From clicks to chords

You might have heard in the news recently that musician Ed Sheeran was being sued for similarities between his song Thinking out loud from 2014, and Marvin Gaye's song Get it on from 1973. But, given the way we write music to fit into specific genres, is it possible to write unique music with the limited quantity of notes and chords available? In this podcast Oli Freke, our favourite music correspondent, answers this question and plays us real examples of the connections between maths and music. You can find out more about the maths in music in Oli's articles – How many melodies are there? and Sine language. And you can find more of Oli's music, and his book "Synthesizer Evolution", here! The music in this podcast comes from, of course, Oli Freke! The track is called Funk Off.