Dissecting Songs Down to Their 'Musical Genome'

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The company Pandora Media takes a different tack for its online music-recommendation service. When you tell Pandora a song you like or have bought, it doesn't mine its sales database for records of other purchases by those who have bought the song. Instead, it looks for songs with a similar musical profile, based on a database of 300,000 songs rated on up to 400 characteristics like rhythmic syncopation, vamping and vocal harmonies. To analyze the songs, Pandora has hired Bay Area musicians like San Francisco jazz guitarist Bob Coons. 'When Mr. Coons describes a particular song, he uses phrases like the "complexity of the chromaticism" and "richness of the harmonic structure." He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex," ' the Wall Street Journal Online reports."

Comments

But wati

[Crusader7]

What if I like both eighties hair metal and symphonic orchestra? I guess it's okay to reccomend songs from each of those categories, but as the number of preferences rises, wouldn't it become harder and harder to pick even a specific genre to reccomend, much less a specific album?

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[M.A. in Folklore and]

The backing production on a lot of her songs actually is pretty complicated, at least compared to what pop music used to sound like. Just compare the density and diversity of beats and sounds on Toxic to, say, anything by the Monkees.

Massively off-topic: the art of pop

[Cally]

There's a rather depressing tendency here on Slashdot for slagging off all contemporary pop (by 'pop' here I mean recordings intended to do little else but lodge in the listener's mind and perhaps convince them to spend money on the artist's recordings.) There has always been disposable crap popular music with little or no merit, it's nothing new. (Read up on the Victorian music hall tradition, certainly in the UK it was overwhelmingly the most popular entertainment for not only the working, but the middle classes too. (Indeed the Gaiety reviews attracted lots of titled Gentlemen and 'crowned heads of Europe'.) For a fascinating work of fiction set in that milleu check out Peter Ackroyd's "Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem" or Angela Carter's "Nights at the Circus" (which is a little more magical post-realism I suppose, but still excellent.) Some of these cathedrals of mass entertainment are still standing in London, often converted into cinemas or now recycled as modern music venues; the Brixton Academy and the Shepherd's Bush Empire for example.

Anyway what I was trying to say that there is in fact some GOOD pop out there now and then. If you want to see the talent behind Britney, you need to look at the names of the producers, engineers, song-writers and musicians on the record. The thing I find most disturbing is the, um, let's call it the "racial dimension", especially in the US where music is sickeningly segregated by colour.

Anyway, miles off-topic, we now return you, etc etc. Sheessh. Does anyone else find Friday evenings profoundly depressing?

Other things that are complex yet still suck

[sycomonkey]

Windows Most laws Tax forms Being a teenager Being an adult Fruitcake

Re:But.. what about performance?

[praxis]

"Those who analyze art, music or literature too deeply, usually do so because they don't get it."

While that may be true in certain cases, I think a blanket statement like that is actually pretty far off of the mark. I'll agree that those who analyze creative arts 'too deeply' don't get it--if by not getting it you mean have a appreciation for the structure that's different than a casual interpretation.

I've listened to classical music for decades. I find that although from the beginning I could enjoy pieces and appreciated their form, it was a study of formal music theory that gave me new tools for appreciating what I heard. When I hear a composition from one era and can place how the composer rejected the norms of the previous era I have a different--and I feel deeper--appreciation of the pience than if I am in the dark about certain things.

The same goes for literature. Being aware of the significance of certain workplay brings a much greater understanding than just being able to follow the plot on the surface. When reading Orwell's 1984 being aware of the irony of 'doubpleplusungood' make for a richer appreciation than just thinking "wow, they use odd forms instead of the more mainstream 'bad'". Granted it doesn't take much to analyze the irony of the wordplay, but that analysis creates in the reader a different level of appreciation than not analyzing anything.

I guess my point is that just because one can apply an indepth analysis into the struture of a creative piece does not mean they are unable to appreciate a work at face value anymore. It just gives them more tools which they can apply to appreciation of art.