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I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

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Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#101

Post by airstrike »

uoaei wrote: post #99
huimang wrote: post #64

Using absolute chord analysis instead of relative chords (i.e. roman numeral analysis) doesn't make sense. As others have noted, the original dataset is flawed because the structure of a song is critical, you cannot omit repeating chords. Programmers/analysts should take more care to understand music theory or the underlying field at hand, before compiling datasets or doing analysis. "Most common chord" is mildly int…

The parallels between your critique of music analysis, and linguists' critique of LLMs, bear remarkable similarities. "Language/thought is more than sequences of tokens" will still be true no matter how much data we throw at the problem to smooth the rough edges.

Except music theory has a math component to it so it's arguably somewhat quantifiable and falsifiable in a way that linguistics never will be.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#102

Post by Levitz »

uoaei wrote: post #99
huimang wrote: post #64

Using absolute chord analysis instead of relative chords (i.e. roman numeral analysis) doesn't make sense. As others have noted, the original dataset is flawed because the structure of a song is critical, you cannot omit repeating chords. Programmers/analysts should take more care to understand music theory or the underlying field at hand, before compiling datasets or doing analysis. "Most common chord" is mildly int…

The parallels between your critique of music analysis, and linguists' critique of LLMs, bear remarkable similarities. "Language/thought is more than sequences of tokens" will still be true no matter how much data we throw at the problem to smooth the rough edges.

The parallelism doesn't really work, I'm going to try to stretch it to make a point though.

Imagine that we were at a stage in which LLMs didn't really make sentences, only output like "Potato rainbow screen sunny throat", then we studied which words are used. There's really not much value to the words at all, we could maybe see which words are bundled together, we could try to ascertain what kind of words are used more, but in wanting to study the coherence of it all, it just holds very, very little value.

Chords by themselves hold very little meaning. The sensations evoked come from chords in a context and the progression provides very valuable context. Talking about a chord in a song is like talking about a word in a book, it's never really about that piece of the puzzle appearing, it's about how that piece is used in the puzzle.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#103

Post by [deleted] »

huimang wrote: post #64

Using absolute chord analysis instead of relative chords (i.e. roman numeral analysis) doesn't make sense. As others have noted, the original dataset is flawed because the structure of a song is critical, you cannot omit repeating chords. Programmers/analysts should take more care to understand music theory or the underlying field at hand, before compiling datasets or doing analysis. "Most common chord" is mildly int…

[deleted]

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#104

Post by aczerepinski »

As a jazz musician I’d estimate that there are at least an order of magnitude more seventh chords than triads in jazz songs. I question a dataset that says there are more triads. Makes me wonder what else is wrong with the data.

For instance, G being the most common key in jazz doesn’t ring true. I’d wager that it’s Bb, Eb, F in some order.

Maybe all of the songs in this set were simplified for guitar players?

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#105

Post by Levitz »

calibas wrote: post #95

From my experience playing guitar, the average punk or metal song is almost entirely power chords, while this data says power chords are only 5% of chords in both genres... I thought maybe there's types of metal and punk that I don't know about, but Wikipedia, LLMs and guitar tab sites all agree with me. Punk and metal is overwhelmingly power chords, so I don't see how the data comparing chord types can be correct.

That was also really surprising to me, but I think it can be explained by the fact that they bundle up repeated chords.

You could play a G power chord for 3 minutes straight and it would count as one.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#106

Post by kortex »

seertaak wrote: post #88
huimang wrote: post #64

Using absolute chord analysis instead of relative chords (i.e. roman numeral analysis) doesn't make sense. As others have noted, the original dataset is flawed because the structure of a song is critical, you cannot omit repeating chords. Programmers/analysts should take more care to understand music theory or the underlying field at hand, before compiling datasets or doing analysis. "Most common chord" is mildly int…

Agree completely. I assume OP means major or minor 7th chord - they can't possibly mean dominant 7th, because...does there even exist a single blues song which doesn't have that chord? And let's say you take maj7 chords - "you and me song", "you are so beautiful", "sing sang sung", "1975" - just off the top of my head. Pretty much any pop song which is melancholic sounding. For min7, choose virtually any Santana song…

I am pretty sure the analysis is: however the chord is notated in Ultimate Guitar, that's how it's analyzed. So if the chord sheet says C Am F G, that's exactly how it's being analyzed, even if that G is almost certainly acting as a dominant 7th, especially once you factor in what all the other voices are doing.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#107

Post by alganet »

HN proceeds to give a crowd pseudo-lecture on notation, because notation is important. I think HN misses the point.

If you do these analysis using very basic notation knowledge (letters on top of lyrics are chords!), can you discover by yourself what you missed?

Many self-taught amateur musicians go through something similar. You play the simple chord chart, then you notice by yourself that it is not enough. You start to understand the instrument, training the ear, and learning beyond the simple charts.

Can you do that with data? Possibly. Maybe, as others mentioned, another dataset would be needed. However, to suggest that such dataset needs to be "a better one in notation" seems misguided.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#108

Post by duped »

alganet wrote: post #107

HN proceeds to give a crowd pseudo-lecture on notation, because notation is important. I think HN misses the point. If you do these analysis using very basic notation knowledge (letters on top of lyrics are chords!), can you discover by yourself what you missed? Many self-taught amateur musicians go through something similar. You play the simple chord chart, then you notice by yourself that it is not enough. You star…

I don't see anyone harping on notation, but using notation to point out why the analysis is lacking.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#109

Post by duped »

I think large scale automated harmonic analysis is a worthy endeavor for the purposes of musicological research that could even be applied to pedagogy (deceptively hard problem: identify what piece(s) of music to teach to achieve specific goals for students).

But you really need good (and preferably ethical) sources of data to do that, and UltimateGuitar ain't it. You also probably want to engage with some music theorists to normalize the data to give you better analysis and ask better questions than "what is the most common chord."

From this analysis I don't think "is music getting simpler" can be answered, and I think the trends are interesting questions to investigate for musicologists but this data set and analysis are too flawed to answer them.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#110

Post by alganet »

duped wrote: post #108
alganet wrote: post #107

HN proceeds to give a crowd pseudo-lecture on notation, because notation is important. I think HN misses the point. If you do these analysis using very basic notation knowledge (letters on top of lyrics are chords!), can you discover by yourself what you missed? Many self-taught amateur musicians go through something similar. You play the simple chord chart, then you notice by yourself that it is not enough. You star…

I don't see anyone harping on notation, but using notation to point out why the analysis is lacking.

The author self-reported lack of music knowledge.

Using notation to point out the mistakes makes no sense. Unless the message in those critics is "learn notation".

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