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I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.
- seefoma 14y agoWhile I think this sort of analysis is really cool and potentially interesting, there really isn't anything non-obvious in this article, assuming one is familiar with basic music theory. Hopefully this is part one and the more interesting material is being saved for later.
- mvkel 14y agoCould you combine this data to algorithmically create the "most common song ever made"?
- cpeterso 14y agoThe Most Unwanted Song [1] and The Most Wanted Song [2] were a music experiment by artists Komar and Melamid. They survey people to find the most and least favorite musical instruments, genres, lyrical content. Komar and Melamid also created most and least wanted paintings by country. [1] http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/04/a-scientific-at/ http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/04/a-scientific-at/ [2] http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/05/survey-produced/ http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/05/survey-produced/
- nileshtrivedi 14y agoVery interesting! Although, for most common chords chart, I think that instead of simply counting the number of times a chord appears, you should have also considered the duration of that chord in the song. Didn't Pandora radio did the same analysis for its recommendation engine?
- freehunter 14y agoYeah, I play guitar as just a personal hobby, and there are a lot of times when I'll play an "in between" chord on my way to the next chord I would consider to be in the progression. Many times it's not a traditional "chord" you would find in this list, but just something to bridge a key change or just create a feeling of movement. I would say that this is most often limited to music that falls outside of pop culture, though. Katy Perry doesn't need to create movement or flow because emotional expression on the backing track is not what her music is about. The Raconteurs might, though. But once you get to that point you have to make the distinction between notes and chords.
- davec 14y agoThat's a good recommendation. I have a feeling it wouldn't change the results much for pop songs. I know Pandora has done some analysis like this for their database, but I thought it was limited to things like major or minor tonality, upbeat tempo, etc. and didn't delve as much into the nitty gritty harmony. One reason for this might be that these patterns are so universal (spanning lots of genres), that it might not be too helpful for determining what types of music people like. I could be wrong about this though.
- batista 14y agoHmm, one could also use a Markov chain on those 1300 chord progressions....
- nollidge 14y agoI thought of this too while I was reading, but I think the results would be pretty bland.
- jerf 14y agoThe problem you'd have is a simple Markov chain would have trouble lining up the chord progressions on the larger intervals that chords line up on. You'd end up with a song that sounded sensible in the microscale but just sort of wandered around at weird intervals. And if you fix this... well... you'd end up with chord progressions essentially indistinguishable from the sampled pop music. But that would be an awfully complex way to obtain results that you could just as easily do by hand. :) In fact many people can just vamp those chord progressions in real time if you don't expect too much creativity.
- _delirium 14y agoThat's the problem that David Cope had trying to do a Markov-chain-based recreation of Bach, in one of his many experiments in that endeavor; just wanders and doesn't really sound like much, even if all of the n-grams are legit, because it doesn't produce any kind of phrase structure. He ended up with sampling based on hierarchical context instead, iirc: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoThe site structure is a little strange, MP3 files here http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm
- c0balt279 14y agoI did this a while ago to create an infinite music machine. The chains are just based off of one particular song (Bicycle built for two, which also happens to be the song the IBM 704 sang back in the day) but could be made to work with these chords (The site appears down, so I can't access the content). You can find the source code here : https://github.com/Feni/Infinite-Music-Machine https://github.com/Feni/Infinite-Music-Machine
- Brashman 14y agoHow does this compare to what Music Theory says about chords and chord progressions? Any Music Theory experts/aficionados around? I've unfortunately forgotten most of what I learned in my one class on it.
- dfan 14y agoThe chord stuff is all perfectly reasonable (in pop music, that is; in a classical piece in the key of C you would have an Em going to an Am way more than to F, for example, and you'd see way more D chords). I don't buy that Eb/Cm is the third most common key in pop music, though. There's not a whole lot of pop music in minor keys, and Eb is a weird key to play guitar in.
- freehunter 14y agoI do hear piano in Eb occasionally, but in my years of playing guitar I can't say I've ever come across it in any song I've played.
- wildwood 14y agoKeep in mind that, with a capo, any key becomes trivial for a guitar.
- colanderman 14y agoEb is a weird key to play guitar in. Van Halen did it all the time. (Tuning down a 1/2 step is not uncommon among heavier rock/heavy metal bands. I'm not entirely sure why though.)
