Okay, so I have a mathematical problem that I'd really appreciate if anyone could solve. I am a musician and I want to know how many (possible) chords there are.
- A chord is definied as any combination of three or more notes.
- There are twelve notes
- We could adress them as numbers 1-12 to simplify things.
- It does not matter in what order the numbers are in. For example a chord consisting of tones 1, 3, 5 and 7 is the same chord as a chord consisting of 1, 7, 5, 3.
- There is however an exception to the above rule and that is the starting note. Meaning 5, 3, 1, 7 would count as another chord than 1, 3, 5, 7. To simplify this you could say that any combination should be multiplied with how many notes there are in this specific combination. So the chord consisting of all twelve notes would end up being twelve different chords. A chord consisting of three notes would end up being three different chords.
- A little musical curiosa. Chords generally consist of three to five notes, a jazz-musician might use 6 or even 7 notes. Anything above will probably sound really bad. But I'm interested in how many chords there are that is possible in theory.