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I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs

308 points by jnord 2y ago

SoftMachine 2y ago
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narrator 2y ago
Then there's the most complex pop song of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8
- LandStander 2y ago
  The song is "Never Gonna Let You Go" by Sergio Mendes
  - userbinator 2y ago
    The first few words of your comment, along with the sibling comment mentioning a "Rick", made me hesitant to click that link.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nwatson 2y ago
  Thanks for the Rick Beato video. Yes, complex.
hirvi74 2y ago
I find the analysis interesting in terms of a hobby project, but I'd be careful extrapolating too much out of this. 680k is quite the sample size, but my issue lies within the myopic selection of one instrument and the issues that arise from the platform of Ultimate Guitar. 1. I am curious, how many of the 680k songs are unique? It is rather uncommon for massively successful songs to only have one version of tabs out in the wild, so I am curious how many songs individual songs were counted multiple times. 2. This analysis only looks at guitar tabs or instrumentations there were transcribed for guitar. Chords can be made with more than just one instrument, thus that missing 7th note could actually be played by another instrument not included in the tabs. 3. As music progressed from the pre-jazz era to modern times, it became more common for people to play an instrument, like piano or guitar, while singing at the same time. Obviously there are exceptions to everything, but often times guitar pieces are simplified if the guitarist is also singing for practical reasons. 4. Music has also become more accessible as time progressed. It would be hard for an average person to learn the organ or hurdy-gurdy without access to one. It's much easier to acquire and learn piano when it can be a 4 inch thick plastic keyboard on a stand. 5. People tend to have a warped concept of the history of music. Pachelbel's Canon in D is by no means a complex song and has stood the test of time. Music through out time has also served different purposes. Hell, go back to Ancient Greece, Gregorian chants, and Medieval music. Those various time periods were not generally fully of complexity either. I would argue such times were generally less complex than modern music.
- alexjplant 2y ago
  > People tend to have a warped concept of the history of music. Pachelbel's Canon in D is by no means a complex song and has stood the test of time. Music through out time has also served different purposes. Hell, go back to Ancient Greece, Gregorian chants, and Medieval music. Those various time periods were not generally fully of complexity either. I would argue such times were generally less complex than modern music. True facts. The fifties and sixties were replete with simple, disposable pop music. "Yummy Yummy Yummy" topped the charts in the late 60s and has, what, three chords in it? What about "Sugar, Sugar" or the Monkees? Staff songwriters and session cats cranked this stuff out by the ton back in the day but people still love to take potshots at modern pop music for being inferior to the oldies in this regard.
  - a4isms 2y ago
    The key observation for me is Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is crud." My most impressionable years for music were the 70s and 80s. I remember fantastic music from that time... But the fact is, most of what we hear today from that era has been curated for us. We hear the 10% of the 70s and 80s hits that weren't crud. Or maybe even the 1% that was great. If we actually listen to the top twenty-five singles from any month in those two decades, 90% of them would be crud. I think most people comparing the present to the past are comparing everything today to the 10% of yesterday that wasn't crud.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      We do an awful lot nowadays, though. Hmm, actually, I guess it is a straightforward equation I just don’t have my pencil or envelope handy. Imagine that we are interacting with all the accumulated good stuff, plus the modern good stuff, as well as the old good stuff (the old crud is forgotten). If our productivity is growing exponentially, is the proportion of crud increasing over time?
  - pfisherman 2y ago
    Complexity is not just variation in chord progression, key, or melody. Dark Side of the Moon is basically the same chord progression repeated over and over; but with different rhythm, tempo, arrangement for each song. The variation within the scope of the repetition and call backs to various melodic and rhythmic motifs at various points throughout is part of what makes the album such an epic and thematically cohesive listening experience.
alexjplant 2y ago
Interesting analysis. Some observations: - Ultimate Guitar isn't exactly known for the sterling quality of its transcriptions. Teenage me submitted at least a few tabs that were clearly incorrect that still got 4 and 5 star ratings. Amateur guitarists are also infamously bad at figuring out voicings and extensions so something like a 9 might end up as a maj7 or just a triad. Adult me checks Songsterr first then uses his ear to figure out what's _really_ going on when I run across incorrect parts in the tablature. - Some genres of music like downtuned metal are largely monophonic and instead rely on quick melodic movement or drone-y background guitars to imply harmony. This data set doesn't seem to account for this. - There's no way that power chords only account for single-digit percentages of chords in rock, metal, and punk. There are albums that have been certified Platinum that are 90% power chords (technically power intervals, I suppose).
throwaway0665 2y ago
Does this take into account capo position? A G is easy to play so authors might use G to play a Bb for example with a capo to avoid barre chords. Likewise authors will choose simpler chord substitutes to make it easier to play. It's the same with lead sheets / the real book style music books. Performing musicians need to reproduce music quickly so only the triad will be written down even if the musician ends up playing some other extensions. The data is heavily biased towards simplicity. You can make conclusions about the data - but not music as a whole.
notfed 2y ago
This seems to be an analysis of chords used, not chord progressions?
- zoogeny 2y ago
  I too was a bit disappointed, hoping we'd get some statistics on chord progressions. But to be fair to the OP, he analyzed chord progressions to generate statistics on chords. It does inspire hope that someone will take the same dataset and provide statistics on the most common progressions.
jancsika 2y ago
> An “interval” is a combination of two notes. Minor nitpick: it's a "dyad" that is a combination of two notes. An "interval" is the difference between two (or more) pitches. And just as you'd measure the space between your eyebrows using a ruler, you'd measure the interval between middle C and concert A using your ears. The bonus, however, is that our listening apparatus is already quantized to octaves-- if you hear a pitch against a second pitch that's double/quadruple/etc. the frequency of the first, your ear marks this interval as special. It's likely most of you've already used this fact to your advantage; perhaps unwittingly, when someone begins singing "Happy Birthday" outside your normal singing range. (Though most renditions of "Happy Birthday" lend credence to Morpheus' lesson from The Matrix that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking it.) :)
- gchamonlive 2y ago
