pop music DOES all sound the same

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Claire M (Permanant GUEST!)
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 10:42 AM

I'm so happy to read this & wish I'd found this place before.

I like some pop music, but wouldn't want my shelves full of it. It could be because it wasn't played at me, while blues/folk always was. I'm so used to the latter that I get in a foul mood when I can't listen to it for some reason, & as soon as I put some on it goes away.

As a disabled person, my life is (& will be) very different to that described in standard pop songs, so I tend to gravitate toward nastier songs because they make more sense; me 2 fine legs were, in a sense, taken away (because they don't work), I do get lost (but unfortunately not in the pines), a lot of people I know happen to be very ill, so they do tend to die quite young.

I can cope with some pop music, but most people I know who like it seem to want to play it too loud, & think I'd be happier if I didn't listen to the music I do. They seem to get bored easily too. I don't & I don't think I ever have. In their way of thinking, if you like something you must own it, even if you're not sure you like it. Get me a decent cd & I'll be happy for ages.

As for toys, I still treasure Katy the rag doll (ooooh, I luv you just the way you are) & Midnight the toy cat.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Keith
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 08:40 AM

check out this site guys!

www.ThatSongSoundsLike.com

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 05:47 PM

That's the problem with the pop music audience...they get bored VERY easily! ;-) It only takes about a verse and a half of just about any song to bore them unless there's a hook. (whoopee!) A hook and some chaotic video scenes will keep them vaguely interested for, oh, maybe one and a half more verses at the very most, and that's why pop songs are usually pretty short. DON'T ask them to remember the words! That would be soooooo boring!

In ancient times people would quietly listen to epic poems, tales passed down by word of mouth, stories that were easily an hour long and songs that told a story in 20 or 30 verses. They didn't get bored. Perhaps this was because they didn't live in a world that gave them about 600,000,000 choices of what to do all the time, thus leaving them so jaded and overfed after awhile that they weren't really much interested in anything.

It's simple. Give a child one toy and he will treasure it, give it a name, turn it into a companion that lasts for years. Give him 800 toys, 3 computers, a cellphone, an Ipad, a Blackberry, and whatever the hell else you can get out there for your kid these days and.....he'll get bored. Very bored. He'll have no patience at all. He'll have no ability to sustain any attention span. He won't stay interested long. He'll decide that almost everything "sucks", get depressed, and be depressing to others.

And he'll probably listen to a lot of pop music eventually, because it's all around him, but certainly not with enough attention to remember the lyrics of the song...but that's okay, coz they're probably not worth remembering anyway, right?

We may be looking at the most bored, overstimulated, overfed, unhealthy, and confused generation in human history right now in the developed world...mainly because we have buried ourselves under a mountain of material goods and ephemeral media and have lost our souls and our minds in the process.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: melodeonboy
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 05:25 PM

If, as I assume, modern pop songs are primarily more a product of improved technology and the skill of the sound engineers using that technology rather than any creative flair, individuality or talent on the part of the artist; and if a large majority of these songs are produced by a much smaller number and variety of record companies, then it would seem likely that they would sound the same, or at least more similar to each other than would have been the case in the past.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 02:28 PM

If a genre of music didn't consist of individusl works that had substantial similarities, it wouldn't be a genre.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 01:33 PM

Somebody didn't read the article.

True; I got bored after the first few words.

Subject: RE: Folklore: It does all sound the same - official
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 07:45 AM

Hit the wrong button Mike, but it has been passed down through the generations so, by some peoples' reckoning it can be......!!
Thanks for he opportunity to clarify my own particular stance.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: It does all sound the same - official
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 07:18 AM

Why did you give this news the "Folklore" prefix, Jim? Just out of interest...

~Michael~

Subject: Folklore: It does all sound the same - official
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 07:08 AM

From The Irish Times 27th July 2012:
Jim Carroll

Spain
POP MUSIC TODAY DOES ALL SOUND THE SAME
In what could be 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 analysed, 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 past 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs had 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," Mr Serra said.
"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."
The study appears in the journal Scientific Reports. - (Reuters)

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 10:38 PM

I think nations (to use the term loosely) go through brilliant periods and then lulls in their music, and that we are definitely in a lull right now.

I don't need graphs to tell me that the pop music I hear in public places lacks melody and other forms of musical interest.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 08:15 PM

They didn't look at genres labelled as "folk".

I suspect the trends would have been much the same if you looked at any one of them.

Commodification means homogenization. It just so happens that pop is the most commodified musical genre there is, so it's the obvious one to look at.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Andy Shandy
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 08:02 PM

Errrmm..

pop is fun - that's why we like it.

Similarly, for many millenia all human orgasms aint changed that much and have more or less felt the same -
but we still likes them too.

Bread, beer, cheese; give or take acceptable variations - always very samey, but nonetheless also very nice - still like 'em..

plenty more popular/populist examples of 'always the same, never changing, but we still like them' !!!

getting the drift ....???

Ok, of course this does not apply to Folk music
which is noted for being radically different and ever changing
with every new song being innovative & sonically unique...

yeah as unique as my flatulently reverberating arse cheeks !!!
and not much more popular with the greater British public.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 08:00 PM

Somebody didn't read the article.

The surprising thing is how many different parameters they looked at, and that the trend was the same for all of them.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 07:39 PM

What utter rot. To most ears all Irish music sounds the same; all Scottish music sounds the same; all Jazz sounds the same; all Piobaireachd sounds the same; all Balinese gamelan sounds the same; all Traditional English Folk Songs sound the same; all Mozart sounds the same; all Gaelic Psalm singing sounds the same; all Gagaku sounds the same; all Swedish fiddle music sounds the same...

When don't know or understand the music, it all sounds the same. Why post just to tell us about stuff you don't care about or understand? Tell us what you know, not what you don't; after all, considerable knowledge is always offset by a greater ignorance.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: RTim
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 06:58 PM

Agreed!!
Tim Radford

Subject: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 06:42 PM

Or, how to be a grumpy old git, but now with added graphs:

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120726/srep00521/full/srep00521.html

summary:

http://io9.com/5929469/the-real-reason-why

I hate to think what the same methodology would do with country.