pop music DOES all sound the same

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 06:01 PM

the "folk music" of today is the music that most people know, not the music that people in folk clubs play

Since I don't believe there's any such thing as "the folk music of today", I don't agree. As far as folk music's concerned, mechanical reproduction - starting with pianolas and ending with TV - changed everything, ISTM.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 05:06 PM

This is the first critical comment I've seen that might have some genuine scientific foundation. One of the surest ways to lie with statistics is in the choice of the dataset, or the criteria applied to it.

D'you ever get the feeling your postings are invisible Foggers?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 03:47 PM

Macfarttle.........

Abuse? Geeziz man.......Abuse? No.....See, abuse would be if I suggested your mother was a collie who ate shit and ran rabbits or that your balls were the size of buckshot pellets and your dick resembled a broken toothpick. I didn't do that fearing that it all might be true.   

I'm a nice guy.......ask anyone..............


Spaw

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 11:48 AM

A study of this kind would seem to require a much more comprehensive definition of variables than has been specified in the research model, and the conclusions therefore seem overbroad, and tend to be contradicted by information from other sources.

Do you like that better?

This research seems really to be more intended to showcase the current state of music information retrieval technology, and, rather than to actually answer questions, to suggest the avenues of research that may now be possible.

As is sadly typical of scientific studies of all types, the press, aided and abetted by those with a musical axe to grind, has jumped to
attention grabbing, and misleading conclusions.

Incidentally, rather than being either an exercize in dismissing contemporary music or pointless "Who gives a shit" research, this technology is used at such places as Pandora, iTunes, etc to find other sorts of music that you might like, based on the recordings that you have listened to.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 11:29 AM

Well, the Kodak moment is gone, that's fer shore.

##############################

Notice the slope of this lady's breasts as she does a pop song from 1965. Turn your computer upside down to see the year 2005 and it's obvious that she has changed her singing style as well as her physiology. Couldn't be clearer.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 11:13 AM

our mistake is to fail to realise that abuse the is the last refuge of a loser.

That's you clamped then, Macfarlane as abuse seems to be one of your pet tactics. Loser, huh? It figures.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 11:08 AM

yep.. Charley Macfullofhimself has leached onto this thread
to show off his vast knowledge and superior intellect & wit....

you need 'smileys' ???


.. it's a lovely sunny day, try chilling out to some Herman's Hermits & Bay City Rollers...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 10:57 AM

>        From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
>        Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:51 AM
>        
>        Now back to the topic of debate.
>        
>        As unreliable and spurious as this 'scientific' research may be,
>        we need to consider for whom these 'findings' will be of most benefit
>        and a source of increased 'indisputable' cultural power...??

Supposing that these results are followed up, and sufficiently widely accepted, neither of which is at all certain, I suspect that those who might benefit most might actually be music industry moguls, who might use it to justify concentrating expenditure ever more on mainstream work.

>        In a similar way to how & why the Nazi party needed Eugenics
>        and other sham fashionable modern state of the art sciences
>        to prove theories of racial purity and superiority....
>        
>        The POP RESISTANCE will fight back against cruel oppressors !!!

Dear me, if this is meant to be serious (there is no smiley) you really have got conspiracy theory bad, haven't you? Have you been taking your anti-paranoia medication?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 10:46 AM

>        From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
>        
>        Charles please could you use the simple & proven effective communicational convention of "Quotation marks".*

And what if there is something within quotation marks within the quoted part of the post? The real problem is that Mudcat doesn't provide even the most basic form of text formatting to simplify applying italics or similar.


>        From: catspaw49
>
>        Well Macfarlane, after continuing reading you have convinced me you are both interested in shit and full of it. My mistake.