  That's new for me. What's an interval between three pitches called?
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    Two intervals?
    - gchamonlive 2y ago
      A third, fourth, fifth, sixth... Triton... Those are intervals. I ask again, what's an interval between three pitches? Is it a triad? If it's so, than it's not a minor nitpick, OP is just being plain pedantic for the sake of it.
      - seba_dos1 2y ago
        "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.
yahoozoo 2y ago
Power chords are only 5% in Metal? OK.
divbzero 2y ago
Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions? Analyzing individual chords involves counting the frequency of each chord (such as G, C, or D). Analyzing chord progressions would involve counting the frequency of chord pairs (such as D—A or C—G), chord triplets (such as D—A—Bm or C—G—Am), or longer sequences of chords. For an alternative look at the data, you could also normalize chord progressions across key signatures for your analysis (D—A or C—G would both normalize as I—V, D—A—Bm or C—G—Am would both normalize as I—V—vi).
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  i know. I was so disappointed reading that article. I had gone in expecting an analysis of progressions. e.g. VI-IV-I-V instead I got a page of chords analysis. chord progression != chords.
- mkl 2y ago
  Yes, I was disappointed. The original paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22046 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22046 did look at chord progressions. They also trained a machine learning model to predict the next chord. Some of the chord progression data is in graph form at https://github.com/spyroskantarelis/chordonomicon https://github.com/spyroskantarelis/chordonomicon. The raw chord data is at https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/tree/main https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/tree/.... It consists of one row per song containing a list of chord names in song order (no timing information) and Spotify ids for track and artist. It seems like Spotify has a different id for every released version, so it's really hard to search for particular songs in the data. To normalise across key signatures you need to know what key the song is in (at each point), and the data doesn't contain that. For many genres it could be guessed reasonably accurately from the chords.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions? Not according to the other comments, which say that the data set strips chords that follow identical chords, as if "too" was one of the most common words in written English.
naijaboiler 2y ago
says chord progressions, and then just talked about chords without any progressions. disappointing article.
qotgalaxy 2y ago
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cjohnson318 2y ago
Listing the "most frequent chord" is a weird analysis, I'm more interested in the "most frequent key", or a transition matrix from one key to another, e.g., if I'm in F, what's the chance I go a fifth up to C, or a fourth down to Bb. Just telling me G is a popular chord doesn't do much.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  The "haunting" riff in the Hounds song features a tritone, and it's a modal-ish progression - perhaps with hints of folk music lurking in the background. You're not going to understand it by counting chords. A lot of pop has these quirks. Even things that sound like I-IV-V or I-V-vi-IV bubble gum. Slapping labels on the most obvious chords in a naive way misses them completely.
- domenici2000 2y ago
  Exactly, this is useless. It's like saying the letter E is the most used letter in the world and Wheel of Fortune is your dataset.
  - johnfn 2y ago
    It's significantly worse than that. It's like saying the letter E is the most common letter in a corpus of text where most of the text has been ceasar-shifted.
- edoceo 2y ago
  G is the best one though, maybe D.
memset 2y ago
The way this analysis, and the original dataset were created, makes no sense. This is, in part, not the author's fault, since the original data [1, 2] is flawed. First, the original data was constructed like this: "...The next step was to format the raw HTML files into the full chord progression of each song, collapsing repeating identical chords into a single chord (’A G G A’ became ’A G A’)..." Already this makes no sense - the fact that a chord is repeated isn't some sort of typo (though maybe it is on UltimateGuitar). For example, a blues might have a progression C7 F7 C7 C7 - the fact that C7 is repeated is part of the blues form. See song 225 from the dataset, which is a blues: A7 D7 A7 D7 A7 E7 D7 A7 Should really be: A7 D7 A7 A7 D7 D7 A7 A7 E7 D7 A7 A7 With these omissions, it's a lot harder to understand the underlying harmony of these songs. The second problem is that we don't really analyze songs so much by the chords themselves, but the relationships between chords. A next step would be to convert each song from chords to roman numerals so we can understand common patterns of how songs are constructed. Maybe a weekend project. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.22046 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.22046 [2] https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/blob/main/README.md https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/blob/...
- heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
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- volemo 2y ago
  Could you explain the Roman numerals part?
  - zenogantner 2y ago
    Typically, chord progressions are described independently of the key they are in. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2750s_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2750s_progression
  - Twirrim 2y ago
    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, a good example song is "Sweet Home Alabama", where almost the entire song is just V - IV - I over and over again. One of the most popular chord progressions, used in an astounding number of pop songs is known as the "Four Chord Trick", I – V – VI – IV, famously demonstrated by the Aussie comedy band Axis of Awesome[2] I think I'd agree with the person you're replying to, both in that the original source is flawed due to not including the "dupes", despite them being important, and also because key is largely irrelevant, chord progression is much more important. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ.
vthommeret 2y ago
If you're interested in more relative chord progression analysis, check out Hooktheory (I'm not affiliated but I think love their two books / apps): https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/index https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/index It's "just" 32K songs, but you can see the top chord progressions: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressio... And see which songs follow any chord progression you choose (either absolute or relative chords): https://www.hooktheory.com/trends https://www.hooktheory.com/trends
- ronyeh 2y ago
  I’m a huge fan of Hooktheory, and have bought all their books and products. Thumbs up!
- murki 2y ago
  here's a person who analyzed this data and presented it in a far more interesting way https://www.amitkohli.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/interactivechordprogression https://www.amitkohli.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/interac...
cole-k 2y ago
