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A corpus analysis of rock harmony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2011

Trevor de Clercq  and
David Temperley
Trevor de Clercq
Affiliation:
Eastman School of Music, Department of Music Theory, 26 Gibbs Street, Rochester, NY 14604, USA. E-mail: trevor.declercq@rochester.edu
David Temperley
Affiliation:
Eastman School of Music, Department of Music Theory, 26 Gibbs Street, Rochester, NY 14604, USA. E-mail: dtemperley@esm.rochester.edu
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Abstract

In this study, we report a corpus analysis of rock harmony. As a corpus, we used Rolling Stone magazine's list of the ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’; we took the 20 top-ranked songs from each decade (the 1950s through the 1990s), creating a set of 100 songs. Both authors analysed all 100 songs by hand, using conventional Roman numeral symbols. Agreement between the two sets of analyses was over 90 per cent. The analyses were encoded using a recursive notation, similar to a context-free grammar, allowing repeating sections to be encoded succinctly. The aggregate data was then subjected to a variety of statistical analyses. We examined the frequency of different chords and chord transitions. The results showed that IV is the most common chord after I and is especially common preceding the tonic. Other results concern the frequency of different root motions, patterns of co-occurrence between chords, and changes in harmonic practice across time.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 47 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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