
I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found. - davec
http://blog.hooktheory.com/2012/06/06/i-analyzed-the-chords-of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found/
======
kroger
Nice 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> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_mediant>

~~~
jbert
Doesn't he allow for this by normalising all songs to the key of C before
doing the analysis?

~~~
colomon
The 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...

------
snorkel
Reason: 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.

~~~
dooq
Em is probably the very simplest guitar chord to play, only needing 2 fingers
beside each other. Yet it doesn't come in at the top of the list. So I don't
think your explanation is the dominant force here.

~~~
dfan
Yeah, if you went by novice guitar player easiness, the keys of G and D would
be at the top, not C.

Also, barre chords enable you to play in any key you want, so it's not like
playing in C# is particularly harder than playing in C.

~~~
te_platt
Except that C is a (the?) natural third cord to use with G and D. And then
it's a bit tricky to not get something that sounds like a John Denver song.

------
terryk88a
Snnnzx.. 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
Charting chord progressions definitely sounds interesting. Would also like to
see that based on musical style -- i.e. "blues" vs. "rock".

~~~
jschulenklopper
Already done (but not per musical style). See
<http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/genmap.htm> for a generic Chord Progression
Map, and <http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/chartmaps.htm> for specific maps
for all twelve keys.

~~~
terryk88a
That'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.

------
pents90
For 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-
Dav...](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Models-Musical-Creativity-
David/dp/0262033380)

------
nchuhoai
I like this analysis:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DIgPyxiWU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DIgPyxiWU&feature=related)

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

~~~
powrtoch
Writing 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.

------
dude_abides
Relevant: Pachelbel rant - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM>

------
fferen
When 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>). I was hoping to see some
mention of that in this article, but was disappointed.

~~~
zopa
It'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
Perhaps 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...](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-using-the-I-V-vi-IV-chord-
progression/319852698123)).

~~~
AblyExitNewtons
You can switch to the sensitive female chord progression:
<http://sixfouronefive.blogspot.com/>

------
flomincucci
I'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).

~~~
kevincennis
I 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.

------
PeterWhittaker
Directions 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.

------
lux
The 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
The 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
To be more of a pedant, the Bdim should be a Bm7b5, not a B7b5. Also, The
Temptations, not Otis Redding, sang My Girl.

~~~
glassx
Ooops, yes, you're right on both!

------
seefoma
While 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.

------
te_chris
The article was down, but I assume this will be relevant:
<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
He'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.

------
gbog
I 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.

------
bishnu
This 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.

------
Brashman
How 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
The 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.

~~~
colanderman
_Eb 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.)

~~~
wildwood
That'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...](http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/sidewinders-bar-
grille/24512-why-tune-down-half-step.html)

The explanation that E-flat works better with tunings for brass and horns was
interesting.

------
dpkendal
> 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.

------
taylorbuley
I'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
So 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
A 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/>

------
iambrakes
I 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/>

------
jimmytucson
Probably 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
Hey 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.

------
whichdan
Well, that went down fast.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](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)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I normally use nyud.net first in such cases:
[http://blog.hooktheory.com.nyud.net/2012/06/06/i-analyzed-
th...](http://blog.hooktheory.com.nyud.net/2012/06/06/i-analyzed-the-chords-
of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found/)

------
csl
On 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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Axis_of_Awesome#Four_Chords_Song)

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>

The above link is the official video; but they explain their reasoning better
in this live performance:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0IUdjMcEmo>

------
djahng
Yes, 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.

------
kevincennis
This 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.

------
nileshtrivedi
Very 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
Yeah, 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.

------
splicer
One exception to the diatonic norm in pop music is Radiohead's "Just", which
uses an octatonic scale: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qMagfZtv8>

(ya, I consider Radiohead "pop music")

------
sesimt
I 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.

------
b1daly
This 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.

------
sirteno
I’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>

------
davec
That'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.

------
hlomas
Why not add some more interesting visualizations of your data? Try
<http://d3js.org>. For example <http://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/> or
[http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/20111116/iris-
parallel.ht...](http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/20111116/iris-
parallel.html) might be adapted to communicate which chords follow the others
in a more dense fashion.

------
cpeterso
Flesh Map charts which body parts are most commonly referenced by musical
genre:

<http://www.fleshmap.com/listen/music.html>

------
6ren
The app is pretty cool: [http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/celine-
dion/my-heart...](http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/celine-dion/my-
heart-will-go-on) It animates the score for both "instrumental" and "youtube"
sound.

------
wyck
Interesting 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.

------
mvkel
Could you combine this data to algorithmically create the "most common song
ever made"?

~~~
cpeterso
_The 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/>

[2] <http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/05/survey-produced/>

------
anigbrowl
I'm not crazy about this analysis, but the basic tool
(<http://www.hooktheory.com/>) is pretty awesome. Props for including MIDI and
sheet music exports.

Edit: signup gave me an error 500, though.

------
jmilloy
The 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?

------
nateburke
I 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?

------
TYPE_FASTER
There'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
Axis of Awesome <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ>

------
someone_welsh
relevant and funny:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I>

------
hessenwolf
Can we have a Markov chain diagram for the chord transition with the relevant
probabilities, pretty please?

------
sunspeck
This is awesome. Although I find the upside-down-and-backwards guitar chord
diagrams rather jarring.

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zwieback
a (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.

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indubitably
It's interesting how many comments here imply that more complex is better.

~~~
sesimt
Are you surprised?

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AblyExitNewtons
btw: 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.

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stretchwithme
Eventually, software will write music just for you. And lyrics too.

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michaelfeathers
I wonder what the RIAA thinks of someone amassing a database of the chord
patterns of 1300 popular songs.

~~~
rexreed
As 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).

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baddox
I find it hard to believe that D major wasn't one of the more common chords to
follow and E minor.

~~~
wildwood
Why 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.

~~~
HTryan
Exactly. 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.

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planetguy
What 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.

~~~
anigbrowl
_that song (dunno who it's by) with the lyrics "We found love in a hopeless
place"_

It's by Rihanna, and I can't even understand how it got released. It's like
something that got rejected from how-to-make-techno.tumblr.com for being too
basic.

~~~
aswanson
Its incredibly repetitive pop drivel. I wonder if teens have a higher
tolerance for repetition than adults. They seem the only demographic with any
affinity for this type of stuff.

~~~
krakensden
When you're young, you've heard less music. Which means that things that seem
derivative and samey to older people don't to teens.

There is also, in general, more tolerance for repetition in dance music than
in other genres.

~~~
gizzlon
My impression is that older people stop listening to new music, so at some
point that's not true anymore..

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horsehead
What 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>

~~~
cnanders
Hi horsehead, I don't know if you made it to the Music Editor part of the site
<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.

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monsterix
Well 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.

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batista
Hmm, one could also use a Markov chain on those 1300 chord progressions....

~~~
jerf
The 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
That'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>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The site structure is a little strange, MP3 files here
<http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm>

