The songs composed in recent years are more similar to each other than the old ones. This is because transitions between note groups have slowed over the past 55 years, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports .
The researchers, from the CSIC Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, analyzed almost half a million songs and the transitions between groups of notes that occurred between them. “These musical parameters in songs are like the words in a text and we have observed that there are fewer and fewer different words,” explains Joan Serrá, one of the authors. Given a musical note, it is relatively easier to predict what will be next in a current song .
In addition, current music uses less diversity of timbres and is usually played with the same instruments. “In the 1960s, for example, groups like Pink Floyd experimented much more with sound than now,” says Serrá. On the other hand, in recent years the intrinsic volume at which songs are recorded has increased. This volume is independent of the one that each user can select to play them later.
A recipe for creating songs
These results offer, according to the researchers, a theoretical recipe for composing songs that sound modern and current. “Simple chord changes, common instruments and loud volume are the ingredients of today’s music, making these changes over old songs can make them sound new.”
The analyzed works come from a database of Columbia University (USA). They belong to various musical styles such as rock, pop, hip hop, metal and electronic and have been published between 1955 and 2010.