Your mistake is to fail to realise that abuse the is the last refuge of a loser.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 10:40 AM

Oops! The correct link to my Birthday Number One:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I2cG-ed6hw

I can only wish that such an ensemble as Hesperion XXI had been Number One on the day I arrived on Planet Earth, but, truth was, no one was doing that back then either. Just listen to so called Early Music from the 50s & Early 60s and most of that it heavy handed lifeless formulaic dross as well. It took the mid-late 60s youthful zeitgeist to blow the cobwebs off & kick-start all manner of musics into the sort of diverse life which these days we take for granted.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 10:33 AM

When I was a kid I had a friend who could tell me the make, type and engine size of the unseen car coming around the corner just by the sound it made. We were about 10 at the time, but even so I was sure it was some sort of trick. Was he using reflections in house windows? But no - he could tell them all, where all I heard was a car engine (though I might, at a push tell if it was diesel). I've since met others who can do exactly this - & car mechanics who can tell by the sound of our healthy car engine that all is not as well as we'd hoped.

That said, I can just imagine one of said mechanics (maybe my old childhood pal himself; he had the splendid name of David Crackett though I think he went into double-glazing) muttering his cups: "Trouble with pop music today - all sounds the bloody same!"

*

Ever visited that sight that tells you the Number One Pop Song for your birthday? I did, and got THIS ghastly piece of formulaic MOR dross which I guess was the one of the reasons things just had to get better, which they did, and continue to do so without petty studies like this wasting precious time & resources.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:58 AM

Well Macfarlane, after continuing reading you have convinced me you are both interested in shit and full of it. My mistake.


Spaw

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:51 AM

Now back to the topic of debate.

As unreliable and spurious as this 'scientific' research may be,
we need to consider for whom these 'findings' will be of most benefit
and a source of increased 'indisputable' cultural power...??


In a similar way to how & why the Nazi party needed Eugenics
and other sham fashionable modern state of the art sciences
to prove theories of racial purity and superiority....




The POP RESISTANCE will fight back against cruel oppressors !!!

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:41 AM

Charles please could you use the simple & proven effective communicational convention
of "Quotation marks".*

Your increasingly lengthy multi quote referencing posts are such an eye-strain to untangle
they are rendered almost unreadable.

In fact almost too jumbled to even begin to try reading....

* eg: "Here is a list of The Top 100 Songs from 1962"

italics are optional, but I prefere to use them for improved clarity.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:21 AM

>        From: Rob Naylor
>
>        How did they decide what's "pop" when selecting the half million songs to base their analysis on? Since it was Spanish researchers, did they use Spanish charts, UK charts, US charts of what as selection criteria?
>
>        Did they include, with hindsight, a lot of older songs that didn't figure as "pop" at the time, but as "underground rock" and if so did they balance them up with current non-chart "indie" songs that are relatively unknown in the mainstream?
>
>        In fact, I looked up the "million song dataset"
>        ...
>        (From "The Million Song Dataset Challenge" by Brian McFee et al)

A link would have made it easier to comment on your comments.

>        Having gone through this paper, which deals with the "Taste Profile Subset" I'm still not much wiser as to how they define "pop" music. From what I can see, in this dataset, a song like Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" would make the list on play-count alone, though it would never have been regarded as a "pop" song when released as an album track in 1975 and wasn't even ever released as a single until 1995! the same applies to many songs from the 60s and 70s which were never in any "commercial pop" when originally released but have since become iconic anthems of the period.
>
>        How to compare these "fairly" with what's being produced "underground" these days, and which may well be as varied in its own terms as the "non-pop-pop" of 40-50 years ago was?
>
>        If the review was confined to just singles chart tracks of the relevant period, I suspect the results would show that "top 20 hits" of every period have been structurally limited, similar and "battery farm pop". When I look back to stuff that was in the charts in the days I started listening to "underground music" it was mostly as bland and anodyne (though not quite as loud) as what's in the charts now.

This is the first critical comment I've seen that might have some genuine scientific foundation. One of the surest ways to lie with statistics is in the choice of the dataset, or the criteria applied to it.

Derek Brimstone used to say something like: "What these people say is that the first day of your life is the most dangerous, but the last one's pretty dodgy too!"

In the 80s the police began a campaign against drunken driving, using a statistic like: "X% of accidents involve alcohol!" I can't remember exactly what X was, but my point is, if a drunken pedestrian suddenly lurched out in front of a stone cold sober driver and was hit, that would be included in X, so the choice of that particular statistic was deliberately misleading, and was presumably done to give a bigger value of X than would have a more appropriate statistic such as the percentage of accidents involving drivers found to have alcohol in their blood.

