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

blog.hooktheory.com

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

#51

Post by kroger »

Nice post, I'm looking forward for the next one. Meanwhile I'll give my 2 cents.

The main problem in analyzing tonal music is that we mainly listen to relations between chords. For instance, in the following progression in C major, A major functions as a dominant of D (D is the dominant of G and G is the dominant of C):

    C A D G C.
OTOH, in the following progression the same A is the subdominant of E:

    E A B E.
This means that if a song modulates or there's a tonicization [1] the same chord will have different tonal functions and we'll listen to it differently. Just counting a chord in a song may not be enough if they have different functions.

The number of repetitions also matters. Tonally, the progressions C | C | C | G | G and C | G | C | G are the same as C | G. Is he eliminating repetitions in the analysis?

About using A major in C; you can use it as a dominant of D (see my 1st example) or as a chromatic mediant [2] in C major. Of course, in modern music you can use anything you want, but these two are the most common uses.

And, naturally, the types of chords used will vary according to the music style.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonicization [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_mediant

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

#52

Post by sirteno »

I’d be interested to see if they observed patterns or deviations from the norm when comparing between music genres and perhaps even eras / decades.

My sense, as a classical and electric (contemporary rock / blues) guitarist is that you'd observe interesting deviations from the aggregate results described in the study.

Digging a bit I found the following research piece which shares some more thoughts on this topic:

http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/cunninghams/research/mozart.pdf

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

#53

Post by hlomas »

Why not add some more interesting visualizations of your data? Try http://d3js.org. For example http://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/ or http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/20111116/iris-parallel.ht... might be adapted to communicate which chords follow the others in a more dense fashion.

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

#54

Post by horsehead »

What he's really talking about is chord progression (while he doesn't really say that, it's essentially the description of his first few paragraphs). Most university-level music classes discuss common chord progressions. As he notes, the I, IV and V chords are the most common to appear in a song.

It's a great article, but I think he may have done a lot of work to find out something that is fairly common knowledge lol. Still cool though to have the supporting data. (edit: it would be cool to make this an interactive piece of data presentation to help you write songs. Also, the I, IV and V chords are so popular because they naturally make people feel good. It's why they show up so often in 'pop' music. minor chords have a more depressive quality to them)

Also, if you need proof that certain chords show up often in music, just listen to some Nickelback. Here is a fun link (that I THINK works. my speaker only works in the left side ;) ) http://dagobah.net/flash/nickelback.swf

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

#55

Post by muraiki »

planetguy wrote: post #25

What I'd like to see is a plot of the number of chords used in a song versus time. Possibly even broken down by genre, or correlated to other qualities (sex of singer) et cetera. If you start at the 1950s, you'll see very simple rock songs; your classic three-chord rock songs. As you hit the 1960s you'll see more complexity; The Beatles, for instance, had more harmonic complexity than what had come before, which cont…

Honestly, I wouldn't mind hearing more of your discussion about art music and the breakdown of harmony.

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

#56

Post by wheels »

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…

Unfortunately your explanation doesn't hold water if you consider other instruments.

C major / A minor are even easier on piano. (C major and A minor are relative keys – they contains the same notes, just with a different note emphasized as the root, or tonic.) They're the two keys that are made up of just playing the white keys on the piano. In contrast, G major / E minor is probably the easiest key to play in on guitar (containing G, C, D, Em and Am), and it comes in second place.

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

#57

Post by te_platt »

dfan wrote: post #44
dooq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, if you went by novice guitar player easiness, the keys of G and D would be at the top, not C. Also, barre chords enable you to play in any key you want, so it's not like playing in C# is particularly harder than playing in C.

Except that C is a (the?) natural third cord to use with G and D. And then it's a bit tricky to not get something that sounds like a John Denver song.

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

#58

Post by powrtoch »

nchuhoai wrote: post #15

I like this analysis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DIgPyxiWU&feature=relat... While I do believe the popular songs follow some pattern, I think the chord progression is only a subset. Someone should look into why Call me Maybe is so catchy. Seriously though

Writing likable, memorable songs is about striking a balance between comfortable and interesting. It always irks me when people go from "this chord progression is in a lot of popular songs" to "therefore all you have to do to write a good song is use this chord progression".

The "comfortable" bit is the easy part. Making it interesting is the trick. There are thousands of songs using this same progression that are awful.

That's my main objection to the original post, and similar articles I've seen. It doesn't really tell you anything usable about how to write a good song. At no point as a developing songwriter does looking at a statistical breakdown of chord progression help you take the next step. "It's got the same chords as X, so it'll definitely be good!" is not something you hear good songwriters say.

Edit: To clarify, I think I'm agreeing with the sentiment of your last 2 sentences, as I understand them.

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

#59

Post by UrLicht »

wheels wrote: post #56
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…

Unfortunately your explanation doesn't hold water if you consider other instruments. C major / A minor are even easier on piano. (C major and A minor are relative keys – they contains the same notes, just with a different note emphasized as the root, or tonic.) They're the two keys that are made up of just playing the white keys on the piano. In contrast, G major / E minor is probably the easiest key to play in on gu…

Only easy because they are traditionally taught first. This is because from a music theory standpoint the keys in which those chords are tonic have the least number of sharps and flats. From a memory and hand position standpoint chords that have a black key in the middle (D maj. E maj. etc) are the easiest.

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

#60

Post by mistercow »

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…

I'm going to have to disagree with you pretty strongly. F is just about the most difficult basic chord to play. In fact, besides B flat, it's the only one on the graph that requires four fingers (or a barre). Similarly, A minor is much easier to play than C, yet it is far less common.

The popularity of C and Em as keys is undoubtedly a result of what's easy to play on a standard guitar with no capo, but I see no correlation between chord popularity and ease of playing.

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