11 ms·
Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
- dharma1 11y agoforgot this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4P8orKjadI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4P8orKjadI
- indienkid 11y agoThis is really fascinating. I'd be curious to know how different genres compare, especially pop music.
- protonfish 11y agoI am confused. Is "Start" always a 1? Then how can the first chord change also be a 1?
- stephen_g 11y agoNope. 1 is the root (or tonic) of the key, not necessarily the first chord.
- unseraphim 11y agoYes, of course, but why isn't the first chord in the progression labeled in the diagram? All the others are. There's just a big wall labeled "Start". Things like this make me feel like I am disconnected from the rest of the world. How can anyone look at that diagram for one second and not see this glaring and confusing omission?
- protonfish 11y agoThen what is the first chord? The beginning is labelled "Start" What does this mean? Either less than 25% of songs start on the 1 (no way this is possible) or the second chord is mislabeled as a chord change when it stays the same or those with a 1 in the second column started on a chord other than the root and instead of listing that chord, the data is thrown away. Something is messed up here.
- drostie 11y agoWhy is there "no way this is possible"? The 1 is the key, which is to say, the lowest note played in the progression. If it's less than 25% then that means that 4-chord progressions frequently do not choose their minimum as the first note.
- protonfish 11y agoIf you were a musician you'd know that in popular music the vast majority start on the 1 chord. Classical music probably does this less frequently, but it's nowhere around 1/5 of the time.
- baddox 11y ago"Start" is nothing. I'm not sure why they even put it there. The first chord of the songs are represented by the second column.
- a1k0n 11y ago> Very lazily, I just normalized all probabilities across each transition so that each transition “mega bar” is kind-of the same height. I’m sure there’s a better way to do it, the community is invited to improve! The size of the bars is normalized, not necessarily indicative of probabilities. That's why I isn't any bigger than the rest.
- jayrhynas 11y agoThe way I interpreted it, the first chord starts at the second column. The "start" state is necessary so you can see the distribution of songs among the first chords.
- protonfish 11y agoThis would mean that less than 25% of songs start on the root chord. That can't be true. I would expect a distribution of about 90% 1 chord with a smattering of others taking up the rest.
- pmh 11y agoSomeone asked this on reddit[1]. The answer the author gave was: "the "start" is whatever the api gave for each song, which in turn is the first chord that was entered by the user that uploaded that song, which is of course, not standardized. So it's for sure not the start of songs, or the bridge or whatever... it's this and that." [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/32ol86/chord_progressions_of_25_000_songs_oc/cqdo2bk?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/32ol86/cho...
- cjslep 11y ago> Even though there is a great variety of chords and chord progressions, progressions involving 1,4,5, and 6 are favoured, probably because they ‘sound good’ to our brain. I drive my girlfriend nuts because of this. I don't typically listen to the pop/country songs that are popular with our local radio but when she has it on in the car, every once in a while a song will come on and I'll think "I know this" and start singing an older (wrong) song that fits the progression pretty well.
- chaosphere2112 11y agoI'm fond of this video that illustrates this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
- scott_karana 11y agoThat video is, of course, linked in the article... ;)
- matthijs_ 11y agoThis is a different one actually than the one in the article!
- yellowapple 11y agoThat is incredibly beautiful. :')
- ssharp 11y agoDo you really listen to the chords that closely? For a lot of music, the chords are either largely hinted at (bass notes, the lead guitar or rhythm guitar lick, and how the melody move) and if there is an instrument banging out the exact chord progression, it's usually buried under the stuff or at least the vocal. If I'm writing a song, I'm spending almost all of my time doing things tangential to the chord progressions, but rarely any time on the chord progressions themselves. So usually I'll start with a guitar lick or vocal melody, put a chord progression behind it, and then figure out the rest of the arrangement. If there's a song that's memorable to me, it's almost always because of the main melody or guitar, not the underlying chords. I'm only talking about pop-based music here, so rock, pop, country, etc.
- m_eiman 11y agoSounds like something that could be used to generate endless but still decent elevator music with some Markov chains.
- smrtinsert 11y agoIt's funny, whenever I look up algorithmic music, it never seems to be the usual pop cadences. The Phd who make this their field seem to prefer atonal or dissonant generated music.