It's an admittedly smaller dataset, but Hook Theory has an analysis that allows you to search by chords (including relative) and look at trends: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab https://www.hooktheory.com/trends https://www.hooktheory.com/trends It's a weird coincidence to see this post since I only occasionally remember about Hook Theory and binge it, but I remembered earlier this week. Many of you have probably heard the Axis of Awesome four chords song (if not, look it up, it's great), but it's fun doing the same thing with other songs. Like, did you know that you can sing the chorus of Numb by Linkin Park over the chorus of... * I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace * Immortals by Fallout Boy * Cheap Thrills by Sia (swung Numb lol) (+ the bridge of The Rock Show by Blink 182) Numb has a pretty common chord progression so I could pick songs with the exact same chords, but there are also some oddly specific finds like this video game (?) song that inexplicably has the same relative chord progression as Hotel California https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/zun/reincarnation#Verse https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/zun/reincarnation#... --- I am often surprised how a seemingly simple chord progression has only one result, even when I search by relative chords and ignore extensions and inversions, e.g. https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/chord-search/results?keySelect=any&scaleSelect=any&chordString=i+III+vi+VII&ignoreModifiers=true https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/chord-search/results?ke... However when you put that query into the normal search box, it does match a lot more songs, showing that there is a i III _ VII trend, just that i III vi VII is strange (which I guess makes sense). Perhaps my lack of music theory makes it harder to normalize my queries, but it's also possible that (1) there isn't enough data or (2) there is inconsistency in how people annotate the pieces (some songs will have II II II II, for example, following the rhythm, whereas some songs will have just a single II).
- parpfish 2y ago
  Hook theory: It doesn't matter what I say, so long as I sing with inflection
mastazi 2y ago
I'm surprised that according to the article, in jazz, some chords like D and A, which are mostly found in sharp keys, are more common than chords like Bb and Eb, which are usually found in flat keys. I remember once creating a dataset based on 50 random tunes from the Real Book and sharp keys were less than 20% of the total (based on the key signature at the start of the score) so that graph in the article doesn't seem right. Maybe the discrepancy is because modern jazz fusion tunes are under represented in the Real Book and those are usually more guitar-oriented, so perhaps more likely that the musician would pick a sharp key like D or A. As opposed to straight-ahead jazz were people try to accommodate for sax/trumpet/trombone etc. Or maybe it's because chords like D or A can be dominants in minor keys that are flat keys, e.g. D in the key of Gmin or A in the key of Dmin. - EDIT I just realised that dominants are listed separately so this is not the case. One more thing: according to the article, major triads make up more than 50% of chords in jazz... what? That's certainly wrong, most major chords in jazz are usually maj7th or 6th even when they don't have upper extensions. I think that what they actually meant is "major chords that are not dominants". But they used the label "major triad" instead.
- AIPedant 2y ago
  The dataset is not “jazz,” it’s Ultimate Guitar’s tablature of jazz songs, so the data is very low quality.
  - mastazi 2y ago
    Yes, I think you're right, many Ultimate Guitar charts are generally low quality. I remember once checking out a song in F major and the IV chord was notated as A#, LOL. To be fair there are also high quality charts on UG, but they generally require a paid subscription (I think they are called "pro" charts). Maybe the dataset should have been limited to those but I'm not sure about the legal implications given that they are a paid product.
zzo38computer 2y ago
I do not see the mention of what chord progressions are used. They did mention what chords (according to only the notes, not according to the key) are common, though. I would expect that a full analysis should write the roman numbers (so you will have to know what key it is as well), and might also consider such things as non-chord tones, modulation to other keys, etc. (However, this is not as simple as just putting them into the computer and writing a SQL query or whatever.) What I had seen on television and what I had read, is that I-V-vi-IV chord progression is common in modern music. (There is also i-VI-III-VII, which is the relative minor key than I-V-vi-IV, which is obvious once you realize it.)
p0w3n3d 2y ago
Just changing key from G too F # does not make the song unique if it still follows the same chord schema. It'd be better to identify chords relatively, i.e. IV->I->V->vi
deleted 2y ago
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huimang 2y ago
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 interesting, but not really that useful. The most common key, and the most commonly used chords relative to that key (i.e. with roman numeral analysis) would be much more useful and interesting. This would help paint a clearer distinction between e.g. country and jazz, not that "jazz uses Bb major more". Also, anyone with general instrument knowledge would surmise that since Bb and Eb instruments are much more prevalent. "If you’re sitting down to write a song, throw a 7th chord in. The ghost of a jazz great will smile on you." 7ths don't belong to jazz only, and the average songwriter isn't making data-driven decisions on how to settle on the chord structure for their song.
- deleted 2y ago
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- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  I think most musicians know that I-IV-V-I is the zero thought default for in key chord progression, it's so overused you don't need fancy analysis to figure it out. For me, I'm more interested in the intervals and voicing pairs, because those tell you something deeper about the music that you don't get from the chord progression.
  - toolslive 2y ago
    I-IV-V-I, II-V-I and maybe I-VII-VI-V and you can consider yourself "advanced" ;)
    - fuzzfactor 2y ago
      There's bandleaders who have geared their entire performance so if you can pick this kind of thing up by ear, follow their timing, and put effort into making them sound better, you're more valuable than some alternatives having truly advanced formal musical training. Especially with equal or better chops, lots of players like this can go into a studio and make recordable music, in one take, without actually rehearsing together in advance. And play in any key, since it's just Roman numerals.
1337shadow 2y ago
Aren't Ultimate Guitar chord progressions user contributed? They often simplify the actual chords in their tabs.
unit149 2y ago
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psychoslave 2y ago
Oh just when this morning I was wondering how I might find which sequence of chords would cover all songs ever published. That led me to remember of the famous combinatory proof that was published in Redhit to answer which sequence of some television series one should watch to achieve a minimal chain of something. But I was also concerned that finding chord progression for all songs would be the hardest part, compared to any chord progression which can be just generated by anyone.
vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago
