
Part 2: I analyzed the chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns.  - quile
http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/music-theory-analysis-1300-songs-for-songwriting-part2/
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gnaritas
> What stands out here, is that IV → I (F to C) is not only normal, it
> actually shows up just as often as V → I. This is surprising (at least to a
> classically trained person).

That's not surprising at all, and I don't believe for a second that a
classically trained person would think so either. V -> I is a common movement
for resolution, so is IV -> I as are several others. While his data is
interesting, I find the analysis weak, he's acting surprised at perfectly
known and normal things, even to someone classically trained IMHO. IV -> I
isn't "breaking the rules".

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davec
I disagree that a classically trained musician wouldn't be surprised at the
predominance of IV -> I in popular music. Plagal cadences aren't nearly as
common as V->I in the common practice period, and when it is used, the pull of
IV to I isn't nearly as strong. The resolution is much weaker.

~~~
gnaritas
Of course it weaker, but tons of two chord songs only have I and IV, it's a
sound well burned into our ears. Anyone studying music theory would not be
surprised by this. Perhaps I'm meaning something different by classically
trained, I just mean trained in theory, not the classical period in history.

I also dislike this idea of breaking the rules, theory is descriptive of
music, not prescriptive. There isn't anything you can do that can't be
described by theory, that's its purpose. The rules aren't rules, they're just
common idioms that people use, using an uncommon idiom is not breaking a rule.
Rule is not a proper word to use.

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kefs
Relevant:

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

~~~
pygy_
The _Pachelbel Rant_ is also worth checking:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM>

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jschulenklopper
For an interesting visual way to map common chord progressions, also see
<http://chordmaps.com/mapC.htm> for in the key of C. Steve also made a generic
one: <http://chordmaps.com/genmap.htm>.

I have this as a reference on the piano, and it is nice to experiment with
several routes to return to the root chord (nicely positioned at the bottom of
the page).

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anigbrowl
This is much better than the first part.

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yathern
It's nice to see the data, but I must say I V VI IV was not surprising at all.
I'm sure it's slightly more 'emotional' cousin VI IV I V (think apologize) is
high up on the list.

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slashcom
Please train a Conditional Random Field on this data. (A hidden markov model
would also be interesting, but risks going out of key more easily).

