Study Finds New Pop Music Does All Sound the Same

whoever57 writes "A study of music from the '50 to the present using the Million Song Dataset has concluded that modern music has less variation than older music and songs today are, on average, 9dB louder than 50 years ago. Almost all music uses just 10 chords, but the way these are used together has changed, leading to fewer types of transitions being used. Variation in timbre has also reduced over the past decades."

Comments

Interesting

[Anrego]

Scientific approach aside, I think the more interested you are in something, not just a musical genre, the more you are inclined to notice the components which differentiate one from the other. If you aren’t interested in a specific genre of music, then yeah, it’s all going to sound the same because your brain goes into "ugh, techo" mode.

My music tastes tend to hover around the classic/progressive rock band. Most Techo/electric/dubstep/house/etc all sounds the same to me because my brain doesn’t even spend the effort to actually listen (where it would notice the differences) and just goes “ick”. Same with pop music, country, rap.. (especially rap!).

Re:Interesting

[MightyMartian]

I don't think it's merely perception in your case. Classical music reached considerable complexity, and the modern forms in some cases are even more complex, both in chords, changes and even in the scales used. Progressive rock in many cases has tried to replicate, though not often with as much success, the complexity and diversity of classical forms. You take a band like, say, King Crimson, where Fripp and his cowriters went out of their way to use bizarre tunings, strange chord sequences ripped from jazz, classical and even early and mid-20th century avante garde. The same goes for many 1970s prog rock acts like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Yes. Some of the progressive rock musicians, like Robert Fripp, Chris Squire, Bill Bruford, Neil Peart, Tony Banks, David Gilmour and Rick Wakeman are considered some of the most talented musicians to play "popular" music. There are still a few acts out there that follow in their steps, but by and large full blown prog rock pretty much died by the early 1980s, which is when I think you began to see the beginnings of a slide towards conformity.

But also keep in mind here that most popular musicians from the post-war period onward did not receive any kind of formal training. While that doesn't make becoming a good songwriter impossible, it makes it harder. What I will note from my knowledge of popular music over the last half century is that those songwriters who did excel were ones who often had a very wide familiarity with music. Take the Beatles. You listen to a lot of their early recordings, in particular the BBC Sessions from 1963 to 1965, you find that these guys had an enormous wealth of popular and obscure songs in many genres; rock, rockabilly, R&B, blues, jazz, show tunes, country and western, in fact they were walking encyclopedias of music from the pre-war and immediate post-war period, so when they went to pen their own songs, even the seeming trifles from early on, they could draw on that encyclopedia to come up with all sorts of odd changes and surprising chord progressions you wouldn't expect to find from four young men of seemingly limited experience.

It's also the instruments

[Maxo-Texas]

There are a lot of songs you can recognize instantly from the 60's and 70's because they used unusual instruments like the sitar.

Re:9dB is ALOT

[Maxo-Texas]

It's what you get used to.

A well calibrated home theater can be much quieter than that if you do not listen to louder music all the time.

As the blind person's other senses get more powerful the same thing will happen with your hearing.

If you cut back on your sugar intake by 80%, you will be amazed how overly sweet everything is. 85% dark chocolate starts to taste like milk chocolate after a while and milk chocolate tastes like a bar of pure sugar dusted with chocolate.

You do not need to have your shirt moved by the sound of explosions in an action movie.

Re:I blame

[mwvdlee]

I wonder.... does the sheer quantity of pop music compensate for the loss of quality.
Is is just that overal songs have gotten more similar or that more similar sounding songs are being released.
Is there still the same amount of non-similar songs?

Re:I blame

[DarwinSurvivor]

I never understood this. The RIAA has been trying to stop MP3's for years now, yet they keep making their songs sound like crap so the MP3 algorithm works better. I really can't think of a metaphore dumber than the truth. I don't think iTunes + iPod uses MP3 anywhere in its stack, so that can't be it.

A few complaints

[Keen Anthony]

Understanding that pop music in this article surely refers to popular music of today and not specifically electronic, mostly dance, music, I've got a few complaints about this article.

1. If you analyze music based solely on the mathematical characteristics of the sound without any historical or cultural context, you might as well follow with a critique of paintings by counting the number of colors used by Rembrandt vs those used by Warhol.

2. Music is genealogy. Ergo, similarity must exist. It indicates the convergence of genetics from multiple sources into a singular modern pop musical form. Today's popular music can have a rhythm section that borrows heavily from Caribbean sounds which borrow from African, and yet have neo-classical European influences in the melody. We'll ignore the fact as we're talking about western music, we're already dealing with a specific set of genetic traits.

3. The commonality of musical instruments (digital gear included) means that there will be common sounds. Most the hot rodded guitar pickups you buy today are based on one of two platforms: mahogany and maple bodied PAF guitar or alder/ash bodied single coil guitar. PAF was a 50's era technology. One of the pickups I play today is a 36th Anniversary Dimarzio PAF that is a copy of the original Gibson PAF. Also: Def Leppard's "Hysteria", ZZ Top's "Eliminator", and Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" are three genetically diverse rock albums which share a similar sound because all three employ the use of Tom Scholz' Rockman guitar amp, compressor and chorus/echo gear which Tom created to encapsulate his signature Boston guitar sound. Additionally, much of the synth sounds used in pop music are signature preset sounds that vary between brands and models of keyboard synthesizers. Yes, folks, just as there is a Fender sound and a Marshall sound, there is also a Korg sound and a Roland sound.

