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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.

#181

Post by PeterWhittaker »

Directions for future research:

1. Normalize for key: Express chords as I, ii, iii, IV, etc. This will permit analysis of chord progressions/exceptions (see below) across all keys.

2. Detect common constructs, e.g., 8-12-16 bar Blues, and analyze for exceptions, e.g., use of vi instead of I, use of V versus V7 as turnaround, etc. (And more interesting exceptions, e.g., resolution to ii or iii instead of I, etc.)

3. Related to #2, search for popular songs that do NOT follow/use common constructs. Are there are common characteristics across "second rank" popular songs (by which I mean "popular but not quite smashes, or short-duration - novelty - smashes")?

4. How much variation in key and/or chord progression is there for each artist?

Comments:

A. Not much of a surprise that C/Am is the most popular key: It is the most accessible - the white keys of the piano. It is also very accessible on the guitar, once one learns F...

B. ...but surprising to me that E is so unpopular, being "the natural key" of the guitar (E, A, B/B7 being so easy to learn and so common to the Blues). Analysis of key use by decade - or genre - could prove interesting....

C. Keys these days (the days of equal temperament) are chosen largely on accessibility: Can the soloist hit all of the notes important to the key? Can the accompanist make all the chords important to the song? Once upon a time, prior to equal temperament, keys had sounds and feels of their own, but nowadays, with equal temperament, the progression from unison to octave is by steps of absolutely the same value in each key.

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

#183

Post by Intermernet »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #181

Directions for future research: 1. Normalize for key: Express chords as I, ii, iii, IV, etc. This will permit analysis of chord progressions/exceptions (see below) across all keys. 2. Detect common constructs, e.g., 8-12-16 bar Blues, and analyze for exceptions, e.g., use of vi instead of I, use of V versus V7 as turnaround, etc. (And more interesting exceptions, e.g., resolution to ii or iii instead of I, etc.) 3. R…

Yes, I was thinking 1 and 2 while reading it. I'd love to get hold of the raw data!

In case you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2De2cK1mDw

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

#184

Post by terryk88a »

jschulenklopper wrote: post #170
shaggyfrog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charting chord progressions definitely sounds interesting. Would also like to see that based on musical style -- i.e. "blues" vs. "rock".

Already done (but not per musical style). See http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm for a generic Chord Progression Map, and http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/chartmaps.htm for specific maps for all twelve keys.

That's an interesting site, very nice lessons. But one would have to actually read the material to understand the chart (grin). But that chart is getting on toward what I expected to see at the subject of this HN post.

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

#185

Post by mistercow »

gnaritas wrote: post #161
mistercow wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, turning up the volume or strumming harder isn't exactly going to fill out that frequency spectrum.

Perhaps you missed the smiley. In any case, you can drop the low root and add the high one and it still only takes 3 fingers. I generally leave out the high note and play the middle triad and the bass with the thumb Hendrix style as it feels the most comfortable. But your main point was that the F was the most difficult to play, when what you really mean is your favorite 4 note version of the F is more difficult to p…

> certainly no harder than any other first position chord except perhaps Em

Or, of course, Em11, although you might call that 0th position.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

mistercow wrote: post #60
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 corr…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by gamache »

gruseom wrote: post #166
wheels wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analysis is overly dismissive of genres that you presumably don't like. Simplistic pop songs aren't a new phenomenon; they were just as present in the 60s as they are now. We just don't listen to them anymore as they haven't stood the test of time. This was abundantly evident last weekend when I went through a stack of about 100 45s from the 60s and early 70s that I inherited. (My father was a radio DJ during th…

We just don't listen to them anymore as they haven't stood the test of time. This was abundantly evident last weekend when I went through a stack of about 100 45s from the 60s and early 70s [...] I'd never heard of 90% of the bands There was a Cambrian explosion of music in that period, and virtually no one ever heard of 90%, probably 99%, of the bands. Countless groups sprang up all over the place and pressed record…

"Consider the famous 2-note guitar solo in the Buzzcocks' "Boredom": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoYiQ8Qsozk&t=1m15s. The rest of the band was rolling on the studio floor laughing while the guitarist played it because nobody believed it was possible to do a guitar solo that insane, let alone stick with it for that long. It's as far from complicated as you can get but still a great creation."