- dfan 14y ago(Tuning down a 1/2 step is not uncommon among heavier rock/heavy metal bands. I'm not entirely sure why though.) You answered your own question; it sounds heavier.
- wildwood 14y agoThat's cool, I hadn't heard of that before. Here's a link with some possible explanations: http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/sidewinders-bar-grille/24512-why-tune-down-half-step.html http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/sidewinders-bar-grille/24512... The explanation that E-flat works better with tunings for brass and horns was interesting.
- whichdan 14y agoWell, that went down fast. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.hooktheory.com%2F2012%2F06%2F06%2Fi-analyzed-the-chords-of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoI normally use nyud.net first in such cases: http://blog.hooktheory.com.nyud.net/2012/06/06/i-analyzed-the-chords-of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found/ http://blog.hooktheory.com.nyud.net/2012/06/06/i-analyzed-th...
- pents90 14y agoFor those interested in a far deeper analysis of music structure, as well as exploring the possibility of computer composition and creativity, see the work of David Cope: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Models-Musical-Creativity-David/dp/0262033380 http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Models-Musical-Creativity-Dav...
- monsterix 14y agoWell it isn't hard to figure out chord progressions, modes and key of any song. If you wish to serve 90% of the crowd, who listen to pop music, simply "catch" C Am F G type of chord progressions. For balance, you can expose and iterate with more patterns and lead yourself up to Joe Satriani/Steve Vai's of the world.
- nchuhoai 14y agoI like this analysis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DIgPyxiWU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DIgPyxiWU&feature=relat... While I do believe the popular songs follow some pattern, I think the chord progression is only a subset. Someone should look into why Call me Maybe is so catchy. Seriously though
- lotharbot 14y agoRelated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM - Rob Paravorian on how so many songs have the same chord sequence as Pachelbel's Canon in D
- powrtoch 14y agoWriting likable, memorable songs is about striking a balance between comfortable and interesting. It always irks me when people go from "this chord progression is in a lot of popular songs" to "therefore all you have to do to write a good song is use this chord progression". The "comfortable" bit is the easy part. Making it interesting is the trick. There are thousands of songs using this same progression that are awful. That's my main objection to the original post, and similar articles I've seen. It doesn't really tell you anything usable about how to write a good song. At no point as a developing songwriter does looking at a statistical breakdown of chord progression help you take the next step. "It's got the same chords as X, so it'll definitely be good!" is not something you hear good songwriters say. Edit: To clarify, I think I'm agreeing with the sentiment of your last 2 sentences, as I understand them.
- taylorbuley 14y agoI'd love to build this data into a neural network and see if I can come up with robosongs. It should be quite good at coming up with "What chord should come next?"
- fennecfoxen 14y agoSo if you open up a book like 'Music Theory for Complete Idiots' there's a section on "Chord progressions" that essentially has what you'd recognize as a state transition table for "what chords will sound good after this chord?" and I'm pretty sure there's a row that looks like [iii => IV, vi]. Coming up with a computerized vocabulary for the elements of coherent large-scale composition structures would be more of an interesting area to research than individual chord transitions, because the latter is really a solved problem.
- Tenhundfeld 14y agoA friend of mine has a site that does something similar. It uses music theory to generate real-sounding music for musicians to practice sight-reading. https://sightreadingfactory.com/ https://sightreadingfactory.com/
- jschulenklopper 14y agoThat has been done indeed, that state transition diagram: see http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm for a generic chord progression map.
- DanBC 14y agoI'd love to hear a Markov chain. I don't think it'd be pleasant. But it'd be fun.
- aamar 14y agoQuite a few of these online: MC trained on classical composers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZ2Q-Ls48U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZ2Q-Ls48U Iannis Xenakis was a major 20th century composer who incorporated MCs into some works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzOWKaDrVI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzOWKaDrVI Haven't seen a serious effort with pop/rock though. Lyrics might be the sticking point.
- 6ren 14y agoThe app is pretty cool: http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/celine-dion/my-heart-will-go-on http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/celine-dion/my-heart... It animates the score for both "instrumental" and "youtube" sound.
- baddox 14y agoI find it hard to believe that D major wasn't one of the more common chords to follow and E minor.
- minitrollster 14y agoI tend to agree, but when you think of it, D major isn't used that much in popular music. When you talk about country or acoustic guitar, sure, but not so much in the Billboard charts.