The points you raise about song selection for the database are valid. It would certainly be interesting to know more.

>        From: GUEST,Stim
>
>        As I may have let on, I think the research is lame, in addition to being completely wrong.

Surely it can't be both? It's either lame, in which case it's only partially flawed, or it's completely wrong, in which case it's totally flawed. Given that these things are peer-reviewed, etc, I think the latter is unlikely.

>        Here is a list of The Top 100 Songs from 1962

"100 Greatest Songs From 1962

Criteria: - These records were chosen and ranked based on their initial and lasting popularity, and on their impact on the overall scope of musical history. Records are listed based on the year that they were released."

So that list is flawed as well, because it's partly based on hindsight. If it is true that pop music today is more simplified than that of fifty years ago, those making a selection today such as the above are likely to skew the results by applying modern criteria to produce the selection. You could try this:

1962

>        this statement, "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - chords plus melodies t has consistently lessened in the last 50 years." doesn't even make sense.

Can't find that sentence in the original research page.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 12:33 AM

God love you, Phil Edwards, but I've got some terrible news for you, and that is that the "folk music" of today is the music that most people know, not the music that people in folk clubs play. What people will remember in the future will be distilled from what is popular today--why would it be any other way?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 12:17 AM

As I may have let on, I think the research is lame, in addition to being completely wrong. If that's not enough, I doubt that most of the people who have voiced agreement here have any idea what the popular music of today even sounds like.

Here is a list of The Top 100 Songs from 1962, which, as the more astute among you may glean, was 50 years ago. Pretty much the songs that I remember(having been surgically attached to a transistor radio at that time). Now here's the deal: Most of the songs on that list can be played with the same Doo-woppy 1-6-2-5 chord progression. Here is an example: Dave "Baby" Cortez' "Rinky Dink"

Don't care how many Spanish researchers say different, don't care how many Irish Times music writers you line up, this statement, "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - chords plus melodies t has consistently lessened in the last 50 years." doesn't even make sense.

And, just so you know, I've always been a big Dave "Baby" Cortez fan...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 09:03 PM

How did they decide what's "pop" when selecting the half million songs to base their analysis on? Since it was Spanish researchers, did they use Spanish charts, UK charts, US charts of what as selection criteria?

Did they include, with hindsight, a lot of older songs that didn't figure as "pop" at the time, but as "underground rock" and if so did they balance them up with current non-chart "indie" songs that are relatively unknown in the mainstream?

In fact, I looked up the "million song dataset" from which the Spanish researchers extracted their half millions songs. It appears to be a mish-mash of data from:

- The Echo Nest (A US National Science Foundation grant-aided organisation)

- LastFM

- SecondHand Songs (a database of cover versions)

- MusiXmatch Dataset

- Taste Profile Subset

....and several others.

I've found it quite difficult to wade through the fairly murky logic behind the algorithms used in song selection, despite one of my specialities being statistical analysis of large datasets.

Some of the phrasing from a paper on the Test Profile Subset includes:

[Figure 2 illustrates the distributions of users-per-song and
songs-per-user in the Taste Profile Subset. Most importantly,
there is a dramatic long-tail effect in song popularity:
half of the observed songs have at most 13 unique listeners,
while 95% have at most 488 unique listeners...]

[transferring and storing a
full ranking of all songs for each test user would require
an unreasonably large amount of bandwidth and storage.
Instead, we will set a threshold  and only evaluate the top-
 portion of the predicted rankings.]

[We acknowledge that there are aspects that can not be
measured from the play counts and a ranked list of predictions.
Specifically, ranked-list evaluation indeed, virtually
any conceivable on-line evaluation may not su-
fficiently capture the human reaction: novelty and serendipity
of recommendations, overall listening time, or changes in the
user's mood.]

