Music

A Case of Plagiarism? Or Just an Unfortunate Sonic Coincidence?

Given what we’ve had to work with in the west, we’ve certainly been able to create a lot of music. For centuries, we’ve used a standard scale of pitches or “notes” called the “chromatic scale”: 12 notes in an octave – then repeat.

These 12 notes are the building blocks of our music. Everything from the greatest Mozart opera to the dumbest punk song is constructed from the same basic stuff.

That would lead you to believe that the number of combinations of notes would be infinite. And if not infinite, we’re certainly dealing with a very, very big number.

Actually, I have that number. This comes courtesy of a guy name Frank Behrens who wrote about this in something called The Arts Times in 2004.

A quick bit of math reveals that there are 479,001,600 possible combinations of those 12 notes – if you just played them once each.

But hang on. You just can’t stick a bunch of tones and semitones together and expect them to sound good. Music has to sound pleasing to the ear and soul, too.

That means that despite that last exercise in big numbers, there are only so many combinations of notes that work from an artistic and aesthetic point of view. Are you beginning to see the problem?

If there are only so many notes than can be put together in only so many pleasing ways, how long before things start being repeated? And we can narrow things down even further when we apply the idiom and aesthetics of, say, rock’n’roll and pop music.

Here’s an article that illustrates my point.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 37835 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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