- wildwood 14y agoWhy would the II chord follow iii? Can you cite some examples of that? The only pop/rock use of II that I can think of is as a turn to drive II7 -> V7 -> I.
- Goladus 14y agoI agree, I'd really be interested to see what sort of pattern he's thinking about.
- HTryan 14y agoExactly. D Major chord is a V/V in C Major, which has only a couple of common uses in popular music according to the Hooktheory database. V/V -> V7 -> I is one common one. Another is a substitution for ii, like: I -> V/V -> IV -> V, see John mayer, Kelly Clarkson, Kenny Chesney etc.
- baddox 14y agoI missed that the graph was only showing songs in C major.
- deadhead 14y agoThe graph showing the chords following E minor was created after all songs were transposed to the key of C major.
- Goladus 14y agoNote that he's only searching songs written in C Major. A D Major would be outside the key so naturally it would be quite rare. The results are exactly as I would expect. F is the most common chord to follow E, because that's the primary way to resolve the dissonance of that note in C major. When E appears in other chords in C Major it will also tend to resolve to F unless there's a good reason not to (cadential 6-4). A minor is the next most common after F, because that's the next step in a descending circle of 5ths pattern (E, A, D, G, C)
- flomincucci 14y agoI'm amused by the fact that this person doesn't seem to know that chords per se - and the analysis of them - is practically useless because they can and actually do vary from version to version of the same song. The thing that matters is how the chords are related (modes and progressions).
- sheldor 14y agoExact same thoughts here. Statistics analysis is completely irrelevant when it comes to music (and any form of art of course). That said, the whole attempt is impressive (from an engineer's perspective)
- snitzr 14y agoKnowledge of rudimentary music theory makes this link upsetting in what it's missing. It looks at data in the wrong way. I hope that other articles on HN don't fall apart like this if you know a little about the subject.
- kevincennis 14y agoI don't know -- I still thought it was interesting. The author could have spent all kinds of time trying to figure out if certain chords were functioning as substitute dominants and all of that, but then the article would have been so musically technical so as not to appeal to anyone who doesn't have a fairly high-level music theory background.
- planetguy 14y agoWhat I'd like to see is a plot of the number of chords used in a song versus time. Possibly even broken down by genre, or correlated to other qualities (sex of singer) et cetera. If you start at the 1950s, you'll see very simple rock songs; your classic three-chord rock songs. As you hit the 1960s you'll see more complexity; The Beatles, for instance, had more harmonic complexity than what had come before, which continues to be imitated into the 1970s. Then what happens? I don't know, by the 1980s you're looking at a lot of very simple music again, though music is becoming more diverse genre-wise so you're probably getting a larger spread. Then by the present day you have a disturbing trend of one-chord or even no-chord music; apart from rap [which contains no singing but seems to have got simpler even in the backing tracks over the years] we now find that even sung songs are completely lacking in harmony or chord progression. A particularly annoying example I noticed the other day would be that song (dunno who it's by) with the lyrics "We found love in a hopeless place", which seems to have a melody of just four notes. I could continue this discussion going backwards in time from the 1950s and talking about how the ever-growing harmonic sophistication of art music through Beethoven to Wagner eventually led to a complete breakdown of the idea of harmony in art music which led to music that nobody liked which led to the death of art music and the establishment of rock and roll from square one, but that's another discussion.
- muraiki 14y agoHonestly, I wouldn't mind hearing more of your discussion about art music and the breakdown of harmony.
- Panoramix 14y agoI second this.
- sliverstorm 14y agoI think there is one thing you are overlooking: IMO, the reason the 1980s had simple music wasn't anything complicated; it was the electric guitar. Power chords are super easy to use, and with an electric guitar they still sound good.
- snorkel 14y agoReason: It's easier to play these chords on a 6 string guitar, which has been the dominant instrument of choice for pop song composers. The first C chord on a guitar is easy to hit with no finger twisting required. It's also easy to switch between the first C, Am, and G chord, you can even do it quickly and repeatedly while drunk as you can imagine many pop songs are written. The first F chord requires a little more careful finger placement but still easy to get too. Sure enough you hear this over and over in pop songs, some simple sequence of C F G A chords over and over. Not surprising that the complex guitar chords that require six pencil-thin rubber fingers and a degree in music theory to know how to play aren't heard as often.