[The most trivial recommendation algorithm is to simply
present each song in descending order of its popularity, regardless
of the user's taste profile. Although this model
does not incorporate any personalization, it is useful to establish
a global baseline that should be out-performed by
any reasonable personalized model.]

[We also observe that the same-artist recommender significantly outperforms the global popularity model, as well
as the latent factor model. This indicates that there are
substantial gains to be had by exploiting meta-data transparency,
and incorporating domain knowledge specific to the
structure of musical items, e.g., the relationship between
songs, artists and albums.]

(From "The Million Song Dataset Challenge" by Brian McFee et al)

Having gone through this paper, which deals with the "Taste Profile Subset" I'm still not much wiser as to how they define "pop" music. From what I can see, in this dataset, a song like Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" would make the list on play-count alone, though it would never have been regarded as a "pop" song when released as an album track in 1975 and wasn't even ever released as a single until 1995! the same applies to many songs from the 60s and 70s which were never in any "commercial pop" when originally released but have since become iconic anthems of the period.

How to compare these "fairly" with what's being produced "underground" these days, and which may well be as varied in its own terms as the "non-pop-pop" of 40-50 years ago was?

If the review was confined to just singles chart tracks of the relevant period, I suspect the rexsults wwould show that "top 20 hits" of every period have been structurally limited, similar and "battery farm pop". When I look back to stuff that was in the charts in the days I started listening to "underground music" it was mostly as bland and anodyne (though not quite as loud) as what's in the charts now.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 08:41 PM

Thank you for posting that, Jim. I thought my hearing was going.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Elmore
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 07:45 PM

Are Norah Jones, ZZ Top, Ben Harper, U2, John Mayer,Big Brother and the Holding Company Barbara Cook Pop? When I listened to pop music the big names were Frankie Laine, Bing Crosby, Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Patti Page.

c

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 02:05 PM

Well that just shows that one should always try to read and understand the research itself rather than rely media reports.

Quite like the phrase "battery farm pop" though ...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 04:25 AM

Further thoughts
Jim Carroll

Brian Boyd Irish Times 3.8.12

NO, IT'S NOT JUST YOU-SCIENTISTS PROVE POP REALLY HAS EATEN ITSELF

RELAX. YOU'RE NOT prematurely old, there's nothing wrong with your hearing, and your musical sense and sensibilities are still in full working order.
If you've felt alienated and irritated by the pop music charts over the past few years, console yourself: it's been scientifically proven that the music you listened to when you were younger actually was a whole lot better than the beat-infested, pop-assembly-line rubbish that now thumps its way out of your radio and clutters up the charts.
This week scientists showed, and they can provide tons of white-coat data to back up their findings, that pop music today really does all sound the same - and is annoyingly loud to boot.
Those redoubtable types at the Spanish National Research Council fed almost half a million pop, rock and r'n'b/hip-hop songs from 1955 up to the present into a computer. A special program broke down the audio and lyrical content into crunchable data, and once a bunch of hyper-complex algorithms had been thrown at the songs it emerged that pop music today has effectively eaten itself.
There is a blandness now that simply wasn't there before - and that refers to the number of chords used, the construction of the melody lines and the overall sound. Modern pop has a more limited "timbre palette" and there has been a consistent diminishing of anything approaching "interesting" in how a song is composed, recorded and played.
Look at the top 10 singles listed below and you'll get some idea of that uniformity of sound. Simple chord progressions with a generic rhythmic background and a homogenous use of instrumentation abound. It's battery farm pop.
If you really listen closely you'll hear that "rhythm" and "energy" are the new lodestars of the pop world, which may be fine for something clattering away in the background on daytime radio. But pop used to strive to be so much more than just surface. Listen to what Human League accomplished, for example - and they're not that long ago in terms of the study.
These days, best-selling pop songs are increasingly written to order by committee. A song such as Umbrella (ella-ella) was originally written for Britney Spears who, displaying characteristic insight, turned it down. It ended up in Rihanna's in-tray, and at best she's just the "face" of the song. It has got to the stage where you could swap songs around the handful of pop artists who dominate the singles charts and no one would really know the difference.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of the musical discourse," commented the boffins behind the study. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - chords plus melodies t has consistently lessened in the last 50 years."
The tragedy is that the industry still doesn't realise it's hit an iceberg, that it's chasing the lowest common pop chart denominator and squeezing out the innovation that could help save it. Boilerplate pop isn't doing anyone any favours, despite the dead cat bounce it might be give sales.
The predominance of "loud and bland" is a betrayal of pop's protean strengths. Furthermore, the increasing listen-to-me loudness of pop music is a desperate last throw of the dice in the playlist wars. Loudness is now baked into the pop song and is used as much to hide what isn't going on as to ramp up its meretricious appeal. Dynamic richness is sacrificed at the altar of commercial appeal.
Now that we have actual scientific data about how pop has atrophied over the years, surely it's time that all concerned, from the A&R department to the songwriters and producers, realised that it's the maverick and the counter-intuitive who have been responsible for the great leaps forward.
There are enough flagrant examples from the past two years alone to show that free-range pop is cherished, rewarded and acclaimed - and universally so.
[e-mail]

