

I analyzed the chords to 1300 songs for patterns. Part 3 – Interactive Discovery - davec
http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/chord-progression-search-patterns-and-trends/

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dude_abides
1\. Start with any key.

2\. Look up the relative minor.

3\. Go one step to the right and/or one step to the left in the Circle of
Fifths. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths>

There, you have the most popular and pleasant-sounding chord progressions in
any key. If you want funkier progressions, go further in the circle.

Edit: The chords sound more jazzy when you go counter-clockwise (it is the
circle-of-fourths). Thanks for the correction, @gnaritas.

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gnaritas
The circle of fifths and fourths are the same circle. Clockwise is a fifth,
counterclockwise is a fourth.

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haberman
It's more like it's a circle of both fifths and fourths, in _both_ directions.

For example, C-G is a fifth if you go up, or a fourth if you go down. C-F is a
fourth if you go up, or a fifth if you go down. So it can be a circle of
fourths clockwise or counterclockwise.

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gnaritas
Circles don't have up and down. :) Going clockwise is always a fifth,
counterclockwise is always a fourth.

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haberman
Circles don't, but intervals do. If you start at middle C (C4), you can go up
to G4 to get a fifth or down to G3 to get a fourth. Ergo C-G can, in the
abstract, be thought of as a fifth _or_ a fourth.

I think what you are trying to say is that going clockwise gives you
successive _dominants_ , while going counterclockwise gives you successive
_subdominants_.

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gnaritas
> Circles don't, but intervals do.

Great, but we're discussion the circle of fifths and fourths, not the
intervals. You've moving the goal post. A fifth and a fourth are the same
interval, but in the context of a key they are not, thus the circle is only
fourths in one direction. You can't decide if an interval is a fifth or a
fourth without knowing the key.

> I think what you are trying to say is that going clockwise gives you
> successive dominants, while going counterclockwise gives you successive
> subdominants.

I'm not trying to say it, I said it.

Pick any note on the circle, it's fifth (dominant) is directly clockwise and
it's fourth (sub-dominant) is directly counterclockwise. Counterclockwise is
always the fourth of the note you're moving from.

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kefs
Very relevant: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I>

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aptimpropriety
It bothers me a bit when people link this to 'explain away' pop music.

It's my belief this is an oversimplification - many of these songs are written
in different keys, which can create different sounds and feelings of songs.
Sure, you can transpose them to a common key (as they've done here), but at
that point, it's not really the same song anymore. Also, I've found that chord
progressions can be quite flexible if only 'snip-its' of certain songs are
being used, namely the standard chorus or verse. Much of the genius of
songwriting comes in transitions or bridges.

I'm not denying this is not entertaining, and it works to an extent, but I
would say that there is a degree to which this hinges on the widespread renown
of these songs. It's not so easy to say they would have become so popular if
they were all written in the same key, and not the one of the original artist.

Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or
'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so
easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field. My
opinion most of the talent is in production - Dr. Luke, Red One, Max Martin,
etc.

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king_jester
> Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or
> 'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so
> easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field.

Pop music and folk songs use common chord progressions with variations for the
simple reason that such songs are easy to pick up and play. To that end, pop
music is the opposite of an expert discipline, it is a form that is accessible
to people who want to play music. That doesn't mean that a pop song can't be
complicated or have lots of technical finesse, but that wouldn't be the
typical kind of pop song people play.

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jdietrich
Pop resolutely _is_ an expert discipline, but the expertise is of a type that
many classically-trained musicians barely register.

Skilled musicians tend to be timbre-deaf; In addition, classically-trained
musicians are invariably groove-deaf. They mentally process melody and harmony
very efficiently, which is tremendously useful but inevitably means discarding
a lot of musical information that is highly meaningful to the lay listener.

