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

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

#91

Post by cnanders »

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…

Hi planetguy, that is an excellent suggestion, and something we've actually already started working on. One of the things about the database our community is building is that it can be used for so many interesting studies. BTW, the Rihanna song you mentioned came on the other day and I heard someone sing "we found Dove in a soapless place". Couldn't help but laugh.

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

#92

Post by corry »

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 think it's simpler than that:

(1) People learn to play guitar by playing popular songs. These popular songs feature a subset of chords in certain combinations that sound good (eg. C->G->Am->F, C->Am-F-G, Am->F->C->G).

(2) People start creating their own songs using the mental maps of "what chords sound good together" from step #1.

(3) Rinse, repeat

My feeling is that it helps that these patterns are easier to play in C, but I think it's really about matching the "what chord comes next" pattern to a particular key.

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

#93

Post by pge »

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 think you are misunderstanding the article - All the songs were transposed to the key of C for the purpose of analyzing chords, so don't draw conclusions from the actual chord names presented as the most populat. Instead, what the article is saying is that the I, IV, V chords are the three most common (as one would expect from basic music theory). In the key of C, these are C, F, and G, so that is how it is presented.

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

#94

Post by HTryan »

jimmytucson wrote: post #73

Probably more interesting than the actual notes would be the figured chords and their progressions. In other words, "C G a F" isn't materially that different from "G D e C" or "F C d Bb". All three are instances of the same progression: "I V vi IV" ...which happens to be the most hackneyed (or "effective", depending on your point of view) chord progression in popular music over the last 30 years. If you transform eac…

Hey Jimmy,

Hooktheory stores all of its chord progressions in relative notation so we have tools to answer questions like the one you've posted here. Although the Hooktheory database is relatively small, we have 20 songs that contain I vi IV V, compared with 100 songs containing I V vi IV. Just by visual inspection, of the songs that contain I V vi IV, none of them were written before 1975, which may not prove, but certainly supports your claim.

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

#95

Post by glassx »

The chord choices in Garageband are the chords found within the scale of C, plus Bb (even the Bdim - but, to be pedant, it should actually be a B7b5). Having Bb you can modulate (or "change the key") to F without having to switch scales etc.

Also, the fact that he found D, E and A among the results is probably because of modulations. It's VERY common for pop songs to modulate a whole step during some chorus near the end [1]. As mentioned, G, F and C are V, IV and I. If we modulate a whole step, from C to D, the V, IV and I are A, G and D. It would be nice to consider those modulations into the research.

About the key choice, I believe it's irrelevant. It depends a lot on what's your instrument (Bb, Eb is easier on brass instruments), your style (lots of Metal songs in the key of E because E is the lowest note on guitar), your tuning (lots of rock bands downtune their guitars to Eb or D etc), your proficiency, and, most important, the vocalists range.

--

[1] Otis Reeding - My Girl, Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me (actually lots of songs by her), Monty Python/Eric Idle - Always Look On The Bride Side of Life, Talking Heads Nothing But Flowers (If you search "whole step key change" you'll get a bunch)

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

wildwood wrote: post #36
colanderman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by Synaesthesia »

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.)

Eb in original tuned guitar is very hard. But yeah detuning it 1 semitone is a good trick.

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

#98

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

that song (dunno who it's by) with the lyrics "We found love in a hopeless place"

It's by Rihanna, and I can't even understand how it got released. It's like something that got rejected from how-to-make-techno.tumblr.com for being too basic.

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

#99

Post by HTryan »

ef4 wrote: post #39
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 her…

Good points. Many rules in popular music come directly from classical music (after all, it's been around for a while).

However, as you can see in the Hooktheory database, there are many progressions that seem to be unique to popular music.

You mentioned iii->IV, which is a no-no in classical music due to the parallel fifths (more common: V/vi -> IV). But also look at progressions like: C G Bb F, which is extremely common in pop. Here we have a double plagal cadence set up by the dominant that was never used by Bach or Mozart, which is probably best functionalized as: I V IV/IV IV

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

#100

Post by HTryan »

recursive wrote: post #40
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.

> 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)

I think one of the primary issues with popular music is that it's often ambiguous whether it's in a major or minor mode, even when the song starts on a minor chord. Classically, one would mark the transition to a minor mode by the existence of an authentic cadence: V/vi -> vi, or by the raised scale degree 5, but neither of those clues exist in either song that you mentioned.

In songs like My Heart Will Go On, it appears that the verse tonicizes I, where as the chorus centers around the relative minor. However does it make sense to say it switches modes every time the section changes? Maybe not

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