> If traditional Western harmony is played out, surely the obvious solution is adding more notes?
If traditional Western literature is played out, surely the obvious solution is to add more letters to the alphabet?
If traditional Western literature is played out, surely the obvious solution is to add more letters to the alphabet?
Most of them are of little musical utility, but you could conceivably use and have opinions about them all. This is not possible with literature. There are far more than 2047 functionally distinct sentences, so there is no need to add more letters to the alphabet.
Unrelated but it reminded me of this [0] article discussed on HN a few times.
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmic...
You're omitting time. Harmonic perception is highly contextual. The way a chord sounds will depend heavily on the chords that precede it, so it's not just a question of enumerating the chords. You have to enumerate the chord progressions, and their rhythms. That's a much larger number.