Music Xray: Science or BS?

[ggm1960]

http://www.musicxray.com/tabid/53/Default.aspx

 

I heard a little about it on public radio today. Of course they don't really give out any information they claim to have scientific/mathematical formulas that analyze what music we like (or more to the point: what makes a hit song). They claim music; from the great classical composers all the way to present day hit radio, falls into certain patterns that can be analyzed.

 

I seem to vaguely remember hearing others claim to do this over the years but I've never taken any of it seriously. Anyone buy into this stuff?

[philbo]

Man, it sounds like hype to me but I don't have any direct experience with it.

 

I suppose it would be a real aid if you want to make new music that sounds like everything else that's out there already... But it would also (just like the current crop of label A&R people) be a very effective filter for preventing the next wave of music evolution from reaching the publics ear.

 

But I don't know enough about it to be able to say I have an intelligent opinion...

[blue2blue]

From their website:

 

Music Xray

[elsongs]

From their website: I couldn't find a definition for "mathmeatial" anywhere on the web. In fact, I googled for it and the Music Xray site was the only place this apparent neologism shows up. Also... past whose? That is the first sentence on the first page of their website. And the presumed typo "mathmeatial" has been up there long enough that it googles... Talk about quality control.

 

 

Hey, come on! They're just mathemeaticians, they're SUPPOSED to have poor grammur!

[Anderton]

Here comes the "all music is fractals" brigade again...

[rasputin1963]

I do hope serious, trained musicians are "in" on this little experiment.

 

My personal philosophy is: there are pitches which feel good to us mainly because they are in our own personal vocal range.... Whether by intoning them ourselves--- our by hearing someone else do it-- they sort of touch us in our chest and throat and head in the same places as if we were singing them ourselves. It is the ingenious melody-writer indeed who can string together a series of pitches which "light up" those regions in the listener's body in a calculated way...

 

I think a lot of pop/rock hits from the past have had male vocalists singing in what is essentially a woman's vocal range.... the target audience being primarily teenaged girls. Then of course, your New Age folks will say that different pitches, intoned, stimulate and open the various Seven Chakras along our spine... [When Macca dropped LSD for the first time, he sort of shuffled around the room telling all his mates present, "There are Seven Levels! There are Seven Levels!"]

 

As for rhythms, I do think we subconsciously seek rhythms that "harmonize" (if you will) with both our bodily rhythms (heartbeat, breathing, walking, chewing, skipping, f***ng, even digestive peristalsis) and also with our BRAINWAVE STATE RHYTHMS (beta, alpha, theta, delta). We all know the story of how, supposedly, andante instrumental music from the Baroque and Classical periods-- e.g. Gluck, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Telemann, Vivaldi-- are thought to be great to study difficult subjects by, 'cause they lower us down into upper Alpha, where learning is enhanced.

 

Sometimes i'll be in the grocery store or elsewhere, and a very fast tempo'd House rhythm will be playing on the Muzak system... I'll see a very elderly couple in their 80's shuffling through the store while this music plays.... The ironic tableau is quite amusing, and very clear to me that this rhythm--- approx. 125-135bpm--- is SO-O-O not in this old couple's bodily "repertoire" of rhythms... So I think they hardly even perceive it, it's so alien.

 

There are two online House radio stations I love:

 

http://91.121.9.98:5047 and

 

http://205.188.215.228:8014

 

playing the edgiest Electronica I think I've ever heard.... No lyrics, no D.J., no commercials, no explanations or descriptions, no voiceovers, no pauses... Just wall-to-wall, nonstop, electric dance rhythms, 24/7. Some of it is very clever indeed. If the Future has a a soundtrack, then this is certainly it.

 

But all the time i'm listening, and thinking, man, I'm 44 now and no longer take hallucinogenic or speedy drugs... so I cannot truly "get into" the full meaning and mood of this music. I only sort of appreciate it now "from a respectable distance", one might say. [One great viewpoint, however, for the old codger: No matter how slick House music thinks it is, the rhythms being burbled, thumped and percolated out are old as the hills: an African djembe, an Afro-cuban rumba or conga, a Dominican merengue, a Brazilian samba or baion. La plus ca change, la plus c'est le meme chose... ]

 

Ultimately, though, regarding MUSIC X-RAY, I will say that "variety is the spice of life", and I wouldn't think that a steady diet of the same pitches and rhythms, however carefully assessed to "fit our tastes", would be to my liking... It might work for the masses, but probably not fer musicians.

