George Russell Lydian Concept Pdf' title='George Russell Lydian Concept Pdf' />Medieval Lydian mode. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this mode was described in two ways. The first way is the diatonic octave species from F up to F an octave. I analyzed the chords of 1. This is what I found. The Hooktheory Blog. For many people, listening to music elicits such an emotional response that the idea of dredging it for statistics and structure can seem odd or even misguided. But knowing these patterns can give one a deeper more fundamental sense for how music works for me this makes listening to music a lot more interesting. Of course, if you play an instrument or want to write songs, being aware of these things is obviously of great practical importance. In this article, well look at the statistics gathered from 1. First well look at the relative popularity of different chords based on the frequency that they appear in the chord progressions of popular music. Then well begin to look at the relationship that different chords have with one another. For example, if a chord is found in a song, what can we say about the probability for what the next chord will be that comes after it To make quantitative statements about music you need to have data lots of it. Further reading. Russell, George 2001 1953. Chapter 1 The Lydian scale The seminal source of the principal of tonal gravity. George Russells Lydian chromatic. Introduction. Please note that most of these Brand Names are registered Trade Marks, Company Names or otherwise controlled and their inclusion in this index is. Guitar tab websites have tons of information about the chord progressions that songs use, but the quality is not very high. Just as important, the information is not in a format suitable for gathering statistics. So, over the past 2 years weve been slowly and painstakingly building up a database of songs taken mainly from the billboard 1. At the moment the database of songs has over 1. The genre and where they are taken from is important. This is an analysis of mainly popular music, not jazz or classical, so the results are not meant to be treated as universal. If youre interested, you can check out the database here. Download Program Tic Tac Toe Visual Basic. The entries contain raw information about the chords and melody, while throwing out information about the arrangement and instrumentation. We can use the information in the song database to answer all sorts of questions. In this introductory post, Ill look at a few interesting preliminary results, but we invite you to propose your own questions in the comments at the end of the article. Lets get started. Are some chords more commonly used than others This seems like such a basic question, but the answer doesnt actually tell us much because songs are written in different keys. A song written in the key of C will have lots of C chords in it, while a song written in G will probably have lots of Gs. That G chords are more popular than C chords is likely only a reflection of the fact that its easier to play on the guitar and piano. So instead of answering this meaningless question, Ill answer the slightly more interesting one of, what keys are most popular for the songs in the database Most popular keys in music. C and its relative minor, A are the most common by far. After that there is a general trend favoring key signatures with less sharps and flats but this is not universal. Personal website of composer and saxophonist Javier Arau, the author of several works of jazz pedagogy and music theory, including Augmented Scale Theory. For many people, listening to music elicits such an emotional response that the idea of dredging it for statistics and structure can seem odd or even misguided. LCC for Guitar Foreword Back in the mid 20th century, jazz musician and composer George Russell came out with his vitally important book The Lydian Chromatic. E with three flats, for instance, is slightly though not statistically significantly more common than F with only one flat. B only has two flats but is way at the end of the popularity scale with only 4 of songs using that as the key. What are the most common chords Part 2. Its much more interesting to look at songs written in a single common key. That way direct comparisons are possible and more illuminating. We transposed every song in the database to be in the key of C to make them directly comparable. Then we looked at the number of chord progressions that contained a given chord. Below weve plotted the relative frequency that different chords occurred in descending order. Chord use when all songs are transposed to the key of C major. As expected, C major is a very common chord for songs written in C its the I chord in Roman numeral or Nashville Number notation, but F major and G major the IV and V respectively are used just as often. Interestingly, F and G actually show up in more chord progressions than C C major is the tonal center and one might expect it to be ubiquitous, but it turns out to be pretty common to omit this chord in some sections of a song for effect. My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion is one of many examples in the database that exhibit this behavior. Clicking on the above link will take you to the songs entry in the database and show you that of the two sections that were analyzed the chorus, and the verse, only one contains a C. The A minor chord is the next most popular, but after that there is a significant drop off in use. If youve ever heard someone complain about the four chord pop song, this is what they are talking about. Is there a reasonable explanation for the relative popularity of certain chords Why are A minor chords so popular but A major chords practically non existent There wont always be easy answers, but in this case these results can easily be explained with some basic music theory. A discussion of this is out of the scope of this post, but well definitely explore the music theory behind this in future articles. Even if you dont know the music theory behind this yet, there is a lot of practical information to take away. If your song is written in C and you want it to sound good, you probably shouldnt use any A major chords unless you really know what youre doing. Better stick with A minor, for example. The team over at Apple, Inc. Their latest version of Garage. Band lets you play with Smart Instruments that make you sound like an expert musician even if youve never player a note before. Im skeptical of their claims, but look at the chords theyve chosen for these Smart Instruments Dont those chords look familiar Based on what our database is showing, I might suggest some small changes. In particular, Bdim, while diatonic in C, is much less common than some other chords, like D, and E. Perhaps in the next version of garageband, Apple will fix this they really should. However, overall Apple is making good choices for the chords that the average garage band musician might want to start with. If a song happens to use a particular chord, what chord is most likely to come nextThe previous question took an overall look at the relative popularity of different chords, but we can also look at the relationship that different chords have to one another. For example, a great question to ask is, if a song happens to use a particular chord, what chord is most likely to come next Is it random, or will certain chords sound better than others and thus be more likely to show up in the popular songs that make up our database There are a lot of relationships to analyze, but well start it off by looking at just one for now For songs written in C, what chords are most likely to come after an E minor chord The relative popularity of what the next chord will be is shown below Chords most likely to come after E minor. This result is striking. If you write a song in C with an E minor in it, you should probably think very hard if you want to put a chord that is anything other than an A minor chord or an F major chord. For the songs in the database, 9. There are lot of interesting questions to ask, and we want to know what is most interesting to you. Let us know in the comments below. Other posts in the 1.