- pierrec 11y agoThe field of generative music is very under-researched, but there are some great things out there, including tonal and "harmonious" ones. Try David Cope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgG1HipAayU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgG1HipAayU And xoxos' "BreathCube" and "New Blend": http://www.xoxos.net/software/software.html http://www.xoxos.net/software/software.html
- mjn 11y agoI think of classical music as a more "canonical" target than atonal or dissonant music, though it depends on what community of researchers you're looking at. One of the more famous researchers is David Cope, who spent much of his time on algorithmically modeling composition in the style of J.S. Bach. There's also an intermittent stream of papers on jazz improvization, e.g.: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jazz+improvisation+icmc http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jazz+improvisation+icmc There is a good deal of avant-garde experimentation as well, in part because computer music has in many places/eras been larger in the field of music, rather than the field of computer science. Contemporary composers like Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, etc., picked up and developed new technologies as they became available. But they were avant-garde composers interested in using these technologies as part of their compositional toolkit, not CS researchers interested in automating generation of music per se. One driving question for a certain group of composers is along the lines of: how can this new technology/technique help us make new, different music? Which leads to different experiments than the question: how can this new technology/technique help us automate the production of existing music? Sometimes that still ends up popularly oriented, e.g. in the '60s and '70s there was quite a bit of crossover between avant-garde synth experimentation and popular music, with Brian Eno as one hub in particular, and Moog synths finding their way onto all sorts of top-charting albums. Other times it's ended up less popularly oriented, like most of the granular-synthesis music.
- pcsanwald 11y agoIf anyone has interest in harmonic theory and why I/IV/V progressions are so pervasive, I highly recommend "The Harmonic Experience" by W.A. Mathieu. He really gets into the harmonic series, and how intervals are really low prime ratios. I read this book after being a professional musician for 15 years and it was an ear opening experience. there are lots of great singing exercises for really hearing the overtone series. it's pretty much the "art of computer programming" for music.
- mhax 11y agoThat book looks really interesting - thanks for the recommendation. What still twists my melon about harmony is the Pythagorean Comma. Harmony equating to integer ratios seems so right... But the fact that a perfect 5th on a piano isn't really a perfect 5th troubles me at some existential level.
- luch 11y agoThe comma is not a big deal : it's a problem caused by tone equalizing (aka temperament). Think of instruments as ladders : they have all the same steps, but start at different heights. When combining several types of instruments, the resulting steps are not aligned. Equal temperament solve that problem by normalizing the steps' absolute height. It's a trade-off between the instrument's perfect harmony, and the orchestra's overall one.
- haberman 11y agoI don't mean to be rude, but I'm not sure you understand the comma. It has nothing to do with combining types of instruments. It's a problem that exists even with a single instrument. The problem is that, even on a single instrument (say a piano), if you start on some note (say C0), going up seven octaves should land you on exactly the same note as going up twelve perfect fifths (C7). The problem is that the precise tuning of that C7 is different depending on if you followed the perfect octaves or perfect fifths. If you followed perfect octaves, which have a ratio of 2/1 (or just 2), C7 should have a tuning of precisely (2^7)·C0 = 128·C0. If you followed perfect fifths, which have a ratio of 3/2, C7 should have a tuning of precisely ((3/2)^12)·C0 = ~129.74·C0. The difference between these two is the Pythagorean comma. Equal temperament solves this problem by keeping the octaves perfect (2:1), but compromising on everything else. It defines a half-step as the 12th power of 2, so a fifth ends up being a little narrower than a perfect 3:2 perfect fifth.
- Reefersleep 11y agoThis is great work. What I really want now is a version where you can listen to the chords in the chart individually and in progression!
- davec 11y agoAsk and you shall receive. Hooktheory's Trends tool lets you see and hear all the chord progressions of the individual songs used here. As mentioned in the article, this analysis actually used our free API for accessing our chord progression database (I'm one of the creators of the site). http://www.hooktheory.com/trends http://www.hooktheory.com/trends
- circa 11y agowow this is fantastic. captivating. I can't wait to go home and play now!
