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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 Rich on Monday May 18 2015, @11:49PM
Saw Guitars, Saw Drums. ... just zero variety in choice of instruments.
Oops. "Jumping" John Egan left the Ozrics in 2005. I should've kept a bit more up to date. Rest assured a London concert of them about 15 years ago was most memorable for his ecstatic presentation of a decent range of flutes. It seems the band doesn't have a flutist anymore today. I rest my case.
However, the use of guitars has nothing to do with the music getting more primitive. Quite the contrary; probably only a Chapman Stick could provide more flexibility to a live performing instrumentalist than an electric guitar with a pedalboard. Digital effects approximate the sound of any monophonic acoustic instrument almost to the extent a modern digital piano can replace an acoustic grand piano: Including microphony losses, it will be better than the original in a live setting (unless you're fully unplugged acoustic).
If you really just care about the instruments being lugged around for contemporary music, here are, on the quick, VNV Nation with two keyboards, one unused electric percussion set and zero guitars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcZGXEY8fss [youtube.com], or pushing it to the limit, Apocalyptica with zero keyboards, zero drumkits, and zero guitars on top. Alas, zero woodwinds, too. But the strings are solid. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjvGjUovxPU [youtube.com]