Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder?

Started by Elantric, May 23, 2014, 03:01:45 PM

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Elantric

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/26/is-pop-music-evolving-or-is-it-just-getting-louder/
Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder?
By John Matson
Music just ain't what it used to be. At least, that's the stereotypical lament of each receding generation of music listeners. It's also one way to read a new study on the evolution of pop music in the past half-century.

A group of researchers undertook a quantitative analysis of nearly half a million songs to look for widespread changes in music's character over the years. The findings, published online July 26 in Scientific Reports, show that some trends do emerge over the decades—none of them necessarily good. (Scientific American and Scientific Reports are both parts of Nature Publishing Group.)

The researchers based their analysis on the Million Song Dataset, a publicly available 280-gigabyte file that provides a sort of background sketch—name, duration, tempo, and so on—of songs from nearly 45,000 artists. Of the million songs therein, 464,411 came out between 1955 and 2010 and include data on both the sonic characteristics and the year of release.

Joan Serrà, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, and his colleagues examined three aspects of those songs: timbre (which "accounts for the sound color, texture, or tone quality," according to Serrà and his colleagues); pitch (which "roughly corresponds to the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements"); and loudness (more on that below).

After peaking in the 1960s, timbral variety has been in steady decline to the present day, the researchers found. That implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques. Similarly, the pitch content of music has shriveled somewhat. The basic pitch vocabulary has remained unchanged—the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today—but the syntax has become more restricted. Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod by their predecessors and contemporaries.

Finally, it comes as no surprise that music has gotten louder. A piece of music's loudness is an intrinsic characteristic of the recording, not to be confused with the listener-controlled volume. "Basically, the audio signal, when recorded and stored, is physically bounded to be between certain values (+1 and –1 volts in original recording systems)," Serrà explained in an email. "You can record signals fluctuating between –0.2 and +0.2 or between –0.6 and +0.6 (positive and negative fluctuations are necessary to make the loudspeaker membrane move). That's the intrinsic loudness level we're talking about."

For years audiophiles have decried the "loudness wars"—the gradual upping of recorded music's loudness over time, in an apparent effort to grab listeners' attention. Loudness comes at the expense of dynamic range—in very broad terms, when the whole song is loud, nothing within it stands out as being exclamatory or punchy. (This two-minute YouTube video does a great job of demonstrating how excessive loudness saps richness and depth from a recording.)




Indeed, Serrà and his colleagues found that the loudness of recorded music is increasing by about one decibel every eight years.

It's an interesting study, and it seems to support the popular anecdotal observation that pop music of yore was better, or at least more varied, than today's top-40 stuff. (A recent study also found that song lyrics are darker and more self-focused than they used to be.) But I did wonder if there was a selection bias in play here. The Million Song Dataset, huge as it is, may not provide a representative slice of pop music, especially for old songs. Its contents are heavily weighted to modern music: the database contains only 2,650 songs released between 1955 and 1959, but nearly two orders of magnitude more—177,808 songs—released between 2005 and 2009. That's because it draws on what's popular now, as well as what has been digitized and made available for download. And the songs of yesteryear that people enjoy today (as oldies) may not be the same ones that people enjoyed when those songs first came out.

Let's assume for the moment that the trends identified in the new study—especially the homogenous timbres and restricted pitch sequences—are bad. Then the rare song that bucked those trends, offering up novel melodies and sonic textures, would stand out as being good. Therefore, that song would have a better chance than its contemporaries of surviving the test of time—that is, a better chance of finding itself digitized and widely played some 50 years after its release, thereby boosting its odds of inclusion in the Million Song Dataset. Meanwhile, the blander tunes of decades past would have faded into analog obscurity. The relatively few old songs in such a database, then, would tend to be more sonically interesting than the average song of today, and any analysis comparing old songs to new would likely reflect that. So I wondered if part of what this study is telling us is that bland music can fool us, but not for long.

Serrà acknowledged in an email that a bias due to the "test of time" effect is possible but argued that its influence should be small. For instance, he noted, the long-term patterns and trends that he and his colleagues identified also hold over relatively short—and relatively recent—time periods (say, 1997 to 2007), where the "test of time" effect should be minimal. "The same happens with close and not-so-recent time periods (e.g., 1960 and 1968), where both years could partly incorporate such an effect," he wrote. "Since the trend is consistent in short time spans where you assume the 'test of time' bias is minimal and, furthermore, the trend is also consistent for longer time spans, we can assume it is a general trend and, thus, that the 'test of time' effect is really small."

About the Author: John Matson is an associate editor at Scientific American focusing on space, physics and mathematics. Follow on Twitter @jmtsn.


