I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found. • Hacker News Board

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#31

Post by sheldor » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:44 PM UTC

flomincucci wrote: post #23

I'm amused by the fact that this person doesn't seem to know that chords per se - and the analysis of them - is practically useless because they can and actually do vary from version to version of the same song. The thing that matters is how the chords are related (modes and progressions).

Exact same thoughts here. Statistics analysis is completely irrelevant when it comes to music (and any form of art of course).

That said, the whole attempt is impressive (from an engineer's perspective)

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#32

Post by fennecfoxen » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:46 PM UTC

taylorbuley wrote: post #16

I'd love to build this data into a neural network and see if I can come up with robosongs. It should be quite good at coming up with "What chord should come next?"

So if you open up a book like 'Music Theory for Complete Idiots' there's a section on "Chord progressions" that essentially has what you'd recognize as a state transition table for "what chords will sound good after this chord?" and I'm pretty sure there's a row that looks like [iii => IV, vi].

Coming up with a computerized vocabulary for the elements of coherent large-scale composition structures would be more of an interesting area to research than individual chord transitions, because the latter is really a solved problem.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#33

Post by DanBC » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

taylorbuley wrote: post #16

I'd love to build this data into a neural network and see if I can come up with robosongs. It should be quite good at coming up with "What chord should come next?"

I'd love to hear a Markov chain. I don't think it'd be pleasant. But it'd be fun.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#34

Post by glenntzke » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

snorkel wrote: post #28

Reason: It's easier to play these chords on a 6 string guitar, which has been the dominant instrument of choice for pop song composers. The first C chord on a guitar is easy to hit with no finger twisting required. It's also easy to switch between the first C, Am, and G chord, you can even do it quickly and repeatedly while drunk as you can imagine many pop songs are written. The first F chord requires a little more…

Don't leave out the fact that these are the "home row" power chords too - even easier to play and sound like you have an idea about what you're doing. Many popular songs (and of course 'garage band' simpleton songs) are unimaginative power chord arrangements.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#35

Post by msluyter » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:48 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #26

Brashman wrote: post #7

How does this compare to what Music Theory says about chords and chord progressions? Any Music Theory experts/aficionados around? I've unfortunately forgotten most of what I learned in my one class on it.

He doesn't go nearly enough into depth to say anything surprising. That "C/Am" is by far the most common is not surprising at all; C major is the first key any music student learns. I wish he separated out the major keys from minor keys. It's easy to tell the difference; almost no-one writes pop music in the natural minor (which shares a key signature with the relative major), as it has no dominant fifth. Rather, mel…

I was going to write up pretty much the same analysis of the Em->X progression. I think you aptly covered it. Interestingly, though, as you say Em->C sounds relatively static, I bet you see a lot more C->Em than the reverse (which should suffer from the same problem), and I'm hard pressed to say why exactly.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#36

Post by wildwood » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:48 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #29

dfan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chord stuff is all perfectly reasonable (in pop music, that is; in a classical piece in the key of C you would have an Em going to an Am way more than to F, for example, and you'd see way more D chords). I don't buy that Eb/Cm is the third most common key in pop music, though. There's not a whole lot of pop music in minor keys, and Eb is a weird key to play guitar in.

Eb is a weird key to play guitar in. Van Halen did it all the time. (Tuning down a 1/2 step is not uncommon among heavier rock/heavy metal bands. I'm not entirely sure why though.)

That's cool, I hadn't heard of that before. Here's a link with some possible explanations:

http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/sidewinders-bar-grille/24512...

The explanation that E-flat works better with tunings for brass and horns was interesting.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#37

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:49 PM UTC

batista wrote: post #4

Hmm, one could also use a Markov chain on those 1300 chord progressions....

Peter Langston did some interesting work in 1989 [1] on algorithmic music generation. Many of those live on in Nintendo games today.

[1] http://www.langston.com/Papers/amc.pdf

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#38

Post by dooq » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

snorkel wrote: post #28

Reason: It's easier to play these chords on a 6 string guitar, which has been the dominant instrument of choice for pop song composers. The first C chord on a guitar is easy to hit with no finger twisting required. It's also easy to switch between the first C, Am, and G chord, you can even do it quickly and repeatedly while drunk as you can imagine many pop songs are written. The first F chord requires a little more…

Em is probably the very simplest guitar chord to play, only needing 2 fingers beside each other. Yet it doesn't come in at the top of the list. So I don't think your explanation is the dominant force here.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#39

Post by ef4 » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

Brashman wrote: post #7

How does this compare to what Music Theory says about chords and chord progressions? Any Music Theory experts/aficionados around? I've unfortunately forgotten most of what I learned in my one class on it.

Everything in this post is consonant with typical music theory.

The most popular chords are the good old I, IV, and V, and the next most popular are their relative minors (C -> am, G -> em, F -> dm).

The example they give of chords following "em" is also pretty much what you'd expect. The most classic resolution for "em" would be "am" (it's dominant -> tonic in the relative minor key).

The more popular resolution here ("em" to "F") is more of a pop music thing, because it's harder to do classical voice leading with it -- classical composers tended to avoid parallel fifths.

Edited to add: Why mention classical rules at all in a post about pop music? Because there's not much new under the sun -- you'd be hard pressed to find any harmony in pop music that Mozart or even Bach wouldn't recognize.

Re: I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.

#40

Post by recursive » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

dfan wrote: post #14

Brashman wrote: post #7

How does this compare to what Music Theory says about chords and chord progressions? Any Music Theory experts/aficionados around? I've unfortunately forgotten most of what I learned in my one class on it.

The chord stuff is all perfectly reasonable (in pop music, that is; in a classical piece in the key of C you would have an Em going to an Am way more than to F, for example, and you'd see way more D chords). I don't buy that Eb/Cm is the third most common key in pop music, though. There's not a whole lot of pop music in minor keys, and Eb is a weird key to play guitar in.

> There's not a whole lot of pop music in minor keys

In my informal survey of the first 6 songs I got on the "pop" channel on pandora, fully a third were in minor keys. (Rumor has it by Adele, and I wanna go by Britney Spears)