How many melodies there are?

The number of melodies that can exist is virtually infinite. Melody is a sequence of musical notes that forms a distinctive phrase or idea. It is one of the fundamental elements of music, along with harmony, rhythm, and timbre. Since there are 12 pitches in Western music notation and melodies can be of varying lengths and patterns, the mathematical possibilities for constructing new melodies are essentially endless. The total number of different melodies that can be created exceeds many times over the total number of atoms in the universe.