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Science proves pop music has declined in quality
Wise Badger
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Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.
Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.
A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of the musical discourse," Serra told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
Intrinsic loudness is the volume baked into a song when it is recorded, which can make it sound louder than others even at the same volume setting on an amplifier.
The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a 'loudness war' but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.
The study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, offers a handy recipe for musicians in a creative drought.
Old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable. The Rolling Stones in their 50th anniversary year should take note.
I've always suspected this.
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This is the perfect day for this ;-)
Due to the availability of modern production techniques it has probably become more common.
I can see that, as songs are heavily compressed, say for being more suitable for radio airplay, they will reduce the dynamic range of so much music, from whatever genre, and as a consequence it will flatten the sound out to a more consistent volume and is going to result in many songs sounding quite samey.
I study this sort of thing at university. The main reason for this is simply because songs are compressed a lot more today, so they're all constantly at or near max volume.
Even when songs from decades ago get re-mastered, they get more heavily compressed as well. You can tell this from looking at a graph of the songs volume against time.
The reason songs get compressed so much these days is because it makes them sound better to most people, it makes them stand out more on the radio, and it makes more money. Simple.
This image below shows a comparison between the 1991, 1995 and 2007 versions of Michael Jackson - Black and White, and you can see how the song gets compressed more and more every time it gets released, since they're constantly trying to make it sound better.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Michael_Jackson-Black_or_White_Loudness.png
Glad to hear scientists are finally finding out somthing of use instead of wasting there time finding a cure for diseases.
They are finding cures for diseases but they need a day off every now and then.
Treatments for diseases. Cures are bad for business.
I don't think that if you're a scientist in artificial intelligence it makes you qualified to find a cure for diseases.
Why would Artificial Intelligence Specialists be finding cures for diseases?
I'm 24 and I think this.
Completely agree.
Tell me something I don't know....
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of the musical discourse," Serra told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
I love most music through the ages.every era has loads to offer.
Trouble is pepole cherry pick the great tunes from thier youth, forgetting the crap ones
Cherries seem almost extinct these days, though.
There is a lot of good music about.
I'm playing some contemporary stuff, but very little.
The problem is partly that some younger "song composers" if that's what they call themselves, haven't had a musical training, so consequently they write a song around a chord progression they can play, which is limiting.
All the best song writers, wrote the tune first and then the chord structure to fit it. Consequently, the options were pretty limitless, so they didn't get that "samey" effect I find with a lot of modern pop.
But the poster wasn't talking about those bits of the quote, they were talking about this bit.....
Intrinsic loudness is the volume baked into a song when it is recorded, which can make it sound louder than others even at the same volume setting on an amplifier.
The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a 'loudness war' but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.
Whether a song is "good" is completely subjective, but things like loudness, chord progressions and timbre can be measured and compared. A chord progression isn't an opinion (although there is ambiguity with a lot of songs). The dynamic range of a song isn't an opinion, you can get a numerical value to represent it.
Probably 99% of young people that make music don't do it with an instrument these days. They do it on their computers, so they don't need to be able to play a chord progression, they just need to know how to write it.
I play the piano, so thankfully I knew all my chords and scales already before I started making music. I think people who don't have the musical knowledge will usually teach themselves, since it's not very difficult to learn really.
In rock music, you might be better off writing melody first, then chord progression after, but if you're making a genre of music that's designed for clubs, such as hip hop, house, drum & bass, grime, dubstep, etc. you're better off starting with the chord progression first imo. A lot of the songs of those genres don't even have melodies.
Suddenly all the drums and instruments get lost in the mix, and its no surprise new songs don't bother to be so musically complex, as there's no point if they're going to be heavily sound processed and heard as low bit mp3s. Find it rather sad myself.
That's the problem though, the previous decades has artists that are highly regarded, 60's with The Beatles, Rolling Stones. 70's had Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. 80's with Michael Jackson and the 90's with Nirvana and Radiohead. There are no artists today that are even on the same level as those mentioned.
I suppose you also might include the 'quality' of the lyrics in assessing homogeneity.
I don't agree that evaluating music is entirely subjective.
Yes, at one level good music is just what is good to you. But if I consider the poetry of Seamus Heaney and the poetry of Pam Ayres, there is a depth of structure and meaning that exists in Heaney which doesn't exist in Ayres. That for me makes Heaney's poetry not just different but better than Ayres.
There are similar ways of discerning what is quality in music, just like there are in literature, poetry and art. It's usually related to how the structure or composition of the form produces certain effects in the reader, the viewer or the listener. Music theory would suggest that some music say Wagner is more perfectly constructed than say Johann Strauss. It is an aesthetic judgement and maybe considered of little value to the average listener but it does contribute to what through time becomes recognised as the best of the art form.
Yes, I think it is right to identify technology as having an influence.
You might expect that when the need for technical ability has been reduced that the ability of the artist to express themselves might be raised. When you are not limited by your own technical abilities then you should be able to express yourself more fully as a musician. This report suggests otherwise.
I have actually noticed this. Modern mixes often though not always sound a little mixed up with a lack of clarity in the percussion instruments.
I'm a big fan of Brian Eno and he was one of the first to suggest listening to and changing the timbre in order to produce interesting new sounds. The vertical colour of sound as it has been labelled. That seemed to work on The Berlin Trilogy with Bowie and the Talking Heads albums. Maybe it would be worth some modern musicians listening to those works?