DragonBall M-numbers and speculation

[kenisu3000]

I did some math the other day, using what M-numbers we know and what we know about them, and discovered that Shunsuke Kikuchi composed upwards of 168 pieces of BGM before the series even began! Only 56 of this initial batch are released on CD, with give-or-take 81 unreleased pieces that were actually used in the show, and at least 31 mystery pieces that were never used at all!
That last bit, though, clears something up for me: there's a number of unreleased pieces of BGM from DBZ that don't seem to fit, and have that unique sound that suggests they were composed for the original DragonBall, so that could have been a "waste not, want not" attitude on the part of Shigeru Miyashita, who was in charge of music selection. They saw that there were a bunch of pieces that were never used, and put them to use. I'm sure we still haven't heard all of it, though.

EDIT: Kei17 kindly gave me some corrections and additions, which I'll edit in here.

I realize I never explained what the deal was with the early M-numbers, so I'll do that here:
If you look in the liner notes for disc 2 of the 5-disc set, you'll notice that tracks 2 through 13 (the tracks recycled from the DragonBall Ongakushu vinyl) use letters other than "M" (excepting the "C"s, which are found on the latter half of the disc). Apparently, Miyashita had started out by organizing Kikuchi's work in this manner, and you might also notice that each letter has a specific theme attached to it. Anything starting with:
A uses the OP theme ("Makafushigi Adventure") as a leitmotif for Goku (although there are a good number of other "Makafushigi Adventure" pieces listed under a different letter),
B contains the ED theme ("Romantic Ageru Yo") as a leitmotif for Bulma,
C is bookend music - namely, the Title Card and Eyecatches
F is what's known as a "bridge" - a short piece (usually around 10-20 seconds in length) expressing surprise, shock, goofiness, menace, mystery, and whatever else.
G is emotional music, and
H is scenic music.

I haven't figured out what D, I, and J are for individually, and like the grades they hand out at school, E seems to be totally absent, but after J, it switches to M and stays there for the rest of the series.

Anyway, it seems to me that the first batch (covering the Pilaf Saga and 21st Budokai) contained everything from A-1 to M23 [EDIT: not true, see Kei's post below] (it's not known if there was an M24 or greater, as Kikuchi discontinued each previous "hundreds" batch with every new story arc he composed for), and from there Kikuchi was commissioned for another 26+ pieces for the first half of the Red Ribbon Army arc, and thus we got M101-M126. Then along came DragonBall: The Movie, which gave us the M200s, and later, the Karin/Tao Pai Pai arc, which produced the M300s. After that, Movie 2 saw the M400s, the Piccolo Daimao saga gave us the M500s, and finally, Movie 3, which contained the M600s.
So if I figure right, Kikuchi composed a total of somewhere between 402-420 pieces of music for the original DragonBall, and that's not even counting the Dr. Slump BGM that was recycled for the Penguin Village episodes.

And out of those 402-420, only 111 were released on CD. Yikes.

[kei17]

Those M-numbers were given by Shugeru Miyashita instead of Shunsuke Kikuchi. Such ABC sorting is a traditional way of naming among the staff in TAVAC. In addition, M1 to M23 shoud not be included in the fisrt batch. They are from the 2nd recording.

I haven't figured out what D, G, H, I, and J are for individually, and like the grades they hand out at school, E seems to be totally absent, but after J, it switches to M and stays there for the rest of the series.

According to the liner notes (page 52):

A is arrangement of opening theme
B is arrangement of ending theme
G is emotional music
H is scenic music

There is no more description about the rest. I guess the pieces of J are specific themes for each character.

[kenisu3000]

Oh wow, thanks again, Kei! It's wonderful to have some things cleared up further. I guess that's just what I get for relying on my (very) old "translations" from the liner notes, rather than checking the source material...

[SolarBlade52]

Only 111 out of 402-420 of them? Yikes indeed.
The sad part is that I only like 34 out of all of the ones released.