my favorite paper on analyzing chord progressions so far is this seemingly niche comparative study of five metal genres: https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/58172029/Boddington_Jordan_Herbst_Harmonic_structures.pdf https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/58172029/Boddin... it shows which chords exactly set black metal, power metal, metalcore, death metal and progressive metal apart (i also try to do my own narrative on chords, but so far there's nothing to write home about: https://rawl.rocks/ https://rawl.rocks/)
budmichstelk 2y ago
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digbybk 2y ago
I’m having a hard time believing power chords only account for 5.8% of chords in metal.
- wbl 2y ago
  Metal is extremely hard to analyze because intermodulation products do so much.
- dboreham 2y ago
  The probability that the tab on Ultimate Guitar for any given metal song is accurate, tends to zero.
svag 2y ago
There is a nice standup sketch from an Australian comedy group, the Axis of Evil, that most of the pop songs are using only four chords, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
kube-system 2y ago
I was disappointed to see they use Ultimate Guitar data for this. Back when I played regularly under the study of a professional, I quickly found that the majority of tabs on the site are just plain wrong. Likely some of the “simplicity” observed in the chords here aren’t actually due to the music being simple, but that the user who contributed the tab made their best simplified guess as to what it was. Unfortunately the analysis is probably flawed because of the poor quality of data.
ben7799 2y ago
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 chords. Then very often 7th chords, Sus chords, etc.. all get transcribed down to major chords & minor chords due to the beginner focus. Interestingly he doesn't include 6th chords as their own thing. To be fair there are tons of songs that do actually use those chords, so they may still end up coming out as the most popular. I have a grandfathered in lifetime membership to UG that I only had to pay once for. It was cheap so worth it, but I really find the site kind of icky as they are mostly monetizing crowd sourced low quality work and it's very often wrong. And they nerfed their iPad app recently which is really annoying.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  The power tabs and guitar pro tabs are a big step up over the text based stuff on ug. You can play it in midi and see they are usually perfect.
  - ben7799 2y ago
    Obviously I've had access to those for a long time. I would still say they are nowhere near as good as published material. And sometimes I've seen the community text ones actually be more correct. Really a question of how much you pay for it. Sounds like some plans are $25/month, that's enough to just buy tons of published material instead. I paid $5 for a lifetime membership.. very worth it.
  - pc86 2y ago
    It sounds perfect which is part of it, but if you've ever looked at the Pro tabs, especially the vocal transcriptions, the fretboard positions are all over the place, seem to be wrong about half the time, and in the worst cases I've seen nearly physically impossible to play. Also for unknown reasons (licensing?) it's impossible to have the vocal track play when you're using a backing track.
calibas 2y ago
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.
- xfalcox 2y ago
  I guess one aspect missing here is weighting more popular songs on that analysis. I assume that the analysis is simply counting every song chords, so a unknown band you've never heard about has the same impact as The Ramones. I'd like to see the same graph weighted by band popularity using either YouTube or Spotify data.
- Levitz 2y ago
  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.
aczerepinski 2y ago
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?
alganet 2y ago
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.
- duped 2y ago
  I don't see anyone harping on notation, but using notation to point out why the analysis is lacking.
  - alganet 2y ago
    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".
    - dboreham 2y ago
      You don't need to learn any notation to understand the concept that human perception of music is driven by relative frequency relationships, not absolute frequency.
      - alganet 2y ago
        Yeah, that seems about right. Many musicians can just play a song that feels good. Never knowing anything about notation or frequency stuff. Maybe a data guy can extract something useful from an incomplete dataset too. What was the author trying to do? Showing some prowess with data while learning about music. I think the result was good.
    - 2y ago
duped 2y ago
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.
RickJWagner 2y ago
That’s a really interesting read. I’m shocked at the similarities between country and punk. Did not imagine that!
dboreham 2y ago
Oh, the data came from Ultimate Guitar? So as every guitarist knows: it's wrong.
RajT88 2y ago
What a flawed study - Metal music only uses 5.8% power chords? There is no genre more power chord heavy. (pun intended)
murki 2y ago
what I was hoping this article would do (i.e. express this information as roman numeral progression) has been done here https://www.amitkohli.com/chord-progressions-of-5-000-songs/ https://www.amitkohli.com/chord-progressions-of-5-000-songs/
sD4fG_9hJ 2y ago
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osxman 2y ago
Ultimate Guitar is not very accurate. That is because for example blues notes are 'bended' on a guitar by pushing up the strings a lot. Many notes are wrongly notated on Ultimate Guitar. It is better to use official sheet music books.
anigbrowl 2y ago
One thing that jumped out at me was the data point suggesting there are very few power chords in electronic music. But in fact, they're ubiquitous because it's easy to make a power chord in a single note, by tuning oscillators a 5th apart. Any synth with 2 or more oscillators comes with a bunch of 5th patches (or patch sheets if it's all analog). It's one of the first synthesis techniques people learn to make thick-soundings patches. Also the whole idea of doing the analysis based on absolute rather than relative notes makes little sense to me as a musician, though perhaps that's because I didn't start with guitar or a tuned instrument like a trumpet.
sayrer 2y ago
A lot of them use G or F because that is the biggest bass note you can get in a club system.
teleforce 2y ago
Fun facts you can use circle of fifths as references or cheat sheet for good Chord Progression [1]: "Chord progressions also often move between chords whose roots are related by perfect fifth, making the circle of fifths useful in illustrating the "harmonic distance" between chords." It'll be very interesting to analyse the available songs data to find chords that follow circle of fifths. By cross-reference patterns with the circle of fifths, we might just end up with the LLM equivalent of data-driven musical composer that's capable of generating harmonically pleasing, genre-aware, even hit songs chord progressions. [1] Circle of fifths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths
notquitethere 2y ago
Notwithstanding how these are read, e.g. C can be Cmaj7 or other substitutions, that are understood by the musician and not always written or transcribed accurately, this analysis is akin to counting the number of times a digit 1 through 12 occurs in a financial statement and analyzing all annual reports. Or taking all the fiction books in the library and counting frequencies of characters translated to ascii codes. These are chords not chord progressions. Progressions would be i-iv-v, ii-v-i, and the prevalence of these. An interesting start, but the main meat of this analysis is unexplored.