Kevin M


thebrushwithin

Pop music has always been controlled, for the most part, by corporations, especially where radio play is a defining factor. Basically, there are few "chance takers", anymore, because of corporate structures, and their decisions are usually based on what has already sold. The underground is always where true innovation is born, and when the cream of that underground trend, gains popular notice, via live performance, or nowadays internet, then these companies are forced to take notice, and a "new" trend in music is promoted. A&R look openly for new acts that "sound like"............. The loudness factor is just technology, I would say.

Now_And_Then


And not just pop music, by the way. Do you know what else has been getting worse? Scientific American. It's kind of sad to see a magazine once renowned for attempting to make hard science accessible to a broader audience publish this kind of very soft semi-science.*

Additionally, the study has a very basic flaw in it. The index seems to be based on the number of songs released whereas the important metric would seem to be, what songs are listened to. Since most songs are, for all practical purposes, never listened to by anyone except the people actually involved in the recording of the song (a trend getting worse all the time thanks to the proliferation and "democratization" of the technology needed to record music), we can assume that, for example, one mid-level hit could have as many unique listeners, and can be listened to as many individual times, as many thousands of recordings that never achieved any kind of attention whatsoever. The methodology employed by the current study would give as much weight to the mid-level hit as it would to each of the unlistened-to recordings. These songs from the long-tail represent, in this kind of study, random noise and clutter -  just like in real life!

The study seems kind of pointless to me, personally.

* I'm not kidding, either. I used to read Scientific American in the 80's and 90's on a regular basis but eventually stopped. I picked up an issue a year or two ago and it was vastly different from what it was when I was reading it. But then again, I have seen complaints about about all science magazines on the physics blogs which I read. (Mostly "Not Even Wrong," to be honest.)


gumtown

All too easy these days to hit the "Normalize" button with the option to compress before clipping option on in a recording.
Free "GR-55 FloorBoard" editor software from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grfloorboard/

montyrivers

Quote from: Now_And_Then on May 23, 2014, 11:31:46 PM
And not just pop music, by the way. Do you know what else has been getting worse? Scientific American. It's kind of sad to see a magazine once renowned for attempting to make hard science accessible to a broader audience publish this kind of very soft semi-science.*

Additionally, the study has a very basic flaw in it. The index seems to be based on the number of songs released whereas the important metric would seem to be, what songs are listened to. Since most songs are, for all practical purposes, never listened to by anyone except the people actually involved in the recording of the song (a trend getting worse all the time thanks to the proliferation and "democratization" of the technology needed to record music), we can assume that, for example, one mid-level hit could have as many unique listeners, and can be listened to as many individual times, as many thousands of recordings that never achieved any kind of attention whatsoever. The methodology employed by the current study would give as much weight to the mid-level hit as it would to each of the unlistened-to recordings. These songs from the long-tail represent, in this kind of study, random noise and clutter -  just like in real life!

The study seems kind of pointless to me, personally.

* I'm not kidding, either. I used to read Scientific American in the 80's and 90's on a regular basis but eventually stopped. I picked up an issue a year or two ago and it was vastly different from what it was when I was reading it. But then again, I have seen complaints about about all science magazines on the physics blogs which I read. (Mostly "Not Even Wrong," to be honest.)

Revisionist history, pseudoscience... yeah it's on the rise...  I blame cable television.

But yea, it's hard to study scientific trends in music because, like language, its execution is purely an art in a lot of ways.  It becomes difficult or impossible to take any consistent data sampling in terms of sound and character.  At best, loosely educated researchers can massage the data to come up with pragmatic results.

jburns

Quote from: Now_And_Then on May 23, 2014, 11:31:46 PM
And not just pop music, by the way. Do you know what else has been getting worse? Scientific American. It's kind of sad to see a magazine once renowned for attempting to make hard science accessible to a broader audience publish this kind of very soft semi-science.*

yes! i used to love history and discovery channel back when i used to watch tv and the same has happened as with many magazines which were great. its sad that we live in a world where we should be learning more since of our level communication is excellent and yet we see an opposite result. too many focused on hbo,news,etc. its a water downed down hash tag world where our population on this globe lives the reality tv life. [insert morpheus red pill here] yes these effects are everywhere not only in music. but sometimes by looking hard enough, or amazingly by accident, i come across things that totally impress me. lately it has been electronic pop music from japan. alot of it is wild! i only listen to instrumental music and I've recently realized that i enjoy music with words! i would consider this blasphemy to myself yet i can't understand the language and therefore all my ears pick up are the notes. the last 2 months have been wonderful. its like listening to a new instrument. on top of that the music itself is extraordinary, they use so many synths and the compositions are good. NEVER would i have thought to find such things (melody,solos,multiple sections) in pop music. i should mention that one of the biggest pop stars in japan is a software synthesizer patch. i want to say that again! one of the biggest pop stars in japan is a synthesizer. kids go to the concerts and a hologram character is used as the synth with a real band on stage. you may know of (yamahas?) vocaloid voice software. the characters/presets in it are well taken by the public. imagine kids in america going to a show to hear a moog or korg?? its small things that i can appreciate, to not feel guilty in my time here on earth- that things are not as bad as i normally think they are. id say pop music is getting louder overall. but there is moving forward that i hear too.

