The equivalent of a writer staring at a blank page, wondering how to fill it, is a composer staring at the 88 black and white notes on a piano wondering how to compose a melody that's never been heard before. How can one possibly take the eight notes of a standard scale and write a brand new melody when so many great melodies have already been written? Perhaps they've all been taken!

How many combinations are there?

So, to counter the fear of there being no new melodies, I thought it would be interesting to examine the number of melodies available to a composer looking at his blank stave to see how many there potentially are.