4. Music has gotten louder in part because music has gotten heavier due to the influences of each generation before. I myself a British rock guitarist. My sound is the British sound (ie, Marshall amps, V shape equalization, heavy overdriven PAF style humbucker sound with obvious blues background that originate in the Mississippi Delta mixed with decidedly German cultural influences). I was influenced by bands that were influenced by Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy, and so on. The kids who came after me were influenced by bands that were contemporary to my sound (Metallica and so on). There's a reason why I don't hear a lot of blues in today's harder heavy metal, and it's because those kids grew up listening to Metallica in the 90s whereas I grew watching Metallica in the 80s. Every genre of music has gotten heavier. Hip Hop/Rap musicians aren't doing Zip Zap Rap anymore. Even American country music is heavier and more rocking today than during the days of Merle Haggard. Pop music today is heavily influenced by the club scene as it has been for a long time. And today's club scene is very bass-heavy.

5. 60 years is not a long enough time to be making an educated criticism about how today's music sounds the same. 60 years is not even the lifetime of a person. 60 years means I can take Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Ry Cooder, Frank Zappa, David Gilmour, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Adrian Smith, Paul Gilbert, Slash, John Mayer, Joe Bonamassa, and Orianthi Panagaris, and put them into a single room and they will find a common dialect in music with which to communicate. And actually, with a few exceptions, I can do that. The point is, in 2012, we're still only a few generations removed from the earlier pop musical forms that are perceivably distinct enough that we'd consider them alien in comparison; for example, big band music.

6. Congratulations, with this research at hand, some crotchety geezer can shout that it sounds the same, then blame some anonymous music industry exec for ensuring that all music anywhere is exactly similar.

Re:I blame

[Maxo-Texas]

He's alternately praised for having a rock solid back beat you couldn't move with a cran and then for not keeping metronome time but keeping with the feel of the song here:

http://web2.airmail.net/gshultz/drumpage.html

George Martin -- "Ringo always got and still gets a unique sound out of his drums, as sound as distinctive as his voice. ... Ringo gets a looser deeper sound out of his drums that is unique. ...This detailed attention to the tone of his drums is one of the reasons for Ringo's brilliance. Another is that although Ringo does not keep time with a metronome accuracy, he has unrivaled feel for a song. If his timing fluctuates, it invariably does so in the right place at the right time, keep the right atmosphere going on the track and give it a rock solid foundation. This held true for every single Beatles number Richie played ... Ringo also was a great tom tom player." ( Summer of Love, 1994)

but also

George Martin -- "Ringo has a tremendous feel for a song and he always helped us hit the right tempo the first time. He was rock solid. This made the recording of all the Beatle songs so much easier." (interviewed in 1988 for The Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn)

Re:I blame

[Grishnakh]

The same thing happened with a couple of Metallica songs from "...And Justice For All"; stupid Lars messed up the original mix so that Jason Newsted's bass couldn't be heard, but the Guitar Hero version had the bass much higher in the mix, so some fans remixed the songs and released them as "...And Justice for Jason".

Re:I blame

[Maxo-Texas]

But these may be more what you are referring to...

quote from another site:
Ringo hated drum solos, which should win points with quite a few people. He only took one solo while with the Beatles. His eight measure solo appears during "The End" on the "B" side of Abbey Road. Some might say that it is not a great display of technical virtuosity, but they would be at least partially mistaken. You can set an electronic metronome to a perfect 126 beats per minute, then play it along with Ringo's solo and the two will stay exactly together.

Ringo's ability to play odd time signatures helped to push popular songwriting into uncharted areas. Two examples are "All you Need is Love" in 7/4 time, and "Here Comes the Sun" with repeating 11/8, 4/4, and 7/8 passages in the chorus.

So he could vary the tempo internally while maintaining a perfect beat (from one recording to the next apparently which let them easily cut the music together) in that section.

Re:Not just me

[Anonymous Coward]

Depeche Mode's "Behind The Wheel" is just 4 chords looping endlessly and happens to be a great song with a very creative arrangement that is full of layers. So it is possible to make good music with few chords, but I wonder how difficult it is to accomplish that. I mean, Is an 8-chord song more likely to be catchy than a 4-chord one?

Depeche Mode - Behind The Wheel

Comparison to 'Older music' not fair

[wienerschnizzel]

It's easy to dismiss today's pop-music as simplistic and look up to Wagners and Mozarts of the past. However, 200 years ago, most of the western worlds population never heard an opera and the music they were playing/singing and listening to was just as simplistic. A typical tune, like Pastime with Good Company was nowhere near the complexity of the Ride of the Valkyries

On the other hand, there is still a lot of serious music being made now-days that is being listened to by a minority, just like before.

Re:I blame

[bfandreas]

Daltrey, Entwistle and Townshend could nip off to the pub leaving only Moon and his goldfish on the stage. Bonzo of Led Zep was something of the same caliber.
You can't replace people like this with a machine and they are not robots. Being able to vary is what sets artists apart from pastic stuff with midi ports.
I'd take a Buddy Rich over any sort of synthesized BS. It's the rough edges that keep stuff interesting.
I blame techno and the 90ies. They replaced real drum work with a tortoise in a trashcan that got kicked down a flight of stairs.
And in the 80ies we got the unholy trinity of Stock/Aitcken/Waterman who really figured out how to mass produce 'hits'. As long as people listen to codpiece Cowell we'd better not turn on the radio or TV because BS seems to sell.

Popular music has got no soul left. Crap in the 50ies, 60ies and 70ies had to be played mostly by real musicians.

Re:I blame

[Firethorn]

To be more serious about it: CD quality is more than what 90% of people can hear on 90% of sound systems, for 90% of music.

For a 'fuller' experience, you need several thousand worth of sound equipment and generally young ears to hear the high end that's not on CD, or a really good sub to reach lower.

It's quite possible to have music fuller that even I can hear, but then you're looking at a sound hall for it.

CD mastering techniques, and distortion preferences(such as prefering tube amplifiers) is a perception issue seperate from raw sound data.

Re:Big surprise?

[hannson]

Everything is a remix