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Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

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Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#71

Post by codeulike »

snorkel wrote: post #53

For non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard) ... plus 5 accidental notes that half-way between: A#, C#, D#, F#, G# also known as Bb, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab ... the black keys on a piano keyboard. # means sharp (go up in pitch one-half step) b means flat (go down in pitch one-half step) 7 naturals + 5 accidentals…

But the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#73

Post by cjslep »

ssharp wrote: post #63
cjslep wrote: post #4

> 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…

Do you really listen to the chords that closely? For a lot of music, the chords are either largely hinted at (bass notes, the lead guitar or rhythm guitar lick, and how the melody move) and if there is an instrument banging out the exact chord progression, it's usually buried under the stuff or at least the vocal. If I'm writing a song, I'm spending almost all of my time doing things tangential to the chord progressi…

> Do you really listen to the chords that closely?

> I'm only talking about pop-based music here, so rock, pop, country, etc.

I rarely willingly listen to pop-based music. I don't consciously focus on the chords that closely, but then again I haven't really thought that maybe how I hear songs is different than another person (like the "do you see a duck or rabbit" visual illusion, but with sounds).

For the really curious, the first album I really remember getting into as a kid was Paul Van Dyk's Seven Ways album, which is a pretty minimal trance album (compared to today's "edm") with very few vocals. At the same time, I was getting into guitar with my cousins and playing instrumentals such as Metallica's Orion or Call of Cthulhu. Also around that time my stepfather entered my life. He played violin for a symphony and exposed me to the world of classical music.

So while I've realized my musical tastes are strange (trance, heavy metal, classical are still my go-to genres), I haven't really payed attention to how I listen to music.

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#74

Post by bsder »

mhax wrote: post #12
pcsanwald wrote: post #8

If anyone has interest in harmonic theory and why I/IV/V progressions are so pervasive, I highly recommend "The Harmonic Experience" by W.A. Mathieu. He really gets into the harmonic series, and how intervals are really low prime ratios. I read this book after being a professional musician for 15 years and it was an ear opening experience. there are lots of great singing exercises for really hearing the overtone seri…

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.

22 frets can make some of the extended harmonies much, much closer to ideal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHHv3mwJTlg

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#75

Post by yodsanklai »

codeulike wrote: post #71
snorkel wrote: post #53

For non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard) ... plus 5 accidental notes that half-way between: A#, C#, D#, F#, G# also known as Bb, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab ... the black keys on a piano keyboard. # means sharp (go up in pitch one-half step) b means flat (go down in pitch one-half step) 7 naturals + 5 accidentals…

But the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.

Good question. I don't know the exact answer, but yes I think there's nothing special that distinguish naturals and accidentals from a "listening" point of view. However, this distinction is handy for written music. For example, when you play a piece of music in a given key, let say G major, the notes are G A B C D E F#, there's only one accidental, so you can put this information in the key signature at the beginning of the score, and you can use only 7 natural notes on your staff. And this works for all "diatonic" keys (where notes belong to a major scale). You can always write your music with 7 naturals.

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#76

Post by mpdehaan2 »

codeulike wrote: post #71
snorkel wrote: post #53

For non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard) ... plus 5 accidental notes that half-way between: A#, C#, D#, F#, G# also known as Bb, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab ... the black keys on a piano keyboard. # means sharp (go up in pitch one-half step) b means flat (go down in pitch one-half step) 7 naturals + 5 accidentals…

But the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.

Accidentals are notes outside of a scale, and a scale is an arbitrary concept chosen by some ancient people who decided certain notes sound good together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_%28music%29

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#77

Post by im3w1l »

mhax wrote: post #12
pcsanwald wrote: post #8

If anyone has interest in harmonic theory and why I/IV/V progressions are so pervasive, I highly recommend "The Harmonic Experience" by W.A. Mathieu. He really gets into the harmonic series, and how intervals are really low prime ratios. I read this book after being a professional musician for 15 years and it was an ear opening experience. there are lots of great singing exercises for really hearing the overtone seri…

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.

Just intonation is just a theory. In practice slightly detuned intervals sound good. Imo they can even sound better than when they are perfectly in tune.

Sometimes musicians deliberately use detuning to create a sound, for instance in the "chorus effect".

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=68007 http://www.dancemusicproduction.com/forum/index.php?showtopi...

EDIT: Another interesting fact is that pianos aren't actually tuned to equal temperament. The intervals are tuned slightly bigger than it would dictate, to accommodate pianos' slightly inharmonic overtone series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_tuning#Stretch

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#78

Post by rspeer »

kowdermeister wrote: post #24

"So for example, the transition 4->1->5->6 is one of the most popular ones" The graph does not show this or I'm misunderstanding something. The most popular looks like 1,4,1,5 Also, what does the double, triple numbers mean? 664, 66 in the fist column. I know some music theory, but the article's explanation is rather confusing.

He just said "one of the most popular", and 1 -> 5 -> 6 -> 4 is indeed the ridiculously common progression of "four chord rock".

But if only the changes in chords are being notated, I bet 1, 4, 1, 5 comes from the 12-bar blues, which is even more widespread than four-chord rock. The 12 bars that dominated the 20th century could be notated as:

1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 1, 1, 5, 4, 1, 5

And if you only notate the transitions:

1 -> 4 -> 1 -> 5 -> 4 -> 1 -> 5

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#79

Post by graycat »

haberman wrote: post #29
luch wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

Nice. I'd go with the 2^7 and not the (3/2)^(12).

> It defines a half-step as the 12th power of 2

Uh, instead, "12th root of 2".

Re: Chord progressions of 25,000 songs

#80

Post by snorkel »

codeulike wrote: post #71
snorkel wrote: post #53

For non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard) ... plus 5 accidental notes that half-way between: A#, C#, D#, F#, G# also known as Bb, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab ... the black keys on a piano keyboard. # means sharp (go up in pitch one-half step) b means flat (go down in pitch one-half step) 7 naturals + 5 accidentals…

But the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.

I don't see a good online reference, maybe I read this a guitar book somewhere, but essentially the tones for A, B, C, D, E, F, G notes were picked out by the ancient Greeks (who referred to them as Alpha, Beta, Gamma ... so on) In fact Pythagoras came up with a mathematical tuning system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras#Musical_theories_and...

The 7 natural notes are based on a 7-tone equal temperament (equal tonal spacing), which gives you enough equal spacing between notes to make nice harmonies (nice complimentary resonance) so this sort of a 7-tone minimal palette, and 5 "accidentals" fill the spaces in between those 7 tones to make a fuller 12-tone equal temperament palette.

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