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I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

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Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#41

Post by keymasta »

wannadingo wrote: post #31
gchamonlive wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A third, fourth, fifth, sixth... Triton... Those are intervals. I ask again, what's an interval between three pitches? Is it a triad? If it's so, than it's not a minor nitpick, OP is just being plain pedantic for the sake of it.

Two pitches played together is a dyad, three together is a triad. There may be words for four or more pitches together but I just call them chords. The term interval only makes sense to describe distance between two elements, whether pitches or two marks on a ruler.

Monad Diad Triad Tetrad Pentad Sextad Septad Octad Nontad Dectad Monodectad Didectad/Bidectad (?)

Or,

1 Note/Unison

2 Interval/Diad

>3 Chord

And, I agree an interval is essentially a distance. Distance between three points makes no sense as they might very well lay outside of one straight line. Even they are on the same line.. are we measuring the distance between each distance?

It's ambiguous what that might even mean, but the original poster might think of a collection of intervals which is 0 or more notes with intervals relative to a given root.

For example if you think in integers (pitch set notation):

  m6   { 0 3 7 9 } Minor 6
  5    { 0 7 }     Power Chord
  ma13 { 0 2 4 5 7 9 11 } Ionian
  N.C  { } No Chord/Rest
  °7   { 0 3 6 9 11 } Diminished Seventh/Dim Seven

  .. etc
They might have different numbers of notes but I see them as the same type of identities. I just call them all changes.

Also note that 13 means two different things, either the septad above or a pentad of the form 1 3 5 7 13 aka 7(6) "dominant add six"

So in set notation it's:

  ma13 { 0 4 7 9 11 }
  13   { 0 4 7 9 10 }

  Etc..

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#42

Post by heavymetalpoizn »

memset wrote: post #36

The way this analysis, and the original dataset were created, makes no sense. This is, in part, not the author's fault, since the original data [1, 2] is flawed. First, the original data was constructed like this: "...The next step was to format the raw HTML files into the full chord progression of each song, collapsing repeating identical chords into a single chord (’A G G A’ became ’A G A’)..." Already this makes n…

[dead]

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#43

Post by bee_rider »

a4isms wrote: post #17
alexjplant wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People tend to have a warped concept of the history of music. Pachelbel's Canon in D is by no means a complex song and has stood the test of time. Music through out time has also served different purposes. Hell, go back to Ancient Greece, Gregorian chants, and Medieval music. Those various time periods were not generally fully of complexity either. I would argue such times were generally less complex than modern mu…

The key observation for me is Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is crud." My most impressionable years for music were the 70s and 80s. I remember fantastic music from that time... But the fact is, most of what we hear today from that era has been curated for us. We hear the 10% of the 70s and 80s hits that weren't crud. Or maybe even the 1% that was great. If we actually listen to the top twenty-five singles…

We do an awful lot nowadays, though. Hmm, actually, I guess it is a straightforward equation I just don’t have my pencil or envelope handy.

Imagine that we are interacting with all the accumulated good stuff, plus the modern good stuff, as well as the old good stuff (the old crud is forgotten). If our productivity is growing exponentially, is the proportion of crud increasing over time?

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#44

Post by mkl »

divbzero wrote: post #15

Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions? Analyzing individual chords involves counting the frequency of each chord (such as G, C, or D). Analyzing chord progressions would involve counting the frequency of chord pairs (such as D—A or C—G), chord triplets (such as D—A—Bm or C—G—Am), or longer sequences of chords. For an alternative look at the data, you could also normalize chord pr…

Yes, I was disappointed.

The original paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22046 did look at chord progressions. They also trained a machine learning model to predict the next chord. Some of the chord progression data is in graph form at https://github.com/spyroskantarelis/chordonomicon.

The raw chord data is at https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/tree/.... It consists of one row per song containing a list of chord names in song order (no timing information) and Spotify ids for track and artist. It seems like Spotify has a different id for every released version, so it's really hard to search for particular songs in the data.

To normalise across key signatures you need to know what key the song is in (at each point), and the data doesn't contain that. For many genres it could be guessed reasonably accurately from the chords.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#45

Post by cole-k »

It's an admittedly smaller dataset, but Hook Theory has an analysis that allows you to search by chords (including relative) and look at trends:

https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab

https://www.hooktheory.com/trends

It's a weird coincidence to see this post since I only occasionally remember about Hook Theory and binge it, but I remembered earlier this week.

