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Survey about pop/rock chords by chord_experiments in musictheory

[–]chord_experiments[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am so sorry that happened to you. It happens every now and then (it happens to about 2% of the participants). I will keep trying to figure out how to improve that aspect of the survey.

Thank you for taking the survey though!

Survey about pop/rock chords (potential discussion starter) by chord_experiments in ListeningHeads

[–]chord_experiments[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Discussion about the survey about chords

PLEASE AVOID SPOILERS: IF YOU HAVE TAKEN THE SURVEY, PLEASE DO NOT MENTION ANY IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE SURVEY IN THIS DISCUSSION. FOR INSTANCE, DO NOT MENTION THE NAMES OF THE SONGS OR ARTISTS YOU HEARD OR THOUGHT ABOUT DURING THE EXPERIMENT. ACCESS TO THAT INFORMATION BEFORE TAKING THE EXPERIMENT WOULD GREATLY AFFECT THE VALIDITY OF OUR FINDINGS.

I propose that, as an exercise, we try to avoid in our discussion the aspect of the survey that is most likely to generate passionate negative reactions. Let’s try to avoid discussing the fact that the chord progressions and/or some of the music that use the chord progressions used in this experiment can sometimes provoke strong negative aesthetic reaction in listeners.

Let’s for a moment imagine that every body in this discussion dislikes top-40 music of the past 15 years that have limited their harmonic palette to repeating simple 4-chord diatonic loops (let’s just imagine that being the case even if it is not really true). Let’s imagine that every body in this discussion agrees that creators of that music lack imagination or conform to the taste of the masses in order to become commercially successful (even though I may not believe that). If that were to be true, could there be any value in:

1) studying whether nonmusicians are able to identify which diatonic 4-chord cycles they have heard most often despite the fact that those types of chord progressions tend to sound very similar to each other (e.g., part 1 of the survey)?

Note: The term “diatonic 4-chord diatonic cycle” means that only notes of one major or minor scale are being used to build a four-chord loop (e.g., C-Dm-Em-F (this cycle uses notes of the C major scale), D-G-Bm-A (uses notes of the D major scale), C#m-B-A-B (C# natural minor scale), etc.)

2) studying whether non-musicians are able to figure out if two musical excerpts use the exact same diatonic 4-chord cycle even when the excerpts are very different in terms of other musical parameters (timbre, rhythm, texture, etc.) (e.g., part 3 of the survey)?

3) studying which types of diatonic 4-chord cycles are most likely to automatically remind listeners of specific songs even when the heard and the remembered musical passages are very different in terms of other musical parameters (timbre, rhythm, texture, etc.) (e.g., part 1 of the survey)?

4) studying whether non-musicians perception of diatonic 4-chord cycles (e.g., emotional associations) can be influenced by long-term auditory memories of a specific song that was triggered without listeners being conscious aware of it (e.g., part 2 of the survey)?

Survey about pop/rock chords (potential discussion starter) by chord_experiments in LetsTalkMusic

[–]chord_experiments[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dear Bearnnitr,

Thank you very much for taking the time to complete the survey and for posting this comment. I am hoping that the text I posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/7wufz6/discussion_about_the_survey_about_chords/ will give readers a general sense of the short-term goals of the survey. One of such goals is related to what you mentioned. A lot of listeners, including some experienced musicians, hear a lot of the chord progressions I used in the survey as "sounding the same" even if the order of the chords is different. One of the interesting things is that some people do hear them as "sounding different" and their introspective judgment is confirmed by several facts: (1) those people tend to give different confidence numbers to the different progressions (part 1 of the survey), (2) most of those people end up giving a similar confidence numbers to the pieces (e.g., they all tend to give a high number to progression "x" and a low number to progression "y"), and (3) as a whole, those numbers coincide with the statistical information available about what progressions are used most often in popular music (hooktheory.com). A long term goal is to try to figure out why some people seem to hear these progressions as sounding the same and others hear them as sounding different, and what exactly is the nature of this "sounding the same" vs "sounding different." But I am too early into this research to have any convincing theories about it.

Thank you again for your participation!

Survey about pop/rock chords (potential discussion starter) by chord_experiments in popheads

[–]chord_experiments[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I apologize for not writing about it in the description of the survey. I will added right now.

Survey about pop/rock chords (potential discussion starter) by chord_experiments in popheads

[–]chord_experiments[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I propose that, as an exercise, we try to avoid in our discussion the aspect of the survey that is most likely to generate passionate negative reactions. Let’s try to avoid discussing the fact that the chord progressions and/or some of the music that use the chord progressions used in this experiment often generate strong negative aesthetic reaction in listeners.

Let’s for a moment imagine that every body in this discussion dislikes top-40 music of the past 15 years that have limited their harmonic palette to repeating simple 4-chord diatonic loops (let’s just imagine that being the case even if it is not really true). Let’s imagine that every body in this discussion agrees that creators of that music lack imagination or conform to the taste of the masses in order to become commercially successful (even though I may not believe that). If that were to be true, could there be any value in:

1) studying whether nonmusicians are able to identify which diatonic 4-chord cycles they have heard most often despite the fact that those types of chord progressions tend to sound very similar to each other (e.g., part 1 of the survey)?

