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

B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[Rotten]

This is one of the signs of the apocalypsis

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.

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[notnAP]

I was surprised to read the oops reference, because I actually thought something similar recently as well.

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

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[horn_in_gb]

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.

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[frodo from middle ea]

Britney Spears is to music what Emacs is to text editing.

Despite of all the other goodies ;) , they completely suck at what they are really suppose to do.

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[Krach42]

Hey, I like Britney Spears.

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[drakaan]

Me, I'm not worried about the apocalypsis. What *I* am worried about is the apocalypso.

Whatever you do, DO NOT let Mr. tally man tally your bananas, people. You only have to make it 'till daylight.

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[dgatwood]

Harmonically complex? For somebody who has never taken a music theory course, maybe. The song is just trivially switching between a minor key and the relative major key, and uses two chords in each. Yeah, if you try to write it out as though it stayed in one key, the notation gets a little ugly, but...:

Minor key: I V I
Relative Major: V I V I
Relative Minor key: V I V I
Relative Major V I
Relative Minor V I

Or, more traditionally:

VI IIIMaj VI
V I V I
IIImaj VI IIIMaj VI
V I
IIIMaj VI

Harmonically complex is Macarthur Park. "Oops" has the harmonic vocabulary of a turnip.

From http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/music_theor y/writing_unusual_and_original_chord_progressions. html

First, I will show one of the simplest (and most common) way that a songs chord vocabulary is extended, is simply by adding the major chords from the keys parallel minor scale....

(Emphasis mine.)

Re:B. Spears Music "Fairly Complex"

[Morel]

OBR* - And Ms. Spears has nice

breasts.

* - Obligatory Breast Reference

Nice? Only sometimes,
apparently!

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:But wati

[Teux]

Their system allows you to set different "stations"

Each station gives you the ability to add a few different types of music, but it's not recommended that you try to mix radically different types. You'll have to use old fashioned judgement to choose a broad category you want to listen to, it does the rest of the work exploring similar music.

Britney's Songs

[waterlogged]

..... Those weren't "Chords" that you were admiring.

Wow!

[errxn]

I typed in "dog shit" and got Ashlee Simpson's entire catalog! This thing is amazing!

I'm a musician..

[DJayC]

I'm a musician, and I told it some songs I liked and it's playing a customized radio station of songs that I should like... and it's dead on.

The best part is that you can ask it "Why are you playing this song", and it will explain it to you.. in terms of the song structure and things like that.

These are real people analyzing these songs.. this seems like a great service to find new music from bands you don't know. Taking bands out of the context of a "social circle" (like Amazon and itunes do by simply looking at 'people who purchased this also purchased...') is a GREAT idea.

I urge you to support this project if you are a music lover, or at least check it out and listen for a couple hours.

CounterpointTheSurrealismOfTheUnderlyingMetaphor

[Tackhead]

> 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"

"Yes, do continue ..." invited the RIAA executive.

"Oh ... and er ... interesting rhythmic devices too," continued Coons, "which seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... er ..." He floundered.

Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding "counterpoint the complexity of the underlying chromaticism of the ... er ..." He floundered too, but Coons was ready again.

"... humanity of the ..."

"RIAAnanity," Ford hissed at him.

"Ah yes, RIAAnanity (sorry) of the singer's publicity-whored-out soul," Coons felt he was on a home stretch now, "which contrives through the richness of the harmonic structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other," (he was reaching a triumphant crescendo ...) "and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into ... into ... er ..." (... which suddenly gave out on him.) Ford leaped in with the coup de grace:

"Into whatever it was the song was about!"

The RIAA executive stood up.

"No, well you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write top 40 music to throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief. I'm going to throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!"

...

"...counterpoint the complexity of the underlying chromaticism..." He considered this for a moment, and then unplugged the iVog with a grim smile. "Death's too good for them," he said.

Re:Try Satchmo

[Anonymous Cowtard]

Informative? Some mods just don't see the "Vocals: Shek Baker" credit on the page.

Re:Try Satchmo

[NormalVisual]

The Satchmo version of "Oops" is a fake, albeit a very funny one. Just the same, I do actually find "Oops" (and a surprising amount of other pop music) to be fairly interesting harmonically, though I could do without the vapid lyrics and Britney's singing. She might actually have a decent set of pipes, but we won't know until she stops it with that little fake pop-tart voice. Madonna stopped doing that after her first couple of albums, and showed herself to be in possession of a remarkably rich voice.

Britney's also not too bad to look at, but I doubt she'll hold up over the years as well as Kylie Minogue has. :-)

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?

NOOOOOOO!!!!

[tupshin]

Who the @#$@#$@# put Rick Springfield on my Steely Dan station?

That's just not right. I think my ears just ran off looking for a new home.

-Tupshin

Other things that are complex yet still suck

[sycomonkey]

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

Re:Sounds like a plan, but...

[oberon7]

We don't have any concept of "tags" associated with music. We have a room full of musician analysts, and they listen to songs all day scoring each song on ~400 characteristics. Basically, they create a ~400 dimensional vector for each analyzed song. When you create a station based on a particular artist and/or song, you'll hear songs that are the weighted sum of delta squares across these ~400 dimensions. As you give us positive and negative feedback about the music you hear in a station, we bias the weightings for future playlist generation. It's under constant development, but that's a brief summary of how it works under the covers.

About labels paying us to have their songs indexed, I have trouble seeing that happen. We already buy every CD on all the major labels and analyze them. We also buy every CD from independent musicians that we can get our hands on. All the people here buying the music are independent musicians, so they tend to have a proclivity for independent music. Working here, you get exposed to so much under-the-radar music at times it can be overwhelming.

Also, if you are an independent musician and want to submit your music for analysis, we accept submissions. Drop an email to suggest-music at pandora dot com and Michael will write you back about how that works.

Cheers.

-- Eric
Software Guy @ Pandora

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.

beta tester

[swinginjohn]

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.

For example, my favorite musician, Ben Folds, had the following characteristics:

Syncopation

Singer / songwriter

Piano lead instrument

Alternative ... 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.

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

Um

[a.different.perspect]

Actually, that was a parody -- and a very funny one too. You can download it here. In actual fact, as Wikipedia says, "Oops!... I Did It Again was written and produced by constant suppliers Max Martin and Rami."