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Elmore
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 08:06 PM

How about Tony Bennett?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Elmore
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 08:05 PM

Is Leonard Cohen pop music?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Elmore
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 04:47 PM

I haven't listened to much pop music since I was seduced by folk music in the late fifties. My wife took me to concerts by The Eagles, Elton John, Jimmy Buffett,and Steely Dan. They were all pretty good, and didn't sound alike. Is that pop music?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,foggers (on cookieless Blackberry)
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 07:07 AM

Yep the esteemed Mr Coggles (who holds a doctorate in shit so he does know what he is talking about) is right to point out that if you start bandying research around, those of us with a scientific/academic leaning will be interested in the minutiae of the size of the data set and the inclusion/exclusion criteria because that seriously affects the validity of any conclusions offered. I know it is not as much fun as jumping on the "pop is homogenised rubbish" bandwagon.

I also agree that we humans are creatures of habit and this goes some way to explain why we may tend to like things that fit a certain pattern and consistency, whether its beer, cheese, murder ballads or 12 bar blues.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 05:52 AM

...and I suppose it's because my pedantic-scientific side reacts to the "analysis of one million songs proves they all sound the same" type comments. It proves nothing and doesn't by any means include all western popular music (define that!).

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 05:47 AM

You're obviously a glass-half-empty person - maybe. That means there's room for more beer though...

More seriously though it could be argued that the data-filtering & reduction makes the dataset more statistically significant as only songs which have date tags in the MusicBrainz database are included, which could arguably be the more popular or well known songs. As it's a study of popular music this seems valid.

Be interesting to know what an analysis of the "less popular popular" half million songs would reveal though. Arguably this might be the more interesting side of pop? I suppose that was what I was trying to get at...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 05:06 AM

> From: Burton Coggles
>
> Surely this study is only as good as the dataset used. Reading the supplementary information, the "million song dataset" is slightly misleading in this study as more than half of it was discarded due to lack of date information or duplication.

You're obviously a glass-half-empty person. They still managed to find 464,411 individual pieces they could use, which is surely enough to be statistically significant in this context?

> From: catspaw49
>
> Great research under the "Who Gives a Shit?" classification and obviously there are some folks with a sincere interest in shit! The dumbass lines in the article and on this thread just keep on coming!

Just because you don't consider something relevant (1) or even just interesting to you, doesn't make it shit.

(1)        You may not even realise its relevance. The article proves that the Loudness War is actually happening. This is something that *should* concern you if it doesn't already, because the louder on average music becomes, the less overhead there is to accommodate peaks. IIRC, when I borrowed the CD from the local library, Lene Marlin's "Sitting Down Here" actually clips and distorts as early as about 8s in and constantly thereafter - given that it's an otherwise approachable track with more variety than many in both lyrics and use of acoustic instruments, that's rather depressing.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 04:00 AM

Stim - you're missing the point. "Folk songs being created out of the entertainment industry" is something that happened quite a lot between about 1850 and 1900. 1900-1950, not so much; after that, hardly at all. And before 1850 there were songs, but there wasn't so much of an entertainment industry.