308 points by jnord 2y ago

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Then there's the most complex pop song of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8

LandStander 2y ago
The song is "Never Gonna Let You Go" by Sergio Mendes
- userbinator 2y ago
  The first few words of your comment, along with the sibling comment mentioning a "Rick", made me hesitant to click that link.
deleted 2y ago
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nwatson 2y ago
Thanks for the Rick Beato video. Yes, complex.

hirvi74 2y ago

I find the analysis interesting in terms of a hobby project, but I'd be careful extrapolating too much out of this. 680k is quite the sample size, but my issue lies within the myopic selection of one instrument and the issues that arise from the platform of Ultimate Guitar. 1. I am curious, how many of the 680k songs are unique? It is rather uncommon for massively successful songs to only have one version of tabs out in the wild, so I am curious how many songs individual songs were counted multiple times. 2. This analysis only looks at guitar tabs or instrumentations there were transcribed for guitar. Chords can be made with more than just one instrument, thus that missing 7th note could actually be played by another instrument not included in the tabs. 3. As music progressed from the pre-jazz era to modern times, it became more common for people to play an instrument, like piano or guitar, while singing at the same time. Obviously there are exceptions to everything, but often times guitar pieces are simplified if the guitarist is also singing for practical reasons. 4. Music has also become more accessible as time progressed. It would be hard for an average person to learn the organ or hurdy-gurdy without access to one. It's much easier to acquire and learn piano when it can be a 4 inch thick plastic keyboard on a stand. 5. People tend to have a warped concept of the history of music. Pachelbel's Canon in D is by no means a complex song and has stood the test of time. Music through out time has also served different purposes. Hell, go back to Ancient Greece, Gregorian chants, and Medieval music. Those various time periods were not generally fully of complexity either. I would argue such times were generally less complex than modern music.

alexjplant 2y ago
> People tend to have a warped concept of the history of music. Pachelbel's Canon in D is by no means a complex song and has stood the test of time. Music through out time has also served different purposes. Hell, go back to Ancient Greece, Gregorian chants, and Medieval music. Those various time periods were not generally fully of complexity either. I would argue such times were generally less complex than modern music. True facts. The fifties and sixties were replete with simple, disposable pop music. "Yummy Yummy Yummy" topped the charts in the late 60s and has, what, three chords in it? What about "Sugar, Sugar" or the Monkees? Staff songwriters and session cats cranked this stuff out by the ton back in the day but people still love to take potshots at modern pop music for being inferior to the oldies in this regard.
- a4isms 2y ago
  The key observation for me is Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is crud." My most impressionable years for music were the 70s and 80s. I remember fantastic music from that time... But the fact is, most of what we hear today from that era has been curated for us. We hear the 10% of the 70s and 80s hits that weren't crud. Or maybe even the 1% that was great. If we actually listen to the top twenty-five singles from any month in those two decades, 90% of them would be crud. I think most people comparing the present to the past are comparing everything today to the 10% of yesterday that wasn't crud.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    We do an awful lot nowadays, though. Hmm, actually, I guess it is a straightforward equation I just don’t have my pencil or envelope handy. Imagine that we are interacting with all the accumulated good stuff, plus the modern good stuff, as well as the old good stuff (the old crud is forgotten). If our productivity is growing exponentially, is the proportion of crud increasing over time?
- pfisherman 2y ago
  Complexity is not just variation in chord progression, key, or melody. Dark Side of the Moon is basically the same chord progression repeated over and over; but with different rhythm, tempo, arrangement for each song. The variation within the scope of the repetition and call backs to various melodic and rhythmic motifs at various points throughout is part of what makes the album such an epic and thematically cohesive listening experience.

alexjplant 2y ago

Interesting analysis. Some observations: - Ultimate Guitar isn't exactly known for the sterling quality of its transcriptions. Teenage me submitted at least a few tabs that were clearly incorrect that still got 4 and 5 star ratings. Amateur guitarists are also infamously bad at figuring out voicings and extensions so something like a 9 might end up as a maj7 or just a triad. Adult me checks Songsterr first then uses his ear to figure out what's _really_ going on when I run across incorrect parts in the tablature. - Some genres of music like downtuned metal are largely monophonic and instead rely on quick melodic movement or drone-y background guitars to imply harmony. This data set doesn't seem to account for this. - There's no way that power chords only account for single-digit percentages of chords in rock, metal, and punk. There are albums that have been certified Platinum that are 90% power chords (technically power intervals, I suppose).

throwaway0665 2y ago

Does this take into account capo position? A G is easy to play so authors might use G to play a Bb for example with a capo to avoid barre chords. Likewise authors will choose simpler chord substitutes to make it easier to play. It's the same with lead sheets / the real book style music books. Performing musicians need to reproduce music quickly so only the triad will be written down even if the musician ends up playing some other extensions. The data is heavily biased towards simplicity. You can make conclusions about the data - but not music as a whole.

notfed 2y ago

This seems to be an analysis of chords used, not chord progressions?

zoogeny 2y ago
I too was a bit disappointed, hoping we'd get some statistics on chord progressions. But to be fair to the OP, he analyzed chord progressions to generate statistics on chords. It does inspire hope that someone will take the same dataset and provide statistics on the most common progressions.

jancsika 2y ago

> An “interval” is a combination of two notes. Minor nitpick: it's a "dyad" that is a combination of two notes. An "interval" is the difference between two (or more) pitches. And just as you'd measure the space between your eyebrows using a ruler, you'd measure the interval between middle C and concert A using your ears. The bonus, however, is that our listening apparatus is already quantized to octaves-- if you hear a pitch against a second pitch that's double/quadruple/etc. the frequency of the first, your ear marks this interval as special. It's likely most of you've already used this fact to your advantage; perhaps unwittingly, when someone begins singing "Happy Birthday" outside your normal singing range. (Though most renditions of "Happy Birthday" lend credence to Morpheus' lesson from The Matrix that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking it.) :)

gchamonlive 2y ago
That's new for me. What's an interval between three pitches called?
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  Two intervals?
  - gchamonlive 2y ago
    A third, fourth, fifth, sixth... Triton... Those are intervals. I ask again, what's an interval between three pitches? Is it a triad? If it's so, than it's not a minor nitpick, OP is just being plain pedantic for the sake of it.
    - seba_dos1 2y ago
      "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.

