I Analyzed Chord Progressions in 680k Songs

Welcome back to Can’t Get Much Higher, where music and data meet. Before we get into this week’s topic, here are some recent pieces that people have enjoyed: Now, onto a big dataset about chords. I Analyzed the Chord Progressions of 680k Songs By Chris Dalla Riva Chordonomicon. I couldn’t get the word out of my head. Every syllable was just as beautiful as the last. Try saying it. Kord-oh-nom-i-con. It sounds like a mystical word. And, for me, it is. But it’s a term that didn’t exist last year. “Chordonomicon” was coined by 5 researches last October when they needed a name for a new project that they’d just completed. This project pulled together chord progressions and genres for nearly 680,000 songs from the popular music learning website Ultimate-Guitar. I knew I had to do something with the data. But what? A screenshot of Ultimate-Guitar , a popular music learning website Typically, when I write a data-driven piece for this newsletter, my approach is somewhat scientific. Firs ... Read full article.