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I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

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Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#131

Post by YZF »

ben7799 wrote: post #94

As others have said this is interesting but use of Ultimate Guitar is flawed as the tabs/scores are so bad on that site, very often not even being close to the real chords. On top of being simplified tons and tons of songs get rewritten with a Capo so people can just play G-C-D shapes, if your analysis doesn't look for "Capo" and then transpose all the chords then you end up overrepresenting the key of G and it's cho…

It's really not that bad. It's a mix. There are also many versions for most songs and often comments with corrections.

Learning songs by ear is probably a useful skill that people don't develop because of all the other sources of information... but probably helps more people play which is good.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#132

Post by pxndx »

circlefavshape wrote: post #120
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no recorded or productionized music back then. And yet people liked music as much as we do now. So the only way to enjoy music was to do it yourself. Singing and playing an instrument was just a basic life skill that everyone had back then. (Say, like driving a car or using a computer is today. Not everyone is a professional driver or computer programmer, but not being able to use a computer at all today wo…

> before recorded music literally everyone was a musician in one way or another ... playing an instrument was just a basic life skill that everyone had back then You're just making this up. Playing an instrument is a complex skill that requires a lot of work and an expensive piece of equipment. Music has been a profession since at least Mesopotamian times

You've never played with a pen, finger or spoon hitting different plates and vases on your table and amusing yourself with the drumming? Twanged a ruler on the edge of your desk? Congratulations, that makes you a musician.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#133

Post by golergka »

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…

> average songwriter isn't making data-driven decisions on how to settle on the chord structure for their song

Depends on what do you call data-driven. A songwriter most likely knows that a lot of fifth chords to gives power-metal vibes, and diminished and out-of-key songs do give these ghosts of jazz.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#134

Post by alganet »

pxndx wrote: post #132
circlefavshape wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before recorded music literally everyone was a musician in one way or another ... playing an instrument was just a basic life skill that everyone had back then You're just making this up. Playing an instrument is a complex skill that requires a lot of work and an expensive piece of equipment. Music has been a profession since at least Mesopotamian times

You've never played with a pen, finger or spoon hitting different plates and vases on your table and amusing yourself with the drumming? Twanged a ruler on the edge of your desk? Congratulations, that makes you a musician.

Yes. Maybe not a good musician, but a musician nonetheless.

In the same way, making a joke to amuse oneself makes you a comedian.

Making a simple BASIC program to amuse yourself makes you a programmer.

And so on...

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#136

Post by [deleted] »

mkl wrote: post #40
seba_dos1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Interval between three pitches" is not a well-defined concept, just like "distance between three points" isn't. You need additional qualifiers to describe what you mean by that. Maybe you want the shortest path between them, or maybe you want a triangle. In any case, using a term like that makes it seem like you're confused with the terminology.

They are questioning jancsika's assertion at the top of the thread that an interval can somehow contain more than two pitches: > An "interval" is the difference between two (or more) pitches.

[deleted]

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#137

Post by uoaei »

airstrike wrote: post #101
uoaei wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#138

Post by uoaei »

Levitz wrote: post #102
uoaei wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

It does work, particularly the emphasis on causal sequences being wholly inefficient to represent multidimensional and abstract concepts such as those that exist in both language and music.

The fact that you never refer to "syntax" even in this attempt at high level reasoning gives me pause and I cannot help but to conclude that you are making arguments in bad faith.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#139

Post by dyauspitr »

ben7799 wrote: post #94

As others have said this is interesting but use of Ultimate Guitar is flawed as the tabs/scores are so bad on that site, very often not even being close to the real chords. On top of being simplified tons and tons of songs get rewritten with a Capo so people can just play G-C-D shapes, if your analysis doesn't look for "Capo" and then transpose all the chords then you end up overrepresenting the key of G and it's cho…

They have quite a few versions usually but the most accurate version is usually the one with far and away the most positive reviews/upvotes.

Re: I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

#140

Post by james_marks »

Twirrim wrote: post #57
volemo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain the Roman numerals part?

By convention in music, we use Roman numerals to signify what chord we should play relative to the root (key). "I" refers to the root/tonic/key and we count up from there. [1] So, for example, a common three chord progression in a major scale would be I – IV – V. If we take the key of C, those would be C, F, G, as F and G are the fourth and fifth chords respectively. In the key of G, it'd be G, C and D. In that key,…

This is about the simplest description of chord progressions you're going to find.

There is something peculiar that people who understand music theory tend to have a difficult time explaining it without stacking concepts and new terms.

While I'm sure those concepts are necessary for completeness, to a beginner in becomes a brick wall, and this is blessedly direct compared to, to e.g., the linked wikipedia entry.

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