If he hadn't spent twenty seconds hammering out E-B-E-B, the ending Bb wouldn't be special at all!

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

#188

Post by gruseom »

twelvechairs wrote: post #173
gruseom wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just don't listen to them anymore as they haven't stood the test of time. This was abundantly evident last weekend when I went through a stack of about 100 45s from the 60s and early 70s [...] I'd never heard of 90% of the bands There was a Cambrian explosion of music in that period, and virtually no one ever heard of 90%, probably 99%, of the bands. Countless groups sprang up all over the place and pressed record…

> There was a Cambrian explosion of music in that period This is a bit of a simplistic explanation. Underlying this its really just that recording, playing and distributing music at reasonable quality became much cheaper and easier, so we rapidly went from a world where music was incredibly localised and diverse but not an attractive career (because nobody made much money) to one where music was heavily international…

Come to think of it, "Cambrian" isn't the best qualifer since there wasn't an explosion of species (genres), but of records in a few popular genres. Let's just say "explosion".

This didn't happen just because music was "cheaper and easier". It happened because of the youth culture of the 60s and the asteroidal impact of rock and roll (better science metaphor?), especially the British Invasion of 1963-64. Kids started bands because it was cool. Most weren't expecting to make money or become stars. They were in it to imitate their heroes and impress girls. This history is well known to fans and students of the period, and it's documented. Fanatical pop archivists have traveled to places like Kansas City and tracked down members of bands who pressed 300 copies of some 45 they recorded in 1966 and interviewed them about it.

By 1969, there was a sharp dropoff, not because the economics changed (it's not as if electric guitars got more expensive) but because the cultural moment had passed. Rock and roll became "rock" and started taking itself seriously. Bands started putting out slicker stuff that, in retrospect, was far less fresh and exciting. Fans of rock and roll talk about those years as the dark ages. The DIY aesthetic kicks back in bigtime with punk, which was a conscious effort to revive the values of the mid-60s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHPQI4b0ybE#t=18).

As I said, this stuff is all well documented. I learned about it from old fanzines and liner notes, so I don't have websites handy, but it ought to be pretty easy to find out about.

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

#189

Post by marvin »

fferen wrote: post #126

When I was young and learning music theory in piano lessons, one day I realized that literally half the songs on the radio used the chord progression "I V vi IV". This was a huge revelation to me! To my dismay, I couldn't find any evidence on the internet that anyone else had noticed this, until very recently I saw the "Four Chord Song" by Axis of Awesome ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I ). I was hoping t…

All the music nerds I've been hanging out with consider this a pretty obvious observation. So maybe it's a bit weird it hasn't shown up on the internet before.

But like a lot of other people in here have been saying: There's more to a song than the chord progression. We might as well have been talking about rhythm - the vast majority of Western music is in 4/4 time. Also, practically ALL Western music uses the 12-note system. Not pointing this at you, but it's annoying to hear all the people in this thread complain about how pop music sucks because it's all based on the same foundation. Practically all computer programs are in some way based on C. Does this mean that all computer programs suck?

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

#190

Post by baddox »

Goladus wrote: post #69
baddox wrote: post #20

I find it hard to believe that D major wasn't one of the more common chords to follow and E minor.

Note that he's only searching songs written in C Major. A D Major would be outside the key so naturally it would be quite rare. The results are exactly as I would expect. F is the most common chord to follow E, because that's the primary way to resolve the dissonance of that note in C major. When E appears in other chords in C Major it will also tend to resolve to F unless there's a good reason not to (cadential 6-4)…

Ah, I missed that the graph was only showing songs in C major.
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