yahoozoo 2y ago

Power chords are only 5% in Metal? OK.

divbzero 2y ago

Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions? Analyzing individual chords involves counting the frequency of each chord (such as G, C, or D). Analyzing chord progressions would involve counting the frequency of chord pairs (such as D—A or C—G), chord triplets (such as D—A—Bm or C—G—Am), or longer sequences of chords. For an alternative look at the data, you could also normalize chord progressions across key signatures for your analysis (D—A or C—G would both normalize as I—V, D—A—Bm or C—G—Am would both normalize as I—V—vi).

naijaboiler 2y ago
i know. I was so disappointed reading that article. I had gone in expecting an analysis of progressions. e.g. VI-IV-I-V instead I got a page of chords analysis. chord progression != chords.
mkl 2y ago
Yes, I was disappointed. The original paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22046 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22046 did look at chord progressions. They also trained a machine learning model to predict the next chord. Some of the chord progression data is in graph form at https://github.com/spyroskantarelis/chordonomicon https://github.com/spyroskantarelis/chordonomicon. The raw chord data is at https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/tree/main https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/tree/.... It consists of one row per song containing a list of chord names in song order (no timing information) and Spotify ids for track and artist. It seems like Spotify has a different id for every released version, so it's really hard to search for particular songs in the data. To normalise across key signatures you need to know what key the song is in (at each point), and the data doesn't contain that. For many genres it could be guessed reasonably accurately from the chords.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Isn’t OP analyzing frequencies of individual chords, not chord progressions? Not according to the other comments, which say that the data set strips chords that follow identical chords, as if "too" was one of the most common words in written English.

naijaboiler 2y ago

says chord progressions, and then just talked about chords without any progressions. disappointing article.

qotgalaxy 2y ago

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cjohnson318 2y ago

Listing the "most frequent chord" is a weird analysis, I'm more interested in the "most frequent key", or a transition matrix from one key to another, e.g., if I'm in F, what's the chance I go a fifth up to C, or a fourth down to Bb. Just telling me G is a popular chord doesn't do much.

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
The "haunting" riff in the Hounds song features a tritone, and it's a modal-ish progression - perhaps with hints of folk music lurking in the background. You're not going to understand it by counting chords. A lot of pop has these quirks. Even things that sound like I-IV-V or I-V-vi-IV bubble gum. Slapping labels on the most obvious chords in a naive way misses them completely.
domenici2000 2y ago
Exactly, this is useless. It's like saying the letter E is the most used letter in the world and Wheel of Fortune is your dataset.
- johnfn 2y ago
  It's significantly worse than that. It's like saying the letter E is the most common letter in a corpus of text where most of the text has been ceasar-shifted.
edoceo 2y ago
G is the best one though, maybe D.

memset 2y ago

The way this analysis, and the original dataset were created, makes no sense. This is, in part, not the author's fault, since the original data [1, 2] is flawed. First, the original data was constructed like this: "...The next step was to format the raw HTML files into the full chord progression of each song, collapsing repeating identical chords into a single chord (’A G G A’ became ’A G A’)..." Already this makes no sense - the fact that a chord is repeated isn't some sort of typo (though maybe it is on UltimateGuitar). For example, a blues might have a progression C7 F7 C7 C7 - the fact that C7 is repeated is part of the blues form. See song 225 from the dataset, which is a blues: A7 D7 A7 D7 A7 E7 D7 A7 Should really be: A7 D7 A7 A7 D7 D7 A7 A7 E7 D7 A7 A7 With these omissions, it's a lot harder to understand the underlying harmony of these songs. The second problem is that we don't really analyze songs so much by the chords themselves, but the relationships between chords. A next step would be to convert each song from chords to roman numerals so we can understand common patterns of how songs are constructed. Maybe a weekend project. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.22046 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.22046 [2] https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/blob/main/README.md https://huggingface.co/datasets/ailsntua/Chordonomicon/blob/...

heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
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volemo 2y ago
Could you explain the Roman numerals part?
- zenogantner 2y ago
  Typically, chord progressions are described independently of the key they are in. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2750s_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2750s_progression
- Twirrim 2y ago
  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, a good example song is "Sweet Home Alabama", where almost the entire song is just V - IV - I over and over again. One of the most popular chord progressions, used in an astounding number of pop songs is known as the "Four Chord Trick", I – V – VI – IV, famously demonstrated by the Aussie comedy band Axis of Awesome[2] I think I'd agree with the person you're replying to, both in that the original source is flawed due to not including the "dupes", despite them being important, and also because key is largely irrelevant, chord progression is much more important. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ.

vthommeret 2y ago

If you're interested in more relative chord progression analysis, check out Hooktheory (I'm not affiliated but I think love their two books / apps): https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/index https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/index It's "just" 32K songs, but you can see the top chord progressions: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressio... And see which songs follow any chord progression you choose (either absolute or relative chords): https://www.hooktheory.com/trends https://www.hooktheory.com/trends

ronyeh 2y ago
I’m a huge fan of Hooktheory, and have bought all their books and products. Thumbs up!
murki 2y ago
here's a person who analyzed this data and presented it in a far more interesting way https://www.amitkohli.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/interactivechordprogression https://www.amitkohli.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/interac...

