Music Study
Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 7:29 pm
I am not sure I agree with all of this, but it is interesting nonetheless. What's your take?
Bill
Modern music really does sound the same
For fans of the golden oldies it is confirmation of something they have already
known: modern music really is louder and has less variety than 50 years ago.
The scepticism about modern music shared by many middle-aged fans has been vindicated
by a study of half a century's worth of pop music, which found that today's hits really
do all sound the same.
Parents who find their children's thumping stereos too much to bear will also be comforted
to know that it isn't just the effect of age: modern songs have also grown progressively
louder over the past 50 years.
The study, by Spanish researchers, analysed an archive known as the Million Song Dataset
to discover how the course of music changed between 1955 and 2010.
While loudness has steadily increased since the 1950s, the team found that the variety of
chords, melodies and types of sound being used by musicians has become ever smaller.
Joan Serra of the Spanish National Research Council, who led the study published in the
Scientific Reports journal, said: "We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of
the musical discourse.
"The diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus
melodies – has consistently diminished in the past 50 years."
The "timbre" of songs – the number of different tones they include, for example from
different instruments – has also become narrower, he added.
The study was the first to conduct a large-scale measurement of "intrinsic loudness", or
the volume a song is recorded at, which determines how loud it will sound compared with
other songs at a particular setting on an amplifier.
It appeared to support long-standing claims that the music industry is engaged in a
"loudness war" in which volumes are gradually being increased.
Although older songs may be more varied and rich, the researchers advised that they could
be made to sound more "fashionable and groundbreaking" if they were re-recorded and made
blander and louder.
They wrote: "An old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it
consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the
average loudness."
link; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... qus_thread
Bill
Modern music really does sound the same
For fans of the golden oldies it is confirmation of something they have already
known: modern music really is louder and has less variety than 50 years ago.
The scepticism about modern music shared by many middle-aged fans has been vindicated
by a study of half a century's worth of pop music, which found that today's hits really
do all sound the same.
Parents who find their children's thumping stereos too much to bear will also be comforted
to know that it isn't just the effect of age: modern songs have also grown progressively
louder over the past 50 years.
The study, by Spanish researchers, analysed an archive known as the Million Song Dataset
to discover how the course of music changed between 1955 and 2010.
While loudness has steadily increased since the 1950s, the team found that the variety of
chords, melodies and types of sound being used by musicians has become ever smaller.
Joan Serra of the Spanish National Research Council, who led the study published in the
Scientific Reports journal, said: "We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of
the musical discourse.
"The diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus
melodies – has consistently diminished in the past 50 years."
The "timbre" of songs – the number of different tones they include, for example from
different instruments – has also become narrower, he added.
The study was the first to conduct a large-scale measurement of "intrinsic loudness", or
the volume a song is recorded at, which determines how loud it will sound compared with
other songs at a particular setting on an amplifier.
It appeared to support long-standing claims that the music industry is engaged in a
"loudness war" in which volumes are gradually being increased.
Although older songs may be more varied and rich, the researchers advised that they could
be made to sound more "fashionable and groundbreaking" if they were re-recorded and made
blander and louder.
They wrote: "An old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it
consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the
average loudness."
link; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... qus_thread