or none at all, gives the songwriter a chance to do something original with the rhythm or beat.

The prevalence of rhythm-based music among young people is
not suprising. They are bored with the old melodies, and the new
ones borrow off eachother.
Rhythm-based music is nothing new. People like you and me that come from the so-called "civilized" world have forgotten about the primal origins of music.
In the beginning, long before any melody, there was rhythm.
Music began with simple rhythmic beats by striking some object or using vocalizations.
I feel that rhythm-based music has a certain primal energy that
makes young people want to move and annoys the hell out of old people.

Rhythm-based music still has some time left before oversaturation occurs. So for the time being, we still have some
new tunes to create.

Answer 2

As a tune can be between 8 and 32 bars long, and can use as many as 72 notes and this on a basis of 4, 6, 8 or 16 beats a bar (not to mention all the other possibilities, accidents, rests, doubling, quadrupling of note lengths, halving of note lengths, five beats/bar and so on...) let's say that we have :8 times 32 times 72 times 4 times 6 times 8 times 16 times 2 times 1/2 which gives us a possibility of more than 56million different tunes, and even though any random mix won't necessarily give you a good tune and many tunes are only slightly different from other tunes, it does give us something of an idea of how many we have left to compose.
Which also leads me on to say that there's really no good excuse for anyone to revamp an old song and get away with it.
Let's start making new songs again, shall we?

Answer 3

I agree.. we've run out of tunes but the feeelings with which the songs are sang change so what happens is either an older song gets a new version or the songs that we say new are actually very similar to another song... And after all, if you haven't heard the older song it is new to you.

Answer 4

If we only consider 'Western' music then, yes, in theory, we will. There is only a limited number of notes - twelve in a chromatic scale, a limited number of rhythms that are realistically playable, and the human ear has a limited range of hearing. What will continue to change and make things sound different is the use of instruments, and variables such as tempo and dynamics. Also, much of what was written two, three, and four hundred years ago has been forgotten, so if someone regurgitates it, who will know!

Answer 5

I never thought I'd end up sounding like my Mum when she used to say I've heard this before It was out in nineteen sixty dot but now I catch myself saying "it's not as good as the original" all the time "

Guess I'm just getting old :-( (But it does seem to happen more and more often) come on guys BE ORIGINAL

Answer 6

I think the same thing.

It overwhelms me when new great congs are made or there a thousands of songs from the past that I know I will love but have not heard yet.. aint that freaky?

Answer 7

In essence all music is the same, all usually contains the same underlying rhythms with some other song somewhere across the line.

Answer 8

run out of new tunes new tunes? well maybe one day, but then there will be loads of sh*t remixes of old songs, so there will still be music-if you can bring yourself to call that sh*t music that is.

Answer 9

Good question! god i hope not!!!! There are endless musical combinations they wont run out for quite awhile! and there are billons of lyric choices! I sure hope that I'm not around to witness that if it does happen

Answer 10

confident. i've got heard songs the place they sound only like different ones. I even think of to my self "hmm that music appears like this music" you recognize an artist is understanding of suggestions whilst he/she covers a music. ?