Thought it might be interesting to some here. More analysis is coming up, the site says.
cryophonik
One major flaw in the assessment was grouping the relative major/minor keys. Popular chord progressions written in a major key are different than those written in minor keys, hence, when the author states:
quote:
Interestingly, F and G actually show up in more chord progressions than C! C major is the tonal center and one might expect it to be ubiquitous, but it turns out to be pretty common to omit this chord in some sections of a song for effect.
...he is overlooking the fact that Cmaj is NOT the tonal center for Amin, so his conclusions are misleading. The most popular chord progression in Cmaj is the ubiquitous I-IV-V (C-F-G) progression, whereas in Amin, the most popular chord progression is some form of the i-VI-VII (Amin-F-G) progression. So, when you group Cmaj and Amin, your results will be statistically biased toward the common chords (i.e., F and G), rather than the two separate tonic chords (Cmaj and Amin), so his interpretation is erroneous.
This smells like an SEO ad for Apple anyway.
wayfinder
quote:
Originally posted by cryophonik
One major flaw in the assessment was grouping the relative major/minor keys. Popular chord progressions written in a major key are different than those written in minor keys, hence, when the author states:
...he is overlooking the fact that Cmaj is NOT the tonal center for Amin, so his conclusions are misleading. The most popular chord progression in Cmaj is the ubiquitous I-IV-V (C-F-G) progression, whereas in Amin, the most popular chord progression is some form of the i-IV-VII (Amin-F-G) progression. So, when you group Cmaj and Amin, your results will be statistically biased toward the common chords (i.e., F and G), rather than the two separate tonic chords (Cmaj and Amin), so his interpretation is erroneous.
This smells like an SEO ad for Apple anyway.
Wouldn't I-IV-V in Amin be A - D - E?
cryophonik
quote:
Originally posted by wayfinder
Wouldn't I-IV-V in Amin be A - D - E?
In Amin you would have i-iv-v (or V if using the dominant chord from the harmonic/melodic minor) and that would be Amin-Dmin-Emin (or Emaj).
Looks like I had accidentally typed i-IV-VII in my post above, but it should have read i-VI-VII (now fixed). Anyway, that would be Amin-F-G. In minor keys, this progression, or some variation of it, is used far more in pop songs than i-iv-v and is very recognizable.
Also, not to be too pedantic, but when you are using the Roman numerals, use lower-case letters for minor/diminished chords and upper-case for major/augmented major chords to avoid confusion, otherwise, it loses its meaning.
Beatflux
quote:
Originally posted by cryophonik
In Amin you would have i-iv-v (or V if using the dominant chord from the harmonic/melodic minor) and that would be Amin-Dmin-Emin (or Emaj).
Looks like I had accidentally typed i-IV-VII in my post above, but it should have read i-VI-VII (now fixed). Anyway, that would be Amin-F-G. In minor keys, this progression, or some variation of it, is used far more in pop songs than i-iv-v and is very recognizable.
Also, not to be too pedantic, but when you are using the Roman numerals, use lower-case letters for minor/diminished chords and upper-case for major/augmented major chords to avoid confusion, otherwise, it loses its meaning.
Music theory is nortoriously horrible with terminology like that. ing chrotchets and quarter notes. , just pick one word for everything and have everyone stick by it.
wayfinder
quote:
Originally posted by cryophonik
In Amin you would have i-iv-v (or V if using the dominant chord from the harmonic/melodic minor) and that would be Amin-Dmin-Emin (or Emaj).
Looks like I had accidentally typed i-IV-VII in my post above, but it should have read i-VI-VII (now fixed). Anyway, that would be Amin-F-G. In minor keys, this progression, or some variation of it, is used far more in pop songs than i-iv-v and is very recognizable.
Also, not to be too pedantic, but when you are using the Roman numerals, use lower-case letters for minor/diminished chords and upper-case for major/augmented major chords to avoid confusion, otherwise, it loses its meaning.
alright, thanks for the info
cryophonik
I'd like to see a good representative cross-section of the songs that he analyzed. I'm guessing that these are primarily keyboard-based tracks, because guitar-based pop/rock is heavily represented by songs in the keys of E, A, or D, largely due to their open strings (i.e., easier to play chords in those keys using standard tuning).
DJ Shibby
Cool, he claims to have done something awesome and useful... but...
where is the actual data so we can confirm its truth?
dj_alfi
Wow, some guy transposed 13000 songs and analyzed just to tell us what the Axis of Awesome has been saying for years.
Edit: wth it was only 1300? That's ing lazy, and is far too small of a sample to really tell anything. Thread still isn't worthless cus I got to post the Axis of Awesome in it, which everyone should watch at least thirteen times in their lifetime.
Kysora
I remember hearing a lot of the songs from that Axis of Awesome bit aren't really the same chord progression, they just used songs with relatively interchangeable chords, as long as the melodies still fit.
Looney4Clooney
they link to their data where you can edit or add your own. There have been articles in journals doing this sort of thing in about the same quantity but with perhaps someone a little more qualified doing the analysis. I don't really see how it is applicable at the moment. The data is kinda just raw data that doesn't really give much insight.
dj_alfi
exactly. how many songs are released each year? a million? i dunno... some answer at answers.com said 35-40 000 ALBUMS are released in US and Canada each year. Add a -load of j-pop, k-pop ang god know what else kind of local music phenomenons there are out there, a million released songs worlwide each year might not be that far off.
1300 is nothing. whoever did that work pretty much wasted their time.
MAYBE if the songs were randomly selected from a database containing every song ever recorded, or at least something more definable than 'popular songs', it'd might be unbiased enough to pull something out of it, but im guessing that's nowhere near the selection method they used.
