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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."
I hate Britney's music as much as the next guy - perhaps more owing to my BFA - Music/Recording degree.
But while being subjected to my young girls' favorite CD (Kids Bop #whatever), I was listening to Oops. As it was a remake, I wasn't, *ahem* visualizing Britney, and I heard the song for what (or whatever) it really is.
And as pop goes, it really isn't badly written at all. The phrasing matches the lyrics superbly. And it's not really that simple, despite its pop-tart packaging.
OBR* - And Ms. Spears has nice breasts.
* - Obligatory Breast Reference
Also, Coons (analyst guy) is talking about the chord structure of the song, not the depth of the lyrical content or even the realization of the chord structure. It's actually really well written from the standpoint of tonal western art music, and compares to a simpler bach chorale when you reduce it to just chords. I remember when I heard this song I was really impressed with it and got a lot of flack for it. A couple days later I played a reduction for some fellow (classically-trained) musicians who thought it was a very nicely laid out chorale. I added the melody on top to reveal the source and everyone was really surprised to find it was Britney Spears :)
I may not personally think very highly of Britney Spears as an artist or performer, but her arrangers/composers know their shit and write some pretty robust stuff. Another example is Autumn Goodbye, which has even more complex chords, lots of counterpoint, etc.
OBR* - And Ms. Spears has nice
breasts.
* - Obligatory Breast Reference
Nice? Only sometimes,
apparently!
I beta tested this software and it was really fun. A friend of mine is one of the music cataloguers for that company and he got me on the beta. I got some great music recommendations off of it.
... and a few others I can't remember. Then it picks out stuff with the similar characteristics and gives you a little "private radio station" I think is what they called it. Then you can add other artists, songs, albums or genres to give you a little variety. So for example, from my Ben Folds suggestion, I got some selections from Elton John, Joe Jackson, Tori Amos, The Beautiful South, Aimee Mann, etc. etc.
For example, my favorite musician, Ben Folds, had the following characteristics:
Syncopation
Singer / songwriter
Piano lead instrument
Alternative
I then went through and added The Postal Service as a favored artist, then I started getting new flavors added to the mix. Pretty neat.
The hitch comes from the fact that their recommendations aren't always great. You can skip through their recommendations but you're only allowed to do like 6 per hour. To circumvent this, you can rate each song as it's playing (5-point rating system with the highest being "I really like this sound -- play more like this and the lowest being "Don't play anything like this ever again").
It's a fun little app. It's nice to just throw on and leave on all day... a good alternative to cheesy shoutcast stations and it's WAAAAY better than the alternative...... corporate FM crap.
*shudders*
~sj