Life in Britain changed out of all recognition between 1800 and 1900, and what we now think of as folk songs are a product of that history. You're mistaking a historical fact for a general law.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 03:59 AM

Funnily enough I do have a sincere interest in shit...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 02:45 AM

It never used to, for instance compare Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd with Rubber Ball by Bobby Vee - the second is crap and the first is one of the best ever! Compare Moovin' & a Groovin' with any of Bert Weedons pap.........

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 08:37 PM

Great research under the "Who Gives a Shit?" classification and obviously there are some folks with a sincere interest in shit! The dumbass lines in the article and on this thread just keep on coming! I think I particularly like the bit about genres not starting out as stereotypes..........of course they don't since at that point they aren't genres!!!!!!!!!!


Spaw

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 08:16 PM

In order for a song to become traditional, it has to be well known, and it can't really be well known if it isn't popular...here is an interesting thread about how pop songs turn into folk songs.Soul Asylum's Runaway Train, Folksong?

From my point of view, self-proclaimed "folk and traditional" musicians are not necessary, and may actually get in the way.(just threw that in to stir up trouble::-)

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 06:33 PM

The pop music of the present will become the "traditional" music of the future. That's how it's always been.

I don't think it's always been like that at all - any more than pop music has always sounded the same. I think all you can say is that some folk songs collected 100 years ago had originally been popular songs (music-hall songs and broadside ballads). Either side of that one period it doesn't work - popular songs from 1750 weren't being labelled as folk songs in 1800, and songs from the 1950s haven't magically become 'traditional' with the passage of time.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:10 PM

Reviving this thread as it's been mentioned in another

Surely this study is only as good as the dataset used. Reading the supplementary information, the "million song dataset" is slightly misleading in this study as more than half of it was discarded due to lack of date information or duplication.

Also, Jack, Country is included...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 31 Jul 12 - 03:04 AM

That was me. Here's the link again--
Andrew in Drag

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Jul 12 - 02:56 AM

Here are three songs that are popular this year--you can probably still hear them on the radio, if you still use a radio. Listen and decide if you have trouble telling them apart, etc. Out of deference to folk tastes, I have not provided links to anything with a strong club/dance feel, such as, say, Jessie J's "Domino", Alexandra Stan's "Mr. Saxobeat" or anything by The Black-Eyed Peas, so you'll just have to trust me that there is a lot of range there, too.

a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_l3EGQvL8">Andrew in Drag

Somebody that I Used to Know- Gotye

Someone Like You

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,BobL
Date: 31 Jul 12 - 02:41 AM

Pop music has always been stereotyped, or at least standardised in some way. Songs of the 50's invariably had the same form: V1, V2, bridge, V3, repeat bridge, repeat V3. Songs of the rock & roll era almost invariably followed a 12-bar blues chord sequence. To look at a different aspect, styles tended to alternate between simple "D-I-Y" (think skiffle) and more developed (think Sgt. Pepper), the simple styles showing less variation. Dunno about the present day, I gave up on pop as a bad job thirty years ago.   

It would, however, be interesting to see how pop compares to other music genres under a similar analysis.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Joybell
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 05:41 PM

True-love still teaches children to accompany themselves as singers. I work with children producing commumity shows. It's comforting, though really, really sad, to know we're not mistaken. The popular songs they want to learn to sing, and the way they expect to sound, agree with this study. *sigh*. Luckily for me we live in a rural community and the kids just love the old songs I teach them -- so far. This is within the context of theatre so they don't see it the same way. When they want formal lessons, though, they expect to sound they way their ipods tell them they should.
Joy.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 05:01 PM

the reason that genres exist is because certain people, in a certain place, at a certain time, happen to like a particular rhythm, coupled with a particular sort of phrasing, following a small variety of melodies

As the researchers pointed out, if you look back a few decades you find a far wider variety of sounds WITHIN THE SAME GENRE. Genres do not start out stereotyped.

A few examples within folk/trad:

- the range of voice types for performers entering the field is far less than it was; who's a 20-year-old Sheila Stewart or Jock Duncan?

