I don't know much music theory, and this is what I've been wondering. There are hundreds of songs written every year. Many have new and catchy tunes, but some sound too much like others that have come before. This prompted the question--whether there is a limit on the number of feasible melodies. Of course, there can be infinite different arrangements of notes, but most of them would be discordant and not suitable for melodies. Another qualifier is that there is a practical length range for a melody, I think: super-long ones would be hard to learn and forgotten early, and super-short ones can hardly be called tunes. So, with these things in mind, is there a limit? We will ever reach it? I suppose we might, and then we will merely plagiarize creatively. Or we could change to a new system that doesn't use twelve tones, thus opening up an entirely new playing field.

gab"Imagine trying to distinguish eighty-fourths of an octave"by