A lady called Gwen recently wrote into the NPZr website as follows “With so many songs already written around the world, and throughout time, how the hell can anyone write a NEW song? Yet I hear a new song and I love it and it sounds new — but is it new? How could it be? There must be a mathematical or statistical number of possibilities of note/melody combinations for songs to be made, right? I think about this a lot.”
Years ago my wife and I were writing a musical, and after a reading someone commented that one of the songs sounded very like “Hernando’s Hideaway”. I was upset, partly because I used to dislike “Hernando’s Hideaway”. Apart from the latin rhythm I could see little else in common with the two songs (there wasn’t). What is the point of deliberate plagiarism?
But the idea that there can be no original tunes/melodies left to write is very prevalent. One academic claimed in all seriousness that every possible tune had already been written. This is nonsense. Famously, someone said that a “million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years won’t actually write Shakespeare; a quintillion, maybe, but if there were a quintillion monkeys, then Shakespeare would be the least of our worries”. The same goes for music. What is true is that there is a lot of unimaginative and samey-sounding pop and classical music. (I have to listen to the pop music constantly at the gym; but of course, it is new and exciting to a new, young audience). Also, it has to be said that, if a melody comes spontaneously into ones head, one has to wonder every time, “where does this come from?” Is it a rehash of something you’ve heard and had forgotten, lurking in the recesses of the brain. This is an occupational hazard for people composing any type of music.
The real problem is not plagiarism, deliberate or accidental. The problem is a lack of imagination and inventiveness. All the musical ideas have not been thought of before and I doubt ever will be.
Even if its true that originality is dead, there are so many ways of improvising on and improving existing songs. In my opinion, Status Quo’s You’re in the army now, was dramatically improved by Swedish power metal band Sabaton. Even though I’m sure we have totally different tastes in music, I agree with you about the same-sounding pop music you hear all over the place, even though I’m only 18. Classical music tends to be more imaginative, some film and video game music is excellent. The reason behind the apparent lack of creativity in most modern music is that the masses, with their untrained ears, like catchy music. This constrains composers from being able to experiment. Music has become accustomed to being short and playable on the radio. The best music ought to be played as an album. Pink Floyd’s The Wall is one of the best examples of this.
Owen, you sound like a very knowledgeable and mature 18 year-old. I agree with your point that people’s “untrained ears,” constrain musical evolution. Training ears, like developing any human ability, takes investment of time and resources. And THAT–i.e., training fellow humans–is another subject altogether, eh?