 

Thoughts?

[object.session]

well, it's hard to say anything about the product, since i can barely tell what it is. in any case, it (music xray, whatever it is) could have varied levels of b. s.-ness. i don't think it's *total* bs, though.

 

whether music can be explained mathematically is barely worth questioning, since the field of music theory, which is based on mathematics, is well established. ans whether there's a science to hit pop songs? i'd say that there most likely is, since there are producers whose specialty is transforming the output of a songwriter into one or more pop songs.

 

do hit songs have tendencies that can be explained statistically? i think that's pretty obvious, too. i bet you'd get a pretty nice bell curve from tallying up the durations of radio hits. (or maybe there'd be the sum of a few bell curves, relating to different genres.)

 

so, i guess the question worth asking is whether these statistical calculations (and display) would be helpful to musicians. i think that's sort of like asking whether synthesized orchestras are worth having. in some cases, like when you have access to the real thing, there's not much point. at other times, even a casiotone keyboard will come in handy.

[rasputin1963]

....then there's that famous quote by Leopold Mozart to his son Wolfgang in a letter... He basically said that the musician has to FEEL the music first, before the listener can feel anything...

 

When I hear really great pop hits, that's the first thing that occurs to me...

 

I can really hear the musicians thinking, "Damn, this song we're playing is incredible, it's in the groove, and we're feeling it all over, and thus wish to put all our energies into playing it for you."

 

That "super-confidence which knows no dissent, defeat or question" is definitely the hallmark of a hit recording, IMHO. It's hard to fool listeners, too: they can immediately feel "hit" after only one or two listenings...

 

Some pop songs are really striking to me because they are in unusual keys... The Beatles and Billy Joel have been masters of this... A song whose root key is, let's say, F#minor, or CbMajor, DbMajor or Bbminor is always going to sound strikingly unusual to most pop/rock listeners than if it were in the more common Pop keys of C, D, E, F, G, Aminor, Eb.

 

The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus" immediately sounds creepy and weird from the very first opening chords.... because it's in the "weird" key of CbMajor.

[blue2blue]

I'm actually listening to the ceo from the company on NPR's Science Friday right now... he's a lot more persuasive than the website.

 

Still...

[amplayer]

I'm sure there's some science behind it. You can analyze almost any great art and come up with some rules after the fact that make it so.

 

For me, I prefer the creative minds of the likes of Lennon and McCartney to any model, mathematical or otherwise.

[lowbasslowbass]

What about free improvisation music?

[Anderton]

 

That "super-confidence which knows no dissent, defeat or question" is definitely the hallmark of a hit recording, IMHO. It's hard to fool listeners, too: they can immediately feel "hit" after only one or two listenings...

 

 

Bingo! It's the part of a song that can't be measured by any "test equipment," other than a listener's heart and head!!

[Anderton]

There are two online House radio stations I love: http://91.121.9.98:5047 and http://205.188.215.228:8014 playing the edgiest Electronica I think I've ever heard.... No lyrics, no D.J., no commercials, no explanations or descriptions, no voiceovers, no pauses... Just wall-to-wall, nonstop, electric dance rhythms, 24/7. Some of it is very clever indeed. If the Future has a a soundtrack, then this is certainly it. But all the time i'm listening, and thinking, man, I'm 44 now and no longer take hallucinogenic or speedy drugs... so I cannot truly "get into" the full meaning and mood of this music. Thoughts?

 

First of all, GREAT LINKS!!! Now, this is indeed what "accessibility" is about...you put a link in a post, and I've got a shiny new toy.

 

As to the 44 thing...c'mon, give me a break! Eardrums don't become obsolete at a certain age.

