All Pop Music Too Loud, Sound the Same
If
you’re over 35 years old, then you’ve probably thought to yourself how
all pop music sound the same and that they’re all very loud.
Well, science has proven you right, old timers:
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 homogenization 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."
Now excuse me while I put up my “Get off my lawn” sign: Link