wortha watch! notice the responses of the one older girl who has been "americanized" compared to those of the younger innocent kids.




heres two vocaloid songs, if interested:

i scored a sheet for the voice track in this when i wanted to playing it on guitar about a month ago. because its sample based you can harmonize pretty interestingly with the "vocals".



shawnb

What bothers me more than the homogenous music is the homogenous message. 

There is little-to-no message in Rock anymore.  I was at the Aftershock festival a while back at the height of the Syrian chem weapons conflict, with a lineup of metal bands.  I was expecting... SOMETHING...  But no, all songs were basically love songs & I'll-bash-your-head-in-if-you-look-at-my-girl songs.  Zero content of note.  12 hours of metal, the only mention of the news was Dave Mustaine's single line "Who here thinks we need another war?", which drew a meager smattering of response. 

I've been on this rant here before, and yes, Rock isn't SOLELY about message.  But in my mind, message is what Rock had over most other forms of music over the years.  But today, "Onstage they ain't got no roots... rock... rebel..."

Back to the article...  Not that pop was ever the best selection of music in any generation - by definition, pop *is* the lowest common denominator.  And today there seems to be a smaller number of hyper-formulaic ruts for pop.   There's the screeching-female-vox rut (Aguilera, et al).  There's the neo-disco rut (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry et al).  There's the metal rut (Nickelback, Shinedown, Three Days Grace, etc., etc., etc.).   Within each rut, most songs are indistinguishable from one another. 

Each song carefully sculpted to trigger a teenager "Buy" response on iTunes/Pandora.  Like scientists getting lab rats to press a button for their homogenous food pellets. 

What's sad is that all of these acts have unbelievable talent.  I've seen a video of Lady Gaga sitting at a piano belting out an R&B classic that was impressive.  Live, it is clear that all of these metal bands have so much talent they can play WHATEVER they want...  Amazing professionalism.

The building blocks are there, but heartfelt content ain't. 

(OK, rambling rant over...   Yes, I do feel much better now, thank you...)
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

Kevin M

Too much copy/paste mentality in the music industry. 


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Rhcole

I have always loved loud music, going back to seeing The Who live. But I've stopped going to most pro shows now because they crush my skull in. A typical major act hurls tens of thousands of watts out and cranks the bass up until my fillings start to come out of my teeth. The result is that I can't actually hear it anymore. Sad.

gumtown

One other factor I have not seem mentioned yet is the "Old Fart Factor".
I find as I get older, I am becoming less tolerant to modern pop anyway,

I now know what it is like "to become like my parents" syndrome.
Free "GR-55 FloorBoard" editor software from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grfloorboard/

gumbo

Ha!
We have just moved to a rural valley 35k out of our major town area..one of the BEST things we have discovered is that the TV reception ISN'T...

...6 glorious weeks of peace & quiet so far, and NO intention to hook up a dish....    ;D

Old Fart Factor abbreviates to "OFF".... ;)
Read slower!!!   ....I'm typing as fast as I can...

DreamTheory

Enjoyable conversation.

David Byrne observes (in Ted Talks, and in his very helpful and accurate book How Music Works) that music is affected by the medium in which it is played. Now that songs are being mixed for cell phones and PC speakers, there is a different sound to the music itself, inevitably less sonically rich than pop from the days of audiophile vinyl.

Is there data available to us (in this forum) on the demographics of GR-55 users? The patches seem to me to include a strong representation of sounds relevant to middle aged people who would get the references to things like "Bridge of Sighs" (the 1974 Robin Trower album). I do not think this was simply marketing, but an indicator that most of the best tones were achieved in the '60's and '70's. Today's top pop guitarists like Jack White and John Mayer draw upon classic rock Les Paul and Strat styles. Why is that I wonder? Is there a diminishing return on rock innovation?

One of the many interesting aspects of GR 55 is that it recapitulates a very broad array of sounds that have been hitherto used, but lays them open for us to alter and recombine as much as we care to, suggesting that our creativity is the new frontier in music.



electric: Epiphone Dot semihollow body, acoustic: mahogany jumbo, recording: Cubase Artist 11 or Tascam DP008

thebrushwithin

#14
QuoteBack to the article...  Not that pop was ever the best selection of music in any generation - by definition, pop *is* the lowest common denominator.  And today there seems to be a smaller number of hyper-formulaic ruts for pop.   There's the screeching-female-vox rut (Aguilera, et al).  There's the neo-disco rut (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry et al).  There's the metal rut (Nickelback, Shinedown, Three Days Grace, etc., etc., etc.).   Within each rut, most songs are indistinguishable from one another. 

