Somewhat relevant, The Million Song Dataset: http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/
Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
31–40 of 113 posts
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comma is not a big deal : it's a problem caused by tone equalizing (aka temperament). Think of instruments as ladders : they have all the same steps, but start at different heights. When combining several types of instruments, the resulting steps are not aligned. Equal temperament solve that problem by normalizing the steps' absolute height. It's a trade-off between the instrument's perfect harmony, and the orche…
I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not sure you understand the comma. It has nothing to do with combining types of instruments. It's a problem that exists even with a single instrument. The problem is that, even on a single instrument (say a piano), if you start on some note (say C0), going up seven octaves should land you on exactly the same note as going up twelve perfect fifths (C7). The problem is that the precise…
I'd recommend "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony" if you are interested in the nuances and trade offs of the imperfections of tuning.
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#33> Even though there is a great variety of chords and chord progressions, progressions involving 1,4,5, and 6 are favoured, probably because they ‘sound good’ to our brain. I drive my girlfriend nuts because of this. I don't typically listen to the pop/country songs that are popular with our local radio but when she has it on in the car, every once in a while a song will come on and I'll think "I know this" and start…
I'm fond of this video that illustrates this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
That video is, of course, linked in the article... ;)
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
That book looks really interesting - thanks for the recommendation. What still twists my melon about harmony is the Pythagorean Comma. Harmony equating to integer ratios seems so right... But the fact that a perfect 5th on a piano isn't really a perfect 5th troubles me at some existential level.
In my view all it means is that an approximation of perfection is good enough. And the notion of temperament only really applies to keyboard instruments. Strings are tuned to perfect intervals, and even 'good' intonation of fingered notes is a matter of interpretation. Wind instruments are a hodgepodge of compromises.
I think there is a similar situation with guitar tuning where the G string can either be tuned to a 4th above the D string, or a Maj3 below B string, which are not exactly equal, so guitar chords are usually a tiny bit out of tune.
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#35Now I wonder if anyone has gathered data on vocal ranges. I'd love to be able to query for a list of songs in my range.
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#36To see how popular the 1-5-6-4 progression is you need only watch Axis of Awesome ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
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Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#37forgot this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4P8orKjadI
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#38Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#39I created a similar visualization of part of HookTheory's data:
At the time they didn't have an API, so I emailed them and they sent me a sample to work with. Would be interesting to see how it handles such a large amount of data.
If you're interested in this sort of harmonic analysis, you might also like a little visualization I created of the harmonies within a chord:
http://briancort.com/chordviz/
Great minds... ;)
Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
#40I am confused. Is "Start" always a 1? Then how can the first chord change also be a 1?
Nope. 1 is the root (or tonic) of the key, not necessarily the first chord.
Then what is the first chord? The beginning is labelled "Start" What does this mean? Either less than 25% of songs start on the 1 (no way this is possible) or the second chord is mislabeled as a chord change when it stays the same or those with a 1 in the second column started on a chord other than the root and instead of listing that chord, the data is thrown away. Something is messed up here.