- in Scottish trad, the range of keys used routinely is far less than it was 200 years ago. Where did B flat go?

- the range of durations for songs commercially recorded has always been far narrower than for uncommercial music. The cliche is about long ballads, but there are far more very short songs that never make it onto commercial recordings because there is no way to pad them out to fit anything longer than wax cylinder, if that.

- religious material used to be part of the same genre as secular folk songs and dance music, with performers like Father Sydney MacEwen crossing over between them. Not any more. The Americans can get away with it to some extent but it had better be something the Carter Family recorded.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 04:16 PM

That Guest was me. I hope you don't think that my comments were dimmwitted, Jack, because I actually read the article. I was responding to the people in this thread who are "slagging off" pop music.

As far as the research, their observations are correct, but music is written that way on purpose, so they aren't telling anyone anything that isn't widely known already. Why is is written that way is the better question, and even that question has some pretty well established answers.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 03:37 PM

The point of the paper (which it seems you haven't looked at) was NOT to slag off pop as a genre. It was analyzing developments WITHIN the genre, which are most likely paralleled in many others. (I can think of a few exceptions, from widely differing milieus).

How about you cut out the dimwitted cliches and actually read the thing?

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 03:05 PM

To remedy the good hook/boring song problem, "The folk process" allows the performer to trim the boring parts and use the hook on its own-the way "I rolled and I tumbled" got taken from "Knoxville Girl" and turned into a whole stack of blues records.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 02:52 PM

The pop music of the present will become the "traditional" music of the future. That's how it's always been. It is slightly amusing when people who embrace traditional and folk music complain about the "sameness" of whatever music it is that they don't like. As Dick Greenhaus pointed out above musical genres are "genres" because they share a lot of common elements. Nine times out of ten, the things that the don't share are borrowed from other musical genres.

Bottom line is the reason that genres exist is because certain people, in a certain place, at a certain time, happen to like a particular rhythm, coupled with a particular sort of phrasing, following a small variety of melodies, with lyrics that tell stories that reflect the ideas and values of their place and time. Musicians, smart people that they are, endeavor to give em what they want.

Another time, another place, another kind of music.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 02:36 PM

A good hook can definitely be really neat, no question about it. What troubles me is when a song has a good hook....but it doesn't have anything else good in it. ;-) If you know what I mean...

Some pop music is quite good, by the way. Most of it is pretty lacklustre stuff, but there are a few gems to be found here and there.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 02:19 PM

..interesting Guardian article on my mrs's current favourite new pop group
and their 'grooming' for stardom by UK music biz industry.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/mar/08/stooshe-girl-band

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 01:32 PM

[punkfolkrocker: with his serious head on for a few moments]

I've mention before on mudcat how much I love "The Archies";

manufactured bubblegum pop perfection churned out on the factory production line
by some of the cream of late 60's USA commercial song writers
studio producers, session singers & musicians.

Even the LP filler tracks and B sides are timeless pop music
instant acting maximum effect anti depressants.

I rate The Archies high up there with The Turtles, Monkees & Lovin' Spoonful.

Maybe occasionally since the glories of UK glam rock
maybe, just maybe, during the last 35 years
isolated pop singles almost as good as the vintage golden era classics emerge
to brighten up a a few short minutes of day to day modern alienation & misery.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 12:39 PM

Oh, and I love a good hook.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 12:37 PM

There is exciting pop music out there, but it seems to be even more at the fringes of 'popular' music than it was when I were a young thing and me and my best friend were going silly over this strange pixie woman singing in Icelandic on the Indie chart on C4's (then excellent) The Chart Show.

Nevertheless, with tools like Gnoosic / MusicMap, YouTube, Grooveshark etceteras, good pop is much easier to actually discover now than ever, so we're no longer dependent on the late John Peel to act as our musical ears and likewise there's no excuse for limiting oneself to the safe formulas of the top ten muzak machine either - where the so-called 'art' of performers like Gaga, still regurgitates the same top ten formulas of twenty plus years ago.