- its_so_on 14y agoVery good analysis. I wasn't even going to comment, since my reaction (personal impression) to the article was "too bad there might be 2 of the 1300 songs that have chords that don't sound like crap" - since they all do, there might be a couple of dozen well-orchestrated popular songs over the last several decades. (I should add that, despite this fact, I do avidly listen to popular songs and don't have a problem. I wouldn't try to reverse engineer their chord patterns though...) At least your response tells me why this is the case. Thanks!
- cnanders 14y agoThat is a fair critique of the article. The vast majority of the songs that came into the analysis were in fact billboard top 100 so that naturally filters out songs with chords that might sound bad (chords that as a rule are not built off of the major scale the song uses). What we found most interesting, however, was that there are certain patterns that really do show up. The one that was most striking, and that we pointed out in the article, is that the iii chord is almost always followed by IV or vi in pop music. There were similar trends for other some of the other chords that we'll be posting in a later article.
- glenntzke 14y agoDon't leave out the fact that these are the "home row" power chords too - even easier to play and sound like you have an idea about what you're doing. Many popular songs (and of course 'garage band' simpleton songs) are unimaginative power chord arrangements.
- terryk88a 14y agoSnnnzx.. wha? This may best thought of as a lexical analysis of 1300 popular novels. E.G. what is the most popular word following the word "it". The key of a tune 'controls' the chords available, using a typical chord progression. A song in the key of C most typically has the progression C-F-G or I-IV-V in roman numerals signifying 1 for the dominant C, and 4 and 5 for F and G respectively the fourth and fifth notes in the key's scale. More interesting might be what are the most popular chord progressions. E.G. I-IV-V or II-IV-Im. Which is what I was expecting to click through to. A million monkeys can write a hit in how many years, now? And BTW "it was a dark and stormy night" don't you know.
- shaggyfrog 14y agoCharting chord progressions definitely sounds interesting. Would also like to see that based on musical style -- i.e. "blues" vs. "rock".
- jschulenklopper 14y agoAlready done (but not per musical style). See http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm for a generic Chord Progression Map, and http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/chartmaps.htm http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/chartmaps.htm for specific maps for all twelve keys.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- terryk88a 14y agoThat's an interesting site, very nice lessons. But one would have to actually read the material to understand the chart (grin). But that chart is getting on toward what I expected to see at the subject of this HN post.
- TYPE_FASTER 14y agoThere's a great Youtube video of three guys playing many pop songs with the same three or four chords. I'm behind a firewall now or I would post the link.
- snitzr 14y agoAxis of Awesome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
- kroger 14y agoNice post, I'm looking forward for the next one. Meanwhile I'll give my 2 cents. The main problem in analyzing tonal music is that we mainly listen to relations between chords. For instance, in the following progression in C major, A major functions as a dominant of D (D is the dominant of G and G is the dominant of C): C A D G C. OTOH, in the following progression the same A is the subdominant of E: E A B E. This means that if a song modulates or there's a tonicization [1] the same chord will have different tonal functions and we'll listen to it differently. Just counting a chord in a song may not be enough if they have different functions. The number of repetitions also matters. Tonally, the progressions C | C | C | G | G and C | G | C | G are the same as C | G. Is he eliminating repetitions in the analysis? About using A major in C; you can use it as a dominant of D (see my 1st example) or as a chromatic mediant [2] in C major. Of course, in modern music you can use anything you want, but these two are the most common uses. And, naturally, the types of chords used will vary according to the music style. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonicization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonicization [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_mediant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_mediant
- jbert 14y agoDoesn't he allow for this by normalising all songs to the key of C before doing the analysis?
- HTryan 14y agoRight, all of the songs were normalized to C, which exactly the point. At Hooktheory.com you can examine all of the songs in relative notation (i.e. I IV V in place of C F G) which makes it easier to compare chord progressions without having to bother with their respective keys.
- colomon 14y agoThe grandparent is talking about modulation within a song. Unless they normalized each section of each song to C without saying so, modulation is still an issue. For instance (though I greatly doubt it's on their list) Jethro Tull's "The Whistler" has one key for the verse, a different one for the chorus, and yet another for the whistle solo...
