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Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Pop music scientifically proven to suck
Posted by:
tomahawk
()
Date: July 28, 2012 02:10PM
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/27/3554804.htm?WT.svl=news5
Pop music too loud, sounds the same
Friday, 27 July 2012 Chris Wickham
Reuters
Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.
Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.
A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of the musical discourse," says Serra. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
Intrinsic loudness is the volume baked into a song when it is recorded, which can make it sound louder than others even at the same volume setting on an amplifier.
The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a 'loudness war' but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.
The study, which appears in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, offers a handy recipe for musicians in a creative drought.
It suggests old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable.
"This yields a clear recipe for contemporising old songs: using more common chord changes, changing the song's instrumentation, and record it louder," says Serra.
The Rolling Stones in their 50th anniversary year should take note.
Pop music too loud, sounds the same
Friday, 27 July 2012 Chris Wickham
Reuters
Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.
Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.
A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of the musical discourse," says Serra. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
Intrinsic loudness is the volume baked into a song when it is recorded, which can make it sound louder than others even at the same volume setting on an amplifier.
The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a 'loudness war' but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.
The study, which appears in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, offers a handy recipe for musicians in a creative drought.
It suggests old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable.
"This yields a clear recipe for contemporising old songs: using more common chord changes, changing the song's instrumentation, and record it louder," says Serra.
The Rolling Stones in their 50th anniversary year should take note.
Re: Pop music scientifically proven to suck
Posted by:
Autotune rocks
()
Date: July 28, 2012 02:28PM
Re: Pop music scientifically proven to suck
Posted by:
eesh
()
Date: July 28, 2012 05:40PM
What about Japanese music?
Re: Pop music scientifically proven to suck
Posted by:
MrMephisto
()
Date: July 28, 2012 05:54PM
There's definitely a formula to writing pop songs. I thought that was common knowledge.
It's also no secret that there's a direct line from the volume to the appeal. That's one of the reasons audiophiles complain about modern music; it has no dynamic. If you look at the waveform for a new song, it's been compressed so much it looks like a straight line. The goal is to squeeze the most volume out of it as possible.
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13 4826 0948 82695 25847. Yes.
It's also no secret that there's a direct line from the volume to the appeal. That's one of the reasons audiophiles complain about modern music; it has no dynamic. If you look at the waveform for a new song, it's been compressed so much it looks like a straight line. The goal is to squeeze the most volume out of it as possible.
--------------------------------------------------------------
13 4826 0948 82695 25847. Yes.
Re: Pop music scientifically proven to suck
Posted by:
Joan Jett was hot
()
Date: July 28, 2012 08:49PM
Re: Pop music scientifically proven to suck
Posted by:
More old school
()
Date: July 29, 2012 02:29PM