cole-k 2y ago

It's an admittedly smaller dataset, but Hook Theory has an analysis that allows you to search by chords (including relative) and look at trends: https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab https://www.hooktheory.com/trends https://www.hooktheory.com/trends It's a weird coincidence to see this post since I only occasionally remember about Hook Theory and binge it, but I remembered earlier this week. Many of you have probably heard the Axis of Awesome four chords song (if not, look it up, it's great), but it's fun doing the same thing with other songs. Like, did you know that you can sing the chorus of Numb by Linkin Park over the chorus of... * I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace * Immortals by Fallout Boy * Cheap Thrills by Sia (swung Numb lol) (+ the bridge of The Rock Show by Blink 182) Numb has a pretty common chord progression so I could pick songs with the exact same chords, but there are also some oddly specific finds like this video game (?) song that inexplicably has the same relative chord progression as Hotel California https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/zun/reincarnation#Verse https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/zun/reincarnation#... --- I am often surprised how a seemingly simple chord progression has only one result, even when I search by relative chords and ignore extensions and inversions, e.g. https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/chord-search/results?keySelect=any&scaleSelect=any&chordString=i+III+vi+VII&ignoreModifiers=true https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/chord-search/results?ke... However when you put that query into the normal search box, it does match a lot more songs, showing that there is a i III _ VII trend, just that i III vi VII is strange (which I guess makes sense). Perhaps my lack of music theory makes it harder to normalize my queries, but it's also possible that (1) there isn't enough data or (2) there is inconsistency in how people annotate the pieces (some songs will have II II II II, for example, following the rhythm, whereas some songs will have just a single II).

parpfish 2y ago
Hook theory: It doesn't matter what I say, so long as I sing with inflection

mastazi 2y ago

I'm surprised that according to the article, in jazz, some chords like D and A, which are mostly found in sharp keys, are more common than chords like Bb and Eb, which are usually found in flat keys. I remember once creating a dataset based on 50 random tunes from the Real Book and sharp keys were less than 20% of the total (based on the key signature at the start of the score) so that graph in the article doesn't seem right. Maybe the discrepancy is because modern jazz fusion tunes are under represented in the Real Book and those are usually more guitar-oriented, so perhaps more likely that the musician would pick a sharp key like D or A. As opposed to straight-ahead jazz were people try to accommodate for sax/trumpet/trombone etc. Or maybe it's because chords like D or A can be dominants in minor keys that are flat keys, e.g. D in the key of Gmin or A in the key of Dmin. - EDIT I just realised that dominants are listed separately so this is not the case. One more thing: according to the article, major triads make up more than 50% of chords in jazz... what? That's certainly wrong, most major chords in jazz are usually maj7th or 6th even when they don't have upper extensions. I think that what they actually meant is "major chords that are not dominants". But they used the label "major triad" instead.

AIPedant 2y ago
The dataset is not “jazz,” it’s Ultimate Guitar’s tablature of jazz songs, so the data is very low quality.
- mastazi 2y ago
  Yes, I think you're right, many Ultimate Guitar charts are generally low quality. I remember once checking out a song in F major and the IV chord was notated as A#, LOL. To be fair there are also high quality charts on UG, but they generally require a paid subscription (I think they are called "pro" charts). Maybe the dataset should have been limited to those but I'm not sure about the legal implications given that they are a paid product.

zzo38computer 2y ago

I do not see the mention of what chord progressions are used. They did mention what chords (according to only the notes, not according to the key) are common, though. I would expect that a full analysis should write the roman numbers (so you will have to know what key it is as well), and might also consider such things as non-chord tones, modulation to other keys, etc. (However, this is not as simple as just putting them into the computer and writing a SQL query or whatever.) What I had seen on television and what I had read, is that I-V-vi-IV chord progression is common in modern music. (There is also i-VI-III-VII, which is the relative minor key than I-V-vi-IV, which is obvious once you realize it.)

p0w3n3d 2y ago

Just changing key from G too F # does not make the song unique if it still follows the same chord schema. It'd be better to identify chords relatively, i.e. IV->I->V->vi

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huimang 2y ago

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 interesting, but not really that useful. The most common key, and the most commonly used chords relative to that key (i.e. with roman numeral analysis) would be much more useful and interesting. This would help paint a clearer distinction between e.g. country and jazz, not that "jazz uses Bb major more". Also, anyone with general instrument knowledge would surmise that since Bb and Eb instruments are much more prevalent. "If you’re sitting down to write a song, throw a 7th chord in. The ghost of a jazz great will smile on you." 7ths don't belong to jazz only, and the average songwriter isn't making data-driven decisions on how to settle on the chord structure for their song.

deleted 2y ago
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CuriouslyC 2y ago
I think most musicians know that I-IV-V-I is the zero thought default for in key chord progression, it's so overused you don't need fancy analysis to figure it out. For me, I'm more interested in the intervals and voicing pairs, because those tell you something deeper about the music that you don't get from the chord progression.
- toolslive 2y ago
  I-IV-V-I, II-V-I and maybe I-VII-VI-V and you can consider yourself "advanced" ;)
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    There's bandleaders who have geared their entire performance so if you can pick this kind of thing up by ear, follow their timing, and put effort into making them sound better, you're more valuable than some alternatives having truly advanced formal musical training. Especially with equal or better chops, lots of players like this can go into a studio and make recordable music, in one take, without actually rehearsing together in advance. And play in any key, since it's just Roman numerals.