- sirteno 14y agoI’d be interested to see if they observed patterns or deviations from the norm when comparing between music genres and perhaps even eras / decades. My sense, as a classical and electric (contemporary rock / blues) guitarist is that you'd observe interesting deviations from the aggregate results described in the study. Digging a bit I found the following research piece which shares some more thoughts on this topic: http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/cunninghams/research/mozart.pdf http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/cunninghams/research/mozart.pdf
- hlomas 14y agoWhy not add some more interesting visualizations of your data? Try http://d3js.org http://d3js.org. For example http://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/ or http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/20111116/iris-parallel.html http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/20111116/iris-parallel.ht... might be adapted to communicate which chords follow the others in a more dense fashion.
- horsehead 14y agoWhat he's really talking about is chord progression (while he doesn't really say that, it's essentially the description of his first few paragraphs). Most university-level music classes discuss common chord progressions. As he notes, the I, IV and V chords are the most common to appear in a song. It's a great article, but I think he may have done a lot of work to find out something that is fairly common knowledge lol. Still cool though to have the supporting data. (edit: it would be cool to make this an interactive piece of data presentation to help you write songs. Also, the I, IV and V chords are so popular because they naturally make people feel good. It's why they show up so often in 'pop' music. minor chords have a more depressive quality to them) Also, if you need proof that certain chords show up often in music, just listen to some Nickelback. Here is a fun link (that I THINK works. my speaker only works in the left side ;) ) http://dagobah.net/flash/nickelback.swf http://dagobah.net/flash/nickelback.swf
- cnanders 14y agoHi horsehead, I don't know if you made it to the Music Editor part of the site http://www.hooktheory.com/editor http://www.hooktheory.com/editor but you can use the Music Editor to write songs using I V IV (type 1,5,4 on your keyboard) and such. One of the main goals of Hooktheory is to make more people aware of these basic elements of music theory and help people incorporate it into their musical endeavors.
- jschulenklopper 14y agoThis is an interesting generic Chord Progression Map: http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm This page contains the specific Chord Progression Maps for all twelve keys: http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/chartmaps.htm http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/chartmaps.htm
- dude_abides 14y agoRelevant: Pachelbel rant - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
- te_chris 14y agoThe article was down, but I assume this will be relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis We spent a lot of time doing this sort of stuff to flesh out harmonic and melodic patterns/meaning of pieces while at music school. To (grossly) simplify, it's essentially a form of reduction analysis, but the final step of the analysis is always I - V - I chord progression (tonic - dominant) with the 3 blind mice melody above (stepwise descending). I never found the final reduction particularly useful as, though he had a point about the prevalence of the tonic dominant relationship, it was over blown. The reduction steps were very useful for stripping away flourishes though, in order to see what was happening at a more base level in a piece (we analyzed a lot of Mahler this way). Kinda like Map/Reduce in some ways.
- dfan 14y agoHe's doing stuff at a way way lower of musical theory (just saying things like "what chords occur the most?") than Schenkerian analysis. He's certainly not looking at the shape of a song as a whole. Schenkerian analysis is a ton of fun, although you have to remember to just use it as a tool and not take it too seriously.
- jimmytucson 14y agoProbably more interesting than the actual notes would be the figured chords and their progressions. In other words, "C G a F" isn't materially that different from "G D e C" or "F C d Bb". All three are instances of the same progression: "I V vi IV" ...which happens to be the most hackneyed (or "effective", depending on your point of view) chord progression in popular music over the last 30 years. If you transform each chord progression into its figured representation then you can pick up more significant trends such as the above, or blues changes (e.g. "I I I I / VI VI I I / V VI I I") and then you can start to discern when they rose to popularity and which ones are falling out of favor. For example, in the 50s and 60s, I have no doubt "I vi IV V" was more popular than "I V vi IV" but I have no way to prove it currently and would love to find out if I'm right or wrong on that.
- HTryan 14y agoHey Jimmy, Hooktheory stores all of its chord progressions in relative notation so we have tools to answer questions like the one you've posted here. Although the Hooktheory database is relatively small, we have 20 songs that contain I vi IV V, compared with 100 songs containing I V vi IV. Just by visual inspection, of the songs that contain I V vi IV, none of them were written before 1975, which may not prove, but certainly supports your claim.
- gnaritas 14y agoHe transposed them all to C for exactly that reason. Doing what you suggest yields no additional data.
