[Marika (OP)]

Dennis wants to know:

Could we run out of musical notes?
would we be able to use every combination of musical notes?

What do you think?

[diverjohn]

If you use a fretless guitar then your available notes are practically endless.

[Adam Murphy]

I'd say there are enough notes, enough time signatures, enough styles and rythms, that you could probably make music forever

And well, there aren't many people making terrible sounding music (on purpose), so we could probably just mash together terrible sounding notes until the cows come home. Maybe the question is will we ever run out of good music.

But then what counts as new music. Does a metal remix of "Shake it Off" count?
What about singing "Never Gonna Give you up" to tune of Smells like Teen Spirit? Is that "new"?
Or All Star by Smash Mouth sung as a Bach Corale? (it exists and is ridiculous but) is it new?

What even counts as music anyway? John Cage can sit in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and call it music. Is it though?

[chiralSPO]

@Colin2B would probably be a good resource on this one, but I will add my own two cents...

A lot of this will depend on how you define your terms. If we limit ourselves to the "Western" 12 tone scale, and say that a C is a C no matter the octave, then there are only 12 notes: A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, and G#. This allows for 66 possible two-note chords (12×11/(2×1)), 220 possible three-note chords (12×11×10/(3×2×1), etc. Added all together there are 2¹², or 1024 possible "chords" (including no note being played, aka a rest), though most of these would be considered quite dissonant, even by the most avant garde musician...

If we still limit ourselves to these 12 notes, but differentiate between octaves, limited by the range of a piano (which has 88 keys), then there are 2⁸⁸ possible "chords" which is a very big number (but again, mostly not very musical...)

And a piano has a very limited range compared to the range of human hearing...

Also, this totally ignores the role of timbre, or how the note sounds. ie the difference between a trumpet, a clarinet, a crumhorn, and a marimba all playing the "same note." This become nearly infinitely variable with the introduction of electronic instruments (analog or digital).

...And recall that this is still quite limited by the 12-tone scale (there are actually even a few different interpretations of this 12-tone scale: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/df09/f09e4b12a162c642df5d0bbc007c5a7a7be3.pdf), compared to more finely divided scales used in Middle-Eastern and Indian music, and to even more ecclectic scales, like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohlen%E2%80%93Pierce_scale

And all of this only takes into consideration, a single note or chord. Once we get to rhythms and multiple parts, the possibilities are truly endless. (though without enough constraints, most audio will only sound like static--see entropy)

[evan_au]

Could we run out of musical notes?

Since you don't "use up" a note by playing it, no, you can't run out of them.

They are infinitely recyclable.

[ImitationQed]

Infinite tunes, infinite music.

[Liz888]

I think no

[rami999]

i always think of this idea in my mind

[Jameselard]

If I had a dollar for every time someone said that I would have 1 dollar.