That last sentence is key! I will elaborate on an earlier post, I made on this topic.
Having subscribed, for many years, to an independent A&R company, dealing with both mainstream and indie film, and record companies, it is obvious that, no matter what the listing is, one thing is always in common...."sounds like.....". Pop means popular, and it is rare to find anyone in charge of music funding to look for any "evolvement". It is rarely anything other than sales, that motivates an investor - in any field, especially within culture. So most film music sounds similar, also with an increase in singer/songwriter material (especially in advertising), not to mention every pop artist sounding like the current flavor of the year. Evolving styles of music, cross-pollination of genres, etc. ALWAYS come from from the underground scene! After a breakthrough into mass culture, the industry then wants everything to, once again, "sound like...." , over and over again, through the decades. Technology( or sometimes anti-technology, as the in the punk revolution), has always determined what the underground has chosen, as its tools for making music.
     IMHO, there is incredible musical genius being displayed within different electronic genres. Current technology gives anyone with talent, an amazing palette to create with, and many of these artists, most of which are virtually unknown, continually impress the hell out of me. They provide arrangements of sound and music that wouldn't have been thought of years ago. A few years ago, I remember seeing the leader of Foo Fighters, accepting some music honor, and he took the opportunity to give a short lecture to young aspiring musician's, to learn a "real" instrument, instead of moving knobs, etc. Wow! Is he ever out of touch, IMO . Unfortunately, most old school instrument players never evolve musical culture, but rather rehash sounds, styles, albeit with more impressive chops than older players, due to vastly improved learning technologies. In another post, I heard someone say that these neo-metal players have such unbelievable chops, that they could literally do anything with their instruments, but often never take it anywhere, it hasn't already been. Chops do not replace imagination. A musician is one who creates music with an interaction of mind and instruments. To put limits on this interaction is to stifle evolution of the art. Music is evolving, but it isn't "pop" yet.

Elantric


Kevin M

I often think about music as entertainment vs music as artistic expression. Too often the industry is being led by the former.

imerkat

I'm turning thirty this year and can always come here and count on feeling younger again  ;D. does anyone here listen to Dubstep or electro-house?

I think the article needs to add the Definition of Pop. "Is [music that makes the most money] Evolving, or is it just getting louder?"

In that sense it has evolved and become much better at doing what it sets out to do.


BBach

Now_And_Then, I'm with you on Scientific American. It is another attempt to kidnap genuine science to serve economic/political agenda and impose an artificial consensus through exclusion and intimidation. That's not to say everything in the magazine is corrupt , but I would be suspicious of anything within its covers, given its editorial bent.

DreamTheory

Quote from: Elantric on June 30, 2014, 10:27:08 AM
Right Brain thinking and Embracing Failure
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=9892.msg70977#msg70977

It is funny this should come up because I was just blabbing in another thread about one of my all time favorite books, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which actually explains how you can sense and even elicit the onset of intuition. It is a book about drawing with pencils, but I totally see how it applies to guitar. And building stuff too, by the way. I can spend hours planning and not get anything done, but if I just move and do, projects like flooring come out perfect within 1/16". When I don't think about, it my hands know what to do. The most tonally rich music I create is done when I go into open tunings or do things like put on a short cut capo upside down. David Wilcox and Joni Mitchell work this way, intentionally not knowing what the left hand is doing. When everything I know about the fretboard is out of whack, I gravitate towards sounds that live in my subconcious. GR 55 patches can also be a bridge to inspiration, as I explore what they have to say.

Right brain thinking is my drug of choice- I truly derive a specific pleasure from it. But at some point I have to apply the rational side of things and ask questions like

- What chords best fit that melodic line?
- What melodic line is lurking in those chord changes?
- Is there an A part B part, Chorus, Bridge needed and how will the parts fit together?
- How many BPM, what key(s)
- Which voices and FX in GR 55 will enhance this?

Working that out is a different kind of fun.

It's always a good idea to have a recorder running when I am "in the zone" because my right brain has a terrible memory.
electric: Epiphone Dot semihollow body, acoustic: mahogany jumbo, recording: Cubase Artist 11 or Tascam DP008

aliensporebomb

This was my aural response to the brick wall mastering crowd - me, my guitar, my vg-99, a custom patch or two and an audio looper:
https://soundcloud.com/aliensporebomb/after-sleeping
My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

Elantric

Unusual footage of a band playing low volume seemed appropriate given this thread's title.


vtgearhead

Back in my high-school days I heard Cream several times in the NYC area and can testify that the level of restraint on that TV sound stage was quite atypical :-).