If you listen with a musician's ear to most pop records, you hear a simple
melody, a simple chord progression, maybe some simple harmonies, all at a
fixed tempo and time signature. If you listen with a pop songwriter's ear, you
hear hooks and earworms and prosody, you hear a perfectly honed and polished
lyric and a melody that carries the meaning of that lyric without a wasted
beat. If you listen with a producer's ear, you hear the product of sixty years
of evolution in creating sonic landscapes that sound big and rich and engaging
on anything from a nightclub soundsystem to a pocket radio.

In pop production, you've got to grab someone's attention in ten seconds,
engage them in thirty seconds and move their emotions in three minutes. When
most of your potential listeners are scarcely paying attention, that's
fiendishly difficult. Pop has it's own virtuosi, an elite of songwriters and
topliners and producers who can tell a story and convey a feeling with haiku-
like efficiency.

Listen closely and you'll hear: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JipHEz53sU>

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aptimpropriety
You've said what I've been trying to articulate for a long time - in much
better terms than I ever could. Thank you!

I like the dichotomy of songwriter vs. producer - but I would guess it isn't
always so discrete - i.e., production and mastering is essential to conveying
the emotions and moods of the songwriting. In fact, I would argue the lyrics
are often overemphasized in analysis - they are more of a vessel for tones and
cadence of the song.

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kevincennis
This is awesome, but I kind of wish that it matched _progressions_ with
_progressions_.

Right now, if I give it I V vi IV, it'll show me "Complicated" by Avril
Lavigne. While that song does contain those chords, in that order, they
function very differently - because the actual progression is vi IV I V.

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davec
This is something we considered.

Part of the problem is that sometimes when people analyze a section of a song,
they include a pick up, etc. Other times the song doesn't have a strong
resolution, so it's not clear where a progression begins or ends.

We thought this was the best compromise for now. The tool will show you all
songs that start with the progression, as well as songs that use the
progression in a phase shifted manner (which is also interesting).

~~~
kevincennis
Makes total sense. I figured it was due to practical limitations, and wasn't
just an oversight.

Thanks for the reply. And for making this. I'm a huge fan.

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jcr
Though a bit more on the "actual implementation" side of things, there's an
Australian group called "Axis Of Awesome" who did an interesting song called
"Four Chords". It shows the use of a set of four common chords in a lot of
different songs.

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

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davidedicillo
This is exactly what I thought about when I saw the article :)

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dirkk0
... and still nobody wrote 'Pachelbel' yet. :-)

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RockofStrength
I consider the fundamental chords in progressions to be tetrads (seventh and
sixth chords). Triads are nice in their ambiguity as to where they are going
(and their sonic simplicity), and when a seventh or a sixth note is added, it
generally tells you where the chord is headed.

EGs: I I I6 V V V V7 I vs. I I I Imaj7 IV IV IV IV6 I

Sixth chords move up a fifth, seventh chords move down a fifth. (the seventh
of a chord falls, the sixth rises - one can also view the IV7 chord in blues
music that moves to the I to be a IV+6)

The fundamental tetrad concept introduces the idea of "homophonic chords" -
for example, a major sixth chord and a minor seventh chord have the exact same
pattern, and the designation depends on context. Often, two designations exist
in a superposition until it is settled later on (or never).

Also interesting is chordal metamorphosis, where for example a subtle shift in
notes can modulate you into a new mode -for example, V morphing into III7 by
chromatically altering a note, taking you from major mode to relative minor.
(and this particular V III7 change is a nice way to make a strong chord change
when stuck on an already strong chord) EG: Hallelujah - |I |IV V |vi |IV |V
|III7 |vi |

Music theory is a very interesting topic, and I've arrived at models that do a
pretty good job of explaining the underworkings, allowing me to appreciate the
beauty of songs analytically as well as emotionally.

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tunesmith
It's sort of like analyzing the moves to 1300 chess games for patterns. The
good stuff is when you go off-book.

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Zoepfli
First of all - great job! :-)

When I search for any song, I only get the chord progressions of an excerpt,
not for the whole song. Question: do you have the chord progressions for the
whole song stored?

If yes, why don't you show them? It would be great to use in a fake book...

If no, what did you normally chose? Verse, Chorus? Sometimes the musically
most interesting things happen in the Bridge... Why didn't you find the full
progression - just for time reasons? I think if you have mostly Chorus
progressions, it's quite difficult to deduce general statistical information
about "all of popular music", wouldn't you agree?

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cnanders
Thanks! All analyses on Hooktheory are in done in sections. Analyses load one
section at a time. Since songs (well, most songs) repeat the same harmony in
each verse / chorus / ... it made sense for use to use the section approach.
One the Trends page the section that loads is the one that matched the chord
progression you searched (if multiple sections of the same song match, we omit
them from the song list). If other sections of a song have been analyzed,
there are buttons just below the title so you can see them.

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anigbrowl
10/10, not least because MIDI export has been added to the editor sine the
last time I looked. Now if only there were some way to redirect the MIDI under
Windows 7 to something other than the Microsoft Wavetable synth, like an
external MIDI port so I don't have to hear everything on that bad piano...

One minor thing is that there could be a better way to browse by songs than
just the top 10 and 10 most recent. Most of my searches come up empty, so I'd
like some way to browse the list of songs for something I _do_ like rather
than to keep drawing blanks.