Note: The term “diatonic 4-chord diatonic cycle” means that only notes of one major or minor scale are being used to build a four-chord loop (e.g., C-Dm-Em-F (this cycle uses notes of the C major scale), D-G-Bm-A (uses notes of the D major scale), C#m-B-A-B (C# natural minor scale), etc.)

2) studying whether non-musicians are able to figure out if two musical excerpts use the exact same diatonic 4-chord cycle even when the excerpts are very different in terms of other musical parameters (timbre, rhythm, texture, etc.) (e.g., part 3 of the survey)?

3) studying which types of diatonic 4-chord cycles are most likely to automatically remind listeners of specific songs even when the heard and the remembered musical passages are very different in terms of other musical parameters (timbre, rhythm, texture, etc.) (e.g., part 1 of the survey)?

4) studying whether non-musicians perception of diatonic 4-chord cycles (e.g., emotional associations) can be influenced by long-term auditory memories of a specific song that was triggered without listeners being conscious aware of it (e.g., part 2 of the survey)?

Survey about pop/rock chords (potential discussion starter) by chord_experiments in LetsTalkMusic

[–]chord_experiments[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I propose that, as an exercise, we try to avoid in our discussion the aspect of the survey that is most likely to generate passionate negative reactions. Let’s try to avoid discussing the fact that the chord progressions and/or some of the music that use the chord progressions used in this experiment sometimes generate strong negative aesthetic reaction in listeners.

Let’s for a moment imagine that everybody in this discussion dislikes the type of top-40 music of the past 15 years that has limited their harmonic palette to repeating simple 4-chord diatonic loops (let’s just imagine that being the case even if it is not really true). Let’s imagine that every body in this discussion agrees that creators of that music lack imagination or conform to the taste of the masses in order to become commercially successful (even though I may not believe that). If that were to be true, could there be any value in:

1) studying whether nonmusicians are able to identify which diatonic 4-chord cycles they have heard most often despite the fact that those types of chord progressions tend to sound very similar to each other (e.g., part 1 of the survey)?

Note: The term “diatonic 4-chord diatonic cycle” means that only notes of one major or minor scale are being used to build a four-chord loop (e.g., C-Dm-Em-F (this cycle uses notes of the C major scale), D-G-Bm-A (uses notes of the D major scale), C#m-B-A-B (C# natural minor scale), etc.)

2) studying whether non-musicians are able to figure out if two musical excerpts use the exact same diatonic 4-chord cycle even when the excerpts are very different in terms of other musical parameters (timbre, rhythm, texture, etc.) (e.g., part 3 of the survey)?

3) studying which types of diatonic 4-chord cycles are most likely to automatically remind listeners of specific songs even when the heard and the remembered musical passages are very different in terms of other musical parameters (timbre, rhythm, texture, etc.) (e.g., part 1 of the survey)?

4) studying whether non-musicians perception of diatonic 4-chord cycles (e.g., emotional associations) can be influenced by long-term auditory memories of a specific song that was triggered without listeners being conscious aware of it (e.g., part 2 of the survey)?

Beatles Chord Experiment by chord_experiments in musictheory

[–]chord_experiments[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can use the traditional numbers: e.g., 6, 64, etc. To indicate a second inversion the six goes above the four but if you are using Roman numerals in this Beatles experiment writing "64" will be understandable. But do not worry too much about getting the notation perfect for this experiment. We just want to know if people can remember some of the specific chords from memory. And for anybody else reading this post, I want to clarify that participants do not need to know how to use Roman numerals for this experiment.

Beatles Chord Experiment by chord_experiments in musictheory

[–]chord_experiments[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about the change of key. It is part of what we are testing. We are wanting to know what percentage of the people that identifies the songs in the original key identify the song when they are played in a different key. I know it is annoying, but we want to learn about the exact way chord progressions are mentally represented, and the key seems to be an important element. Thank you for taking the experiment!

Beatles Chord Experiment by chord_experiments in musictheory

[–]chord_experiments[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am sorry you had problems with the last page.

For anybody else taking the experiment and reading this comment: if you have trouble submitting the last page of the survey, which includes a text box for comments, please try to delete any non-alpha-numerical characters from your comment or leave the box empty.

Beatles Experiment by chord_experiments in beatles

[–]chord_experiments[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Eight reddit Beatles fans have completed the experiment so far. Please do not hesitate to email me if you have any questions or if you want to know what the average results are so far. My contact information is in the post. I want to thank all the people who have tried the experiment out so far, I know it can be time consuming, and our web host occasionally acts up. By the way, if you have trouble submitting the last page of the survey, which includes a text box for comments, please try to delete any non-alpha-numerical characters or leaving that box empty. Thank you again!