 

As you know I'm super into this kind of music, and as you also may know, have played numerous venues where a lot of people were whacked out on ecstasy...that was all I needed for context . 5 AM, last act going on before the DJs settled in until noon so people could go home, incredible techno foxes dancing with the strobes, smoke machines drenching my coat and guitar so bad I had to fumigate 'em when I got home, having my jaw drop at what the other musicians were doing and feeling damn lucky to be a part of it with my guitar and AdrenaLinn...If you're into the music, you "get" it...simple as that.

 

WHY DID THIS MUSIC NEVER TAKE ROOT IN THE USA THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE? Ah, but that's a whole other topic...

 

Thanks again for the link!

[temnov]

It's interesting, but I worked with couple of Russian scientists in 92-93 and they tried to use some

[Lucky #9]

Speaking of scientific relationships to music...I saw a bit on TV some time ago concerning crop circles. The investigator somehow had them correlated to certain musical notes. Unfortunately, I forget how he determined this relationship.

 

It's as if the Creature Features were trying to communicate with us via music; Something like the closing scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

 

(By the way, I don't think all crop circles are bogus.)

[rasputin1963]

WHY DID THIS MUSIC NEVER TAKE ROOT IN THE USA THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE? Ah, but that's a whole other topic... Thanks again for the link!

 

Craig, glad you like those links. They're incredible to do computer work by.

 

Not sure why this particular breed of Electronic music has never really taken off in mainstream America... all I know is that Americans like their visuals-- their "tits 'n' ass"-- to go along with their music. Nothin' wrong with that, of course, but the Electronica on these two stations seems quite visceral to me and oddly intimate.... I don't necessarily picture any real humans attached to the making of it, and I'm sure that was the creators' very intent. Like a Warhol or Lichtenstein painting which looks as though no human hand ever touched it. It's really an auditory treat, meant to be heard and FELT. ie., there are no smiling "personalities" attached to it. I kinda dig that, frankly.

 

This music is so subterranean, that the only time I've ever heard stuff like it played publicly was in your larger cities.... and then again, only after midnight.... or even only after 2:00am!! This is the kind of stuff I used to only hear in Austin and NYC and SF in "after hours" clubs, where, as you point out, people literally dance until noon the next day. :idea: :idea:

[chipmcdonald]

Where they go wrong is right at the outset:

 

"a new technology that allows music professionals to see their music"

 

 

I think being a human and having well developed opinions is getting bred out of the race.

 

An A.I. one day might make great music; but it can't be quantified so simply. You can't quantify an audiences strange-attractor for acceptance of non-linearity. It's complexity is just beyond the threshold of human comprehension; although there have been times in history where certain humans *could* obviously embrace it fully (McCartney/Lennon, Mozart, et al)

 

This is way too simple. But worse yet - there's this constant .. flagellation in society now where everything is driven towards making a surviveable buck, and we end up with stuff like this making the noise threshold higher....

[deanmass]

Boy...I was on earlier, and was trying to find a direct link to the podcast on Science Friday, and the link was wrong. Got beat to the topic!

 

The CEO on the podcast makes it sound plausible, but, just knowing a little about statistics, probabilities, etc., I am sure there are ways to 'generally' define 'hit' parameters, but the CEO himself says, there are variables they have no accounted for and/or cannot be measured. But, there are patterns that can be measured (according to him). Listen to the podcast, then comment. It makes more sense hearing him talk. He does not sound like a windbag, or that self assured. I listen to science Friday every week, and love it. It was nice to hear some music related science stuff, even if it is hypothetical.

 

I think you could automate detection of some vague, general song frameworks that have a tendency to be more popular than others, however, these will also vary with time/setting/culture, ties ins (movies/events) etc. I think like everything, these tools could just end up being just that, tools for further creativity, rather than constraints or limits. People start talking about 'big companies' automating recording choices, blurring the line between art/creativity and a 'product', things get dicey quick. No matter whether you think it is real or works, it is very interesting to think about.

 

In the podcast, I also found it very interesting that they do not do 'jazz'.. They specifically brought up Take 5, and pointed to it breaking every rule, yet being enormously popular. Even with that statement, it is not 'real', because Take 5 was just an expansion of other jazz concepts and songs that were well explored earlier on, but maybe not as neatly wrapped. I think musical creativity is safe for now...