- jader201 11y agoI'm a bit surprised that one of my favorite "poppy" progressions -- bVI bVII I -- isn't more common. Or, is it that the database isn't very exhaustive yet? http://www.hooktheory.com/trends#node=b6.b7.1&key=rel http://www.hooktheory.com/trends#node=b6.b7.1&key=rel
- tpoindex 11y agoVery nice presentation, although I'd prefer the graph settle to a steady state a few iterations earlier. Ob Lou Reed quote: "One chord is fine, two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz." ( http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lou-reed-velvet-underground-leader-and-rock-pioneer-dead-at-71-20131027 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lou-reed-velvet-under... )
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kowdermeister 11y ago"So for example, the transition 4->1->5->6 is one of the most popular ones" The graph does not show this or I'm misunderstanding something. The most popular looks like 1,4,1,5 Also, what does the double, triple numbers mean? 664, 66 in the fist column. I know some music theory, but the article's explanation is rather confusing.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y agothe first number is the chord number (which should have been notated as a roman numeral, and should have differentiated between major and minor with capital and lowercase). The rest of the arabic numberals indicate the inversion using figured bass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figured_bass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figured_bass
- phaemon 11y agoHe mentions this under "Caveats": 'There are several limitations to this assessment since the Hooktheory API wasn’t really intended for this type of analysis. For example, it doesn’t mention whether “6” is “vi” (minor) or “VI” (major), which is kind of a big deal.'
- phaemon 11y agoIt just says "one of the most popular", not "the most popular". The double and triple numbers are Figured Bass notation (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figured_bass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figured_bass ). So, if you have the 6th and it's the second inversion, it would be 664. For example, in G that would be the second inversion of Em.
- azakai 11y ago> 1,4,1,5 That is indeed very popular, off the top of my head, "Free Falling" by Tom Petty. However, I am puzzled because 1,5,6,4 seems much more popular in my experience, and it doesn't seem that high in that data.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
- wehadfun 11y agoDon't know the technical aspects of music enough to understand what is going on here. Would like examples from real songs to illustrate.
- yodsanklai 11y agoMost songs are based on chord progressions (a sequence of several chords) that is repeated through the whole song. More precisely, there maybe different chord progressions within a given song. For instance, one per section (intro, verse, bridge, chorus, outro and so on...). In theory, there are tons of possible chord progressions but not all of them sound good. In practice some are extremely common (like I - IV - V in rock or ii - V - I in jazz) and can be shared across very different genres. Google "common chord progressions" for many examples. Now for the numbering system. Chord progressions can be described as a sequence of numbers that define the chords in a relative way (in CS terms, think of a relative path in a file system VS an absolute path). In music, what is important to the listener ear is the relation between the notes, not so much the absolute pitch of those notes. Example : A - D - E and E - A - B are the same progressions (I - IV - V) in the key of A for the first one, and in the key of E for the second one. Things get more complicated because you can have different quality of chords (minor, major, dominant...) but you get the idea.
- markbnj 11y agoTo see how popular the 1-5-6-4 progression is you need only watch Axis of Awesome ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ljk 11y agoand before them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
- aidenn0 11y agoThough Pachelbel's Canon is twice as long; it has a iii between the vi and the IV, and a I IV V tacked on the end.
- drostie 11y agoRight. You'll notice this in the Pachelbel rant; he very specifically only sings "da, da-da-da, da-da da-da-da-da-da-da--" (the first half of the violin theme) before abruptly cutting off because with this progression you essentially only get the "first half" of the Canon.
- markbnj 11y agoAwesome! Hadn't seen that one before. I think Axis of Awesome almost ripped him off.
- azakai 11y agoI was surprised though to see that in the data the 1-5-6-4 progression is not the most common. Maybe I'm reading it wrong? Looks like 1-4-* is more popular.
- markbnj 11y agoI think what the amusing videos linked above show is that 1-5-6-4 is very common in certain styles of music, especially modern pop. But when you consider music in its entirety then I'm not surprised to see it recede. So much folk and blues, for example, are built around completely different progressions.
- nathell 11y agoSomewhat relevant, The Million Song Dataset: http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/ http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/
- mwcampbell 11y agoNow I wonder if anyone has gathered data on vocal ranges. I'd love to be able to query for a list of songs in my range.
