Overload by typefaces

Drawcard

I often wonder how come, for example we have so many diverse songs in the world that are all based on combinations of just 7 notes... 7 notes!!

But why are we not overloaded by all the music around us, when it's all more or less built from such simple building blocks? It's the diverse usage of those notes that are found in each composition, making unique and interesting melodies, allowing 1000+ hit songs to exist using just G, A, C, or D chords alone.

Similarly I'm blown away by how many hundreds of thousands of Western fonts are out there, when we are mostly confined to 26 uppercase and lowercase letters, plus numbers and punctuation. Moreover those shapes are mostly black and white, positive and negative shapes. 

I guess it's overwhelming when you view it all in its entirety, but when you zoom in and see the hidden diversity in genres, styles, revivals etc. you start seeing that there's no limit to what can be done with these primitive building blocks we all have.

So I can't stand it when musicians / designers declare "There can be no more, we've seen it all". It's total BS. Just when you think you've seen it all, the next wave of creativity lands on the shore.

Marc Oxborrow

Not disputing that millions of songs are based on a limited number of notes and chords, but I would point out that in Western music we've got 12 notes to work with in a given octave.

Nick Shinn

I think it was Adrian Frutiger who addressed the issue of typeface proliferation thus (probably not in English, but anyway…) —“Why so many wines?”

Yves Michel

Joseph II to Mozart in "Amadeus": too many notes!

Drawcard

Marc Oxborrow said:

Not disputing that millions of songs are based on a limited number of notes and chords, but I would point out that in Western music we've got 12 notes to work with in a given octave.

Haha, you are right. That occurred to me after the 4 hour post edit time expired...