~~~
davec
You can see the more recent and most popular analyses at
www.hooktheory.com/analysis

~~~
anigbrowl
I know, but it only shows the top 10 of each (which is what I was referring to
above). I grew up listening to mostly British music in the 80s, but that's
underrepresented in the database - so I searched for the Smiths, Pet Shop
boys, and several other bands from that period without getting any results at
all.

~~~
davec
Sorry. We used to have a way to show more than the top 10, but it seems to
have been disappeared. I'll make sure that gets added back to make browsing
easier.

~~~
anigbrowl
Cool!

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urlwolf
Doesn't work for me either. I wanted to do this with midi files (after
transposing them to a common key). And apply some dimension reduction on top
(LSA). Never got around to do it.

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zwieback
Fantastic work, I love it. The results I get are sometimes surprising. I play
mostly folk, country and blues so it's always surprising how irreverent a lot
of pop music is when it comes to progressions. Also, I don't see the "big II"
hardly at all. Playing the major II instead of the minor ii is fairly common
at jams I've been to but maybe it's because a lot of people don't know minor
chords, throw in the major instead and think it sounds good.

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mlla
A bit on a same note (pun intended), Jim Pavloff has uploaded to YouTube some
cool videos, where he re-creates some of the tunes by The Prodigy based on the
listed samples, e.g. Voodoo People
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZYLp5uX9Yw>) and Firestarter
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZImvdZ3EZI>)

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Wingman4l7
Reminds me of the great scifi short story _Melancholy Elephants_ by Spider
Robinson, which examines how perpetual copyright would negatively impact music
(there are only so many novel melodies that are pleasant to listen to):
<http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm>

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bavidar
Getting errors on:<http://ec2-54-234-254-65.compute-1.amazonaws.com/analysis>

seeing this.. include(User.php): failed to open stream: No such file or
directory Click play to enjoy a little slice of awesome. Be sure to check out
Rick Astley's dance moves in the video...

~~~
cnanders
Thanks. The mirrors were throw up quickly to handle the load and; that link
that led you to the analysis area was overlooked.

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fatbat
Being a big fan of discovering music I love the approach! Would love to check
this out if it isn't hammered right now. :)

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hdevalence
Is the raw data available?

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guscost
The "Rel" option uses relative notation for easy transposition. Nice!

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__david__
I couldn't get it to work in Firefox (20 beta).

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simcop2387
I couldn't in Chrome on linux either (Version 25.0.1364.152), looks like
they've lost their site for the time being, have to check back later.

~~~
cnanders
Hey everyone, I'm a Hooktheory developer. Site is back up. We are also setting
up mirrors. Will post them shortly.

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nulagrithom
The visualization is really, really neat, but I can't help but feel the three
part article was Music Theory 101 proven with a little math and data.

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socsy
Awesome!

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octatone2
Mirror?