Many of you have probably heard the Axis of Awesome four chords song (if not, look it up, it's great), but it's fun doing the same thing with other songs.

Like, did you know that you can sing the chorus of Numb by Linkin Park over the chorus of...

* I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace

* Immortals by Fallout Boy

* Cheap Thrills by Sia (swung Numb lol)

(+ the bridge of The Rock Show by Blink 182)

Numb has a pretty common chord progression so I could pick songs with the exact same chords, but there are also some oddly specific finds like this video game (?) song that inexplicably has the same relative chord progression as Hotel California https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/zun/reincarnation#...

---

I am often surprised how a seemingly simple chord progression has only one result, even when I search by relative chords and ignore extensions and inversions, e.g. https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/chord-search/results?ke...

However when you put that query into the normal search box, it does match a lot more songs, showing that there is a i III _ VII trend, just that i III vi VII is strange (which I guess makes sense). Perhaps my lack of music theory makes it harder to normalize my queries, but it's also possible that (1) there isn't enough data or (2) there is inconsistency in how people annotate the pieces (some songs will have II II II II, for example, following the rhythm, whereas some songs will have just a single II).

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#46

Post by parpfish »

cole-k wrote: post #45

It's an admittedly smaller dataset, but Hook Theory has an analysis that allows you to search by chords (including relative) and look at trends: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab https://www.hooktheory.com/trends It's a weird coincidence to see this post since I only occasionally remember about Hook Theory and binge it, but I remembered earlier this week. Many of you have probably heard the Axis of Awesome four ch…

Hook theory: It doesn't matter what I say, so long as I sing with inflection

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#47

Post by thaumasiotes »

crdrost wrote: post #38
gchamonlive wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's new for me. What's an interval between three pitches called?

So when you've got an interval you usually mean two sounds that are separated in time. So like the iconic Jaws Melody dun-dan-dun-dan-dun-dan, those notes are separated by an interval that could be called one semitone, 100 cents, or a minor second, depending on who is talking. Or in “Oh when the Saints Go Marching In,” the ‘Oh-when’ interval is two tones (four semitones), 400¢, or a major third, the ‘when-the’ interv…

> So like the iconic Jaws Melody dun-dan-dun-dan-dun-dan, those notes are separated by an interval that could be called one semitone, 100 cents, or a minor second, depending on who is talking.

For what it's worth, I would call that a "half step".

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#48

Post by thaumasiotes »

jancsika wrote: post #10

> An “interval” is a combination of two notes. Minor nitpick: it's a "dyad" that is a combination of two notes. An "interval" is the difference between two (or more) pitches. And just as you'd measure the space between your eyebrows using a ruler, you'd measure the interval between middle C and concert A using your ears. The bonus, however, is that our listening apparatus is already quantized to octaves-- if you hear…

> Minor nitpick: it's a "dyad" that is a combination of two notes.

> An "interval" is the difference between two (or more) pitches. And just as you'd measure the space between your eyebrows using a ruler, you'd measure the interval between middle C and concert A using your ears.

How are you imagining that works? If you had three eyebrows, how much space would there be between them? Intervals are, by definition, the space between two points.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#49

Post by thaumasiotes »

divbzero wrote: post #15

Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions? Analyzing individual chords involves counting the frequency of each chord (such as G, C, or D). Analyzing chord progressions would involve counting the frequency of chord pairs (such as D—A or C—G), chord triplets (such as D—A—Bm or C—G—Am), or longer sequences of chords. For an alternative look at the data, you could also normalize chord pr…

> Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions?

Not according to the other comments, which say that the data set strips chords that follow identical chords, as if "too" was one of the most common words in written English.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#50

Post by edoceo »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #25

Listing the "most frequent chord" is a weird analysis, I'm more interested in the "most frequent key", or a transition matrix from one key to another, e.g., if I'm in F, what's the chance I go a fifth up to C, or a fourth down to Bb. Just telling me G is a popular chord doesn't do much.

G is the best one though, maybe D.
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