- liminal 11y agoI created a similar visualization of part of HookTheory's data: http://briancort.com/songviz/ http://briancort.com/songviz/ At the time they didn't have an API, so I emailed them and they sent me a sample to work with. Would be interesting to see how it handles such a large amount of data. If you're interested in this sort of harmonic analysis, you might also like a little visualization I created of the harmonies within a chord: http://briancort.com/chordviz/ http://briancort.com/chordviz/ Great minds... ;)
- datAmit 11y agoI'm the author of this article, and I signed up to ycombinator just to tell you I can't get over your visualization. It's just friggin top. Any chance you feel like explaining how you did it? mexindian@gmail.com
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ljk 11y agoIf this was done on the blues the chart might not be as diverse....
- lukas 11y agoThis is a cool post. There's also a bunch of really interesting related analysis on the excellent hookyheory blog http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/ http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/
- snorkel 11y agoFor non-musicians, here's some terminology behind this: There are 7 natural notes in (western) music: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (the white keys on a piano keyboard) ... plus 5 accidental notes that half-way between: A#, C#, D#, F#, G# also known as Bb, Db, Eb, Gb, Ab ... the black keys on a piano keyboard. # means sharp (go up in pitch one-half step) b means flat (go down in pitch one-half step) 7 naturals + 5 accidentals = 12 notes in the chromatic scale. These are the primary colors in music. Chords are like secondary colors. Chords are combinations notes that harmonize well when played together. Typically chords are 3 or more notes spaced at one note or one-and-half notes apart. So the C Major chord is C + E + G played together. Minor chords, noted with the lowercase "m" are made by dropping the "third" note down a half-step, so "C minor" or "Cm" is C + Eb + G, can also be expressed as C + D# + G So put it all together, F#m means "F sharp minor" so the root note of the chord is "F sharp" and the next note from the F major chord, A#, is dropped down a half step from its major position to A natural, so the notes are F# + A + C# Fortunately when playing an actual instrument you only memorize your finger positions to make the entire common chord shapes rather than thinking about the individual note under each finger. The hook melody of song, the chord sequence that is repeated throughout the verse or chorus, is expressed as chord progression in Roman numeral 1 to 7: I II III IV V VI VII Why did we switch from letters to numerals now? Because lettered notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G are fixed positions (ie. hard-coded) and the numerals are relative positions (ie. abstracted) So the Roman numeral expression is a more general form of the melody structure. This lets you takes a progression like C–G–Am–F (repeated over and over until you get a Grammy) and expressed it as I–V–vi–IV .. which you can just shift up or down to another key and everybody loves your new hit song, you win another Grammy, and few people realize it's same damn song as before with new tempo and new lyrics! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93... ...
- codeulike 11y agoBut the question is, what's natural about the Naturals, and whats accidental about the Accidentals? Because taken together they are just 12 equally spaced notes.
- 11y ago
- Tloewald 11y agoSeems like you could take rap genius and this resource and combine them into a Bayesian pop song generator. (Melodic and rhythmic progressions are the next step).
- bsder 11y agoSomething doesn't look right. How can such a small sliver go into flat6(b6) and yet a much thicker sliver flows out into flat7(b7)?
- cbd1984 11y agoWhat is this magic chord they all start on?
- joeyspn 11y agoJust learnt about http://www.hooktheory.com/ http://www.hooktheory.com/ thanks to this article, and I must say that I really love the concept of the website. I've always had music production as a hobby but w/o proper music theory background I struggled to analyse popular songs. This makes the process really easy and fun! I feel this site could be huge with a couple of tweaks: real-time and proper midi interfacing. I hope the site will evolve towards more complex collaborative songwriting...
- ianremsen 11y agoFor anyone rather confused, I wrote the majority of this wiki article on introductory music theory. http://battleofthebits.org/lyceum/View/I+Am+New+To+Music+Theory/ http://battleofthebits.org/lyceum/View/I+Am+New+To+Music+The...
- cbd1984 11y agoThese diagrams make no sense.
- jay_neyer 11y agoCan someone please explain what the 646, b7, 36, and other numbers mean? They discussed it briefly, but I didnt really follow. Sorry if its a noob question. Looks great though!
- was8309 11y ago> ... how will humanity ever learn to be creative if everyone keeps doing the same thing over and over this charted for the yearly top 100 selling songs over the last ~80 years would clearly show the dumbing down of popular music. The Standard Songbook contains music that everyday people sang and danced to, but has a creative variety of chord progressions.