- wyck 14y agoInteresting but a melody analysis would be way more insightful. Pop music is all about the simple melody, in terms of impacting a recognizable pattern on the brain. That is why it's popular, and you see the same melodies repeated over and over, and over, and over.
- stretchwithme 14y agoEventually, software will write music just for you. And lyrics too.
- lux 14y agoThe reason people fall back to the I IV V and VI chords (C F G and Am in the key of C) is that going between them creates a false sense of forward motion in the listener without actually going anywhere. Moving from the IV to V creates tension that can be built up and released by resolving to the I, or increased by going to the VI and resolved to the IV. Any combination of those pretty much sounds "good". Variations add the II (Dm) in place of the V or in between the IV and V, or add the III on the way to the IV. It's really simple, and made even simpler by power chords because you don't even have to move your hand shape to play entire songs on rhythm. Leads can then switch between major scale phrases and pentatonic (aka blues) phrases of the minor of whatever key is being played in, (so Am blues over C) and almost anything they do sounds good to the average listener. In the end, you only have to keep their attention for ~40 seconds between hooks and just crutch on the catchy chorus and you've got a hit. But if you analyze most popular forms of music, the above is at their core anyway. It's just more bare bones in modern pop and rock music.
- glassx 14y agoThe chord choices in Garageband are the chords found within the scale of C, plus Bb (even the Bdim - but, to be pedant, it should actually be a B7b5). Having Bb you can modulate (or "change the key") to F without having to switch scales etc. Also, the fact that he found D, E and A among the results is probably because of modulations. It's VERY common for pop songs to modulate a whole step during some chorus near the end [1]. As mentioned, G, F and C are V, IV and I. If we modulate a whole step, from C to D, the V, IV and I are A, G and D. It would be nice to consider those modulations into the research. About the key choice, I believe it's irrelevant. It depends a lot on what's your instrument (Bb, Eb is easier on brass instruments), your style (lots of Metal songs in the key of E because E is the lowest note on guitar), your tuning (lots of rock bands downtune their guitars to Eb or D etc), your proficiency, and, most important, the vocalists range. -- [1] Otis Reeding - My Girl, Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me (actually lots of songs by her), Monty Python/Eric Idle - Always Look On The Bride Side of Life, Talking Heads Nothing But Flowers (If you search "whole step key change" you'll get a bunch)
- neonscribe 14y agoTo be more of a pedant, the Bdim should be a Bm7b5, not a B7b5. Also, The Temptations, not Otis Redding, sang My Girl.
- glassx 14y agoOoops, yes, you're right on both!
- michaelfeathers 14y agoI wonder what the RIAA thinks of someone amassing a database of the chord patterns of 1300 popular songs.
- glenntzke 14y agoIt's the Music Publisher's Association (MPA) that cares about tabs and copyright infringement. The relevant wiki link for some case studies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature#Legal_issues
- rexreed 14y agoAs long as the songs are not distributed and the database owner owns the songs, then what's the issue? Generic analysis of chord progressions are not copyrightable, altho tabs for specific songs in print probably are, but I don't think these are specific song tabs. (but if chord progressions were software, they'd probably be patentable... sigh).
- zwieback 14y agoa (vi) over d (ii) comes as a surprise to me. I notice a lot of jam players will substitute II or II7 for ii but I thought this work was based on tabs. I didn't think the relative minor was all that common in pop music.
- bishnu 14y agoThis is a good start, I'd be more interested if these chord patterns were compared against a database of UNpopular songs to see if the what sort of differences in chord distribution correlated with popular songs (although where you'd find that, I do not know). It's difficult to understand what this really quantifies - all the "2nd chord" distribution suggests to me at this point is that there's a large difference between actually playing music vs a random sequence of chords. It's good that you're recapitulating that at least, but not really a striking observation. Regardless, I will be keeping tabs on this. Hah, totally didn't intend that pun.
- someone_welsh 14y agorelevant and funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
- gbog 14y agoI have a pessimistic theory on melodies that could be enforced by this study. Melodies are sequence of tones that can be remembered and sung. We have 7 or 12 or 5 tones, about the same number of distinguishable time patterns. Memory for melodies seem powerful, maybe allowing up to 40 elements in the sequence. By pure combinations it seems the space of melodies is very large. But this space is in fact dramatically shrinked by the very strict relationships imposed on subsequent tones and the result could be that "we have finished exploring the space of interesting melodies", we are deemed to repeat ourselves, musical invention is something of the past.
