there are only so many combinations of musical notes in existence. So how have we not run out yet?
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Adding new notes is really a thing. Different musical cultures operate on different sets of notes. There are pentatonic cultures with only 5 notes. There are Near Eastern and Indian cultures with much more than 12 notes, they operate microtones. Western music advanced from ancient pentatonic, to various diatonic (7 note) modes, to chromatic music (12 notes). There were also less successful music systems in Western history, such as the Ancient Greek genera, ethos and melos which eventually boiled down to diatonics (more exotic versions just sorta died out).
TL/DR: it is a mistake to think that there are just 7 notes. It is all culturally and historically variable.
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