Back in
September, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog titled “I analyzed the
chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.”
Although it is written in a somewhat
conversational manner, the research and results posted by Dave Carlton are some
of the most in-depth, serious and accessible about popular music available.
The first part of the study explores the
popularity of certain chords; this includes the most popular keys pieces are
written in followed by the most popular chords.
The second part of the study seeks to answer, based on statistics, “What
chord should come next?”
This section
takes any chord and provides the frequency that any other chord follows it
based on the 1300 songs.
Since my
original visit to the site however, the project has grown into a larger
community of popular song analysis.
This is a
wonderful project with regard to music education; especially music theory. Like almost any subject, one of the main
factors that determines a student’s interest is relevance. This is certainly true for music theory. The Hooktheory website is a user friendly
database that using music theory skills and applies them to understand popular
music. Not only is it simply interesting,
it would also serve as an excellent teaching tool.
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