- anigbrowl 14y agoI'm not crazy about this analysis, but the basic tool (http://www.hooktheory.com/ http://www.hooktheory.com/) is pretty awesome. Props for including MIDI and sheet music exports. Edit: signup gave me an error 500, though.
- fferen 14y agoWhen I was young and learning music theory in piano lessons, one day I realized that literally half the songs on the radio used the chord progression "I V vi IV". This was a huge revelation to me! To my dismay, I couldn't find any evidence on the internet that anyone else had noticed this, until very recently I saw the "Four Chord Song" by Axis of Awesome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I). I was hoping to see some mention of that in this article, but was disappointed.
- cnanders 14y agoHi fferen, I V iv V is indeed a super popular progression. You can see an example of it here: http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/james-blunt/youre-beautiful http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/james-blunt/youre-be.... One cool thing about the way we store music (using relative notation) is that we can compare any two songs to see how similar they are harmonically. For example, there are several "similar songs" shown below the I V vi IV example in the link that all use the same progression in different keys.
- zopa 14y agoIt's called a deceptive cadence -- that's the I V vi part. The IV is warmup for the V - I cadence that ends it all. "Deceptive" because vi is one note away from I, but in minor, not major. It's a well-known pattern; sorry the internet let you down.
- fferen 14y agoPerhaps my google-fu was weak back then; searching now I see posts about it on several sites. Ha, there's even a Facebook group called "Stop using the I V vi IV chord progression" (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-using-the-I-V-vi-IV-chord-progression/319852698123 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-using-the-I-V-vi-IV-chord...).
- AblyExitNewtons 14y agoYou can switch to the sensitive female chord progression: http://sixfouronefive.blogspot.com/ http://sixfouronefive.blogspot.com/
- b1daly 14y agoThis analysis misses the forest for the trees: modern pop music is all about stylistic and sonic innovation. Musical forms tend to evolve along certain parameters while holding others constant. In jazz and classic there has (historically) been a lot of exploration in harmony and melody, but the sonic palette has held steady over long periods of time. Pop music is the opposite. In the world of rap music, the sonic innovation has been extreme. The meaning of a Public Enemey "song" cannot be assessed through this type of analysis.
- b1daly 14y agoThis analysis misses the forest for the trees: modern pop music is all about stylistic and sonic innovation. Musical forms tend to evolve along certain parameters while holding others constant. In jazz and classic there has (historically) been a lot of exploration in harmony and melody, but the sonic palette has held steady over long periods of time. Pop music is the opposite. In the world of rap music, the sonic innovation has been extreme. The meaning of a Public Enemey "song" cannot be assessed through this type of analysis.
- indubitably 14y agoIt's interesting how many comments here imply that more complex is better.
- sesimt 14y agoAre you surprised?
- cpeterso 14y agoFlesh Map charts which body parts are most commonly referenced by musical genre: http://www.fleshmap.com/listen/music.html http://www.fleshmap.com/listen/music.html
- sesimt 14y agoI was hoping he had found the "Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progressions". No such luck. Did he have Frank Zappa's "Shut and Play Yer Guitar" in his collection? Melodies are mildly interesting. It's harmonics that are an endless source of mystery.
- sunspeck 14y agoThis is awesome. Although I find the upside-down-and-backwards guitar chord diagrams rather jarring.
- splicer 14y agoOne exception to the diatonic norm in pop music is Radiohead's "Just", which uses an octatonic scale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qMagfZtv8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qMagfZtv8 (ya, I consider Radiohead "pop music")
- djahng 14y agoYes, given that C major is the most popular key, it follows that C, F, and G are the most popular chords. That's called a I-IV-V chord progression, and is the basis for most blues, which rock (and subsequently pop) evolved out of. Oh, and a G chord isn't any easier to play on a guitar than a C# chord.
- dpkendal 14y ago> Eb with 3 flats, for instance, is slightly (though not statistically significantly) more common than F with only 1 flat. Ask any singer: F is the hardest key to sing in. Most people who have to sing in F unaccompanied will inevitably go flat over the course of the song without lots of practice. I would have plotted the frequency of each chord relative to the key. (e.g., count chords as I/IV/V/ii/etc. instead of C/F/G/Dm) This automatically corrects for the relative popularity of different keys seen earlier in the post.