1337shadow 2y ago

Aren't Ultimate Guitar chord progressions user contributed? They often simplify the actual chords in their tabs.

unit149 2y ago

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psychoslave 2y ago

Oh just when this morning I was wondering how I might find which sequence of chords would cover all songs ever published. That led me to remember of the famous combinatory proof that was published in Redhit to answer which sequence of some television series one should watch to achieve a minimal chain of something. But I was also concerned that finding chord progression for all songs would be the hardest part, compared to any chord progression which can be just generated by anyone.

vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago

my favorite paper on analyzing chord progressions so far is this seemingly niche comparative study of five metal genres: https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/58172029/Boddington_Jordan_Herbst_Harmonic_structures.pdf https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/58172029/Boddin... it shows which chords exactly set black metal, power metal, metalcore, death metal and progressive metal apart (i also try to do my own narrative on chords, but so far there's nothing to write home about: https://rawl.rocks/ https://rawl.rocks/)

budmichstelk 2y ago

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digbybk 2y ago

I’m having a hard time believing power chords only account for 5.8% of chords in metal.

wbl 2y ago
Metal is extremely hard to analyze because intermodulation products do so much.
dboreham 2y ago
The probability that the tab on Ultimate Guitar for any given metal song is accurate, tends to zero.

svag 2y ago

There is a nice standup sketch from an Australian comedy group, the Axis of Evil, that most of the pop songs are using only four chords, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

kube-system 2y ago

I was disappointed to see they use Ultimate Guitar data for this. Back when I played regularly under the study of a professional, I quickly found that the majority of tabs on the site are just plain wrong. Likely some of the “simplicity” observed in the chords here aren’t actually due to the music being simple, but that the user who contributed the tab made their best simplified guess as to what it was. Unfortunately the analysis is probably flawed because of the poor quality of data.

ben7799 2y ago

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 chords. Then very often 7th chords, Sus chords, etc.. all get transcribed down to major chords & minor chords due to the beginner focus. Interestingly he doesn't include 6th chords as their own thing. To be fair there are tons of songs that do actually use those chords, so they may still end up coming out as the most popular. I have a grandfathered in lifetime membership to UG that I only had to pay once for. It was cheap so worth it, but I really find the site kind of icky as they are mostly monetizing crowd sourced low quality work and it's very often wrong. And they nerfed their iPad app recently which is really annoying.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
The power tabs and guitar pro tabs are a big step up over the text based stuff on ug. You can play it in midi and see they are usually perfect.
- ben7799 2y ago
  Obviously I've had access to those for a long time. I would still say they are nowhere near as good as published material. And sometimes I've seen the community text ones actually be more correct. Really a question of how much you pay for it. Sounds like some plans are $25/month, that's enough to just buy tons of published material instead. I paid $5 for a lifetime membership.. very worth it.
- pc86 2y ago
  It sounds perfect which is part of it, but if you've ever looked at the Pro tabs, especially the vocal transcriptions, the fretboard positions are all over the place, seem to be wrong about half the time, and in the worst cases I've seen nearly physically impossible to play. Also for unknown reasons (licensing?) it's impossible to have the vocal track play when you're using a backing track.

calibas 2y ago

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.

xfalcox 2y ago
I guess one aspect missing here is weighting more popular songs on that analysis. I assume that the analysis is simply counting every song chords, so a unknown band you've never heard about has the same impact as The Ramones. I'd like to see the same graph weighted by band popularity using either YouTube or Spotify data.
Levitz 2y ago
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.

aczerepinski 2y ago

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?

alganet 2y ago

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.

duped 2y ago
I don't see anyone harping on notation, but using notation to point out why the analysis is lacking.
- alganet 2y ago
  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".
  - dboreham 2y ago
    You don't need to learn any notation to understand the concept that human perception of music is driven by relative frequency relationships, not absolute frequency.
    - alganet 2y ago
      Yeah, that seems about right. Many musicians can just play a song that feels good. Never knowing anything about notation or frequency stuff. Maybe a data guy can extract something useful from an incomplete dataset too. What was the author trying to do? Showing some prowess with data while learning about music. I think the result was good.
  - 2y ago

duped 2y ago

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.

RickJWagner 2y ago

That’s a really interesting read. I’m shocked at the similarities between country and punk. Did not imagine that!

dboreham 2y ago

Oh, the data came from Ultimate Guitar? So as every guitarist knows: it's wrong.

RajT88 2y ago

What a flawed study - Metal music only uses 5.8% power chords? There is no genre more power chord heavy. (pun intended)

murki 2y ago

what I was hoping this article would do (i.e. express this information as roman numeral progression) has been done here https://www.amitkohli.com/chord-progressions-of-5-000-songs/ https://www.amitkohli.com/chord-progressions-of-5-000-songs/

sD4fG_9hJ 2y ago

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osxman 2y ago

Ultimate Guitar is not very accurate. That is because for example blues notes are 'bended' on a guitar by pushing up the strings a lot. Many notes are wrongly notated on Ultimate Guitar. It is better to use official sheet music books.

anigbrowl 2y ago

One thing that jumped out at me was the data point suggesting there are very few power chords in electronic music. But in fact, they're ubiquitous because it's easy to make a power chord in a single note, by tuning oscillators a 5th apart. Any synth with 2 or more oscillators comes with a bunch of 5th patches (or patch sheets if it's all analog). It's one of the first synthesis techniques people learn to make thick-soundings patches. Also the whole idea of doing the analysis based on absolute rather than relative notes makes little sense to me as a musician, though perhaps that's because I didn't start with guitar or a tuned instrument like a trumpet.

sayrer 2y ago

A lot of them use G or F because that is the biggest bass note you can get in a club system.

teleforce 2y ago

Fun facts you can use circle of fifths as references or cheat sheet for good Chord Progression [1]: "Chord progressions also often move between chords whose roots are related by perfect fifth, making the circle of fifths useful in illustrating the "harmonic distance" between chords." It'll be very interesting to analyse the available songs data to find chords that follow circle of fifths. By cross-reference patterns with the circle of fifths, we might just end up with the LLM equivalent of data-driven musical composer that's capable of generating harmonically pleasing, genre-aware, even hit songs chord progressions. [1] Circle of fifths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths

notquitethere 2y ago

Notwithstanding how these are read, e.g. C can be Cmaj7 or other substitutions, that are understood by the musician and not always written or transcribed accurately, this analysis is akin to counting the number of times a digit 1 through 12 occurs in a financial statement and analyzing all annual reports. Or taking all the fiction books in the library and counting frequencies of characters translated to ascii codes. These are chords not chord progressions. Progressions would be i-iv-v, ii-v-i, and the prevalence of these. An interesting start, but the main meat of this analysis is unexplored.