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As reported in The Economist, scientists at the University of London have analyzed fifty years of pop music, and have used statistical techniques to identify three musical "revolutions" of lasting impact.
These revolutions do all correspond with times musical critics would have said change was happening (classic rock, new wave, and hip-hop respectively), but this analysis suggests other apparent novelties, such as the punk of the 1970s, were not the revolutions that their fans might like to believe.
From the article (well worth reading):
They used Last.fm, a music-streaming service, to collect 30-second clips from 17,094 songs (86% of the total) that were (on the Billboard) chart between 1960 and 2010. Then they attacked each clip with sonic analysis and statistics.
They found that they could extract what they describe as “topics” from the music. These were coherent harmonic and timbral themes which were either present in or absent from a clip. Harmonic topics, of which there were eight, captured classes of chord change, or their absence (eg, “dominant 7th-chord changes” and “major chords without changes”). Timbral topics, of which there were also eight, were things like “drums, aggressive, percussive” and “female voice, melodic, vocal.”
The comment thread below the article is also highly recommended, and the dismissal of punk is certainly egregious.
The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010, published by the Royal Society, is found here.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday May 18 2015, @07:19AM
How can one do a good analysis on music with a 30 second sound clip?
Have you ever heard one single note and known instantly what song was about to be played?
Thirty seconds should be enough to fill most of the parameters. Rhythm: check. Tonality: check. Timbre: check. It should also be enough to define a number of aspects of the melodic and harmonic framework.
What you aren't going to get in a thirty second sample is a reliable indication of song structure, but since most popular music uses some variation of verse/chorus structure, it's probably forgivable to omit that parameter. The real question is more "which thirty seconds?", and; if it were me; I'd pick the chorus section.
Now that I've argued for the potential viability of using a thirty second sample, now I'll pose a question of my own: I wonder why they didn't simply run the whole song through their parameter engine? It's not like the computer is going to get bored listening to music.