- kevincennis 14y agoThis was an interesting article, but it's really sad to see that the comments here have devolved into the predictable "all pop music is garbage because they only use 4 chords" argument. It's exactly the same thing as someone looking at a Jackson Pollock and determining that it's garbage because "how much talent does it take to throw a bucket of paint on a canvas?". The point of music, or any art, is to evoke an emotive response from the audience. To equate the "quality" of art to the technical abilities of its creator is essentially to reduce it to something more akin to juggling knives or spinning plates. Art isn't about virtuosity, it's about emotion. But hey, if that's your thing, there are a ton of Dream Theater records available on iTunes.
- nateburke 14y agoI eagerly await an analysis using roman numerals. Most listeners don't care what particular key the song is in. What are the RELATIONSHIPS involved in the chord progressions?
- csl 14y agoOn a related note (corniest pun of the day), the Australian musical comedy act Axis of Awesome made a song called Four Chords Song, which is basically a 47-song medley all using the same chord progression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axis_of_Awesome#Four_Chords_Song http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axis_of_Awesome#Four_Chords... They've said that the chords are used by some of the most well known songs in the world, and their performance demonstrates this nicely, as in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ The above link is the official video; but they explain their reasoning better in this live performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0IUdjMcEmo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0IUdjMcEmo
- AblyExitNewtons 14y agobtw: You can choose whichever chords you like in Garageband. Click the setup button (looks like a gear). Then flip from Track to Song. Scroll down and add some diminished 9ths or whatever.
- hessenwolf 14y agoCan we have a Markov chain diagram for the chord transition with the relevant probabilities, pretty please?
- iambrakes 14y agoI like seeing this data charted out. For hardcore musicians, it's probably pretty common knowledge, but it's interesting to see it in chart form. It actually makes we want to try writing some things avoiding the most common progressions to see what comes out. With regards to other genres and other time periods, I think you'd find pretty similar data with what was "popular" at any given time. Although there have been composers who push the limits, and with some success, our brains seem to be hard wired to react well to the mathematical correlations that are present in the chord parings. On the other hand, perhaps the more exposed we become to varied chord progressions, the more pleasing they would sound. There is a very interesting RadioLab episode exploring the rage that incited at the premiere of Stravinsky's "The Rite Of Spring". Essentially, scientists are learning how the brain reacts to dissonance in music. The story begins about 32 minutes in. http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/24/ http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/24/
- PeterWhittaker 14y agoDirections for future research: 1. Normalize for key: Express chords as I, ii, iii, IV, etc. This will permit analysis of chord progressions/exceptions (see below) across all keys. 2. Detect common constructs, e.g., 8-12-16 bar Blues, and analyze for exceptions, e.g., use of vi instead of I, use of V versus V7 as turnaround, etc. (And more interesting exceptions, e.g., resolution to ii or iii instead of I, etc.) 3. Related to #2, search for popular songs that do NOT follow/use common constructs. Are there are common characteristics across "second rank" popular songs (by which I mean "popular but not quite smashes, or short-duration - novelty - smashes")? 4. How much variation in key and/or chord progression is there for each artist? Comments: A. Not much of a surprise that C/Am is the most popular key: It is the most accessible - the white keys of the piano. It is also very accessible on the guitar, once one learns F... B. ...but surprising to me that E is so unpopular, being "the natural key" of the guitar (E, A, B/B7 being so easy to learn and so common to the Blues). Analysis of key use by decade - or genre - could prove interesting.... C. Keys these days (the days of equal temperament) are chosen largely on accessibility: Can the soloist hit all of the notes important to the key? Can the accompanist make all the chords important to the song? Once upon a time, prior to equal temperament, keys had sounds and feels of their own, but nowadays, with equal temperament, the progression from unison to octave is by steps of absolutely the same value in each key.
- Intermernet 14y agoYes, I was thinking 1 and 2 while reading it. I'd love to get hold of the raw data! In case you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2De2cK1mDw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2De2cK1mDw
- jmilloy 14y agoThe broad stats are cool, but I find that the value really comes from going back to the individual data points. For example, I want to hear the "most atypical" songs. Are they any good?