Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Pop Music Has Gotten Louder and Less Original


You know your dad's old buddies have always told you the music you listen to is too loud. Your old man told you about your favorite pop music "it's unoriginal" I think they might have been speaking some truth to you.

Because as we learn today about a computer analysis of nearly half-a-million songs recorded between 1955 and 2010 and reported in Nature Scientific Reports Thursday. “We have been able to show how the global loudness level of music recordings has consistently increased over the years,” study author Joan Serra of the Spanish National Research Council said in an email exchange.

Similarly, the team found the diversity of chords and melodies has “consistently diminished in the last 50 years”. “This yields a clear recipe for contemporising old songs: using more common chord changes, changing the song’s instrumentation, and record it louder,” said Serra.

The study spanned a variety of genres, including rock, pop, hip hop, metal and electronic. “Much of the gathered evidence points towards an important degree of conventionalism, in the sense of blockage or no-evolution, in the creation and production of contemporary Western popular music,” said the study.

I am sure Arabic pop is not much different, it has gotten a lot louder, thanks to Euro trash and house music invasion. Plus, the lyrics have been recycling for ages now, we just have to have a long term memory. At least, this is what science has concluded. I would add, thanks to having songs written by teams now, no longer would one person author one hit alone----it takes a village to doctor a good song.  

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