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[NEOPARADIGM]

The world is complex enough.

I enjoy simple things.

 

[Llyranor]

Well, even the Classical Period was a reaction to the increasing complexity of (and return to simplicity compared to) the Baroque Period.

That being said, my taste are the opposite. Feed me complex counterpoint <3 <3

 

[TEJ]

Simple does not always mean bad or low quality. The mario games are simple enough that a large audience can play and enjoy them but are often very well designed games.

It's about striking a balance between making something that's digestable to the masses but isn't completely hollow.

 

[Langdon Alger]

A lot of popular songs seem to be 90% chorus. And they're usually short, simple choruses repeated a hundred times.

 

[the1npc]

PopGAF explained.

I'm surprised how big popGAF is, this is a board of mostly males 20-40

 

[Floridian]

I'm surprised how big popGAF is, this is a board of mostly males 20-40

There's 20-40 males that likes to listen to pop music & discuss celebrity culture. Surprise Surprise.

 

[AsylumBlue]

A combination of simplicity and repetition (especially lyrically). If it's easy to remember and can be repeated multiple times, it will stick with people and they will find themselves singing along to it.

 

[twobear]

PopGAF explained.

it doesn't explain why popgaf has you so constantly bothered though

 

[terrisus]

 

[old]

There's beauty in simplicity.

 

[Sami+]

SHOCKING NEWS

 

[twobear]

There's beauty in simplicity.

psh, sounds like the kind of thing a stupid person would say

 

[wildfire]

I'm surprised how big popGAF is, this is a board of mostly males 20-40

You're surprised that when many things are made to cater to men pop songs are capable of that as well?

Pop involves more than boy bands.

 

[jWILL253]

Guess that's why Meghan is so amazing. And I suppose that means people like Beflopcé should go back to the drawing board instead of churning out shitty little indie music.

I've noticed a relatively obvious correlation between the artists you publicly stan for...

 

[Bomber Bob]

News at 11

 

[rude]

I've noticed a relatively obvious correlation between the artists you publicly stan for...

That they're all incredibly talented and revolutionary game changers in the music landscape?

 

[jWILL253]

That they're all incredibly talented and revolutionary game changers in the music landscape?

Lol.

Yeah. Sure. That...

 

[Sesha]

We pretty much knew this already, but I enjoy seeing a scientific study on it. Just look at something incredibly complex like Avant-Prog/Rock in Opposition. As any fan of that genre will tell you, any given release will be bought be like 10 people in total.

 

[Water]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTVUlbP40tI

 

[Geneijin]

I don't know why everyone is going on about how obvious the results are - if you actually read the article as opposed to just the headline, you'd see that there is a lot of interesting and non-obvious stuff in there. For example, the rise and fall of musical complexity within individual music genres.

There's a great book called 'This is your brain on music' which tries to scientifically explain how musical tastes come about. I'm going to grossly simplify what it's about because I haven't read it for a few years. It talks about how your brain, through some weird evolutionary quirk, enjoys music because it sets up expectations with a pattern, and then surprises you by modifying the pattern. More complex music can be seen as catering to those listeners who require more complicated patterns in order to feel the surprise aspect. Perhaps the more niche genres trend towards more complexity because the people who consume and create music within that style build up a kind of tolerance.

Conversely, perhaps more mainstream music genres trend towards simplicity because it doesn't require this build up of tolerance.

The article doesn't quantify musical complexity much actually.

The complexity of music is a multi-faceted concept [11]. Aspects of this complexity that are amenable to a quantitative evaluation include acoustics (the dynamic range and the rate of change in dynamic levels of audio tracks), timbre (the source of the sound and the way that this source is excited), as well as complexity measures for the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content of music (that are often based on time-frequency analyses) [12].

Over the last fifty years popular music experienced growing homogenization over time with respect to timbre [18], which is the fingerprint of musical instruments and was found to exhibit similar statistical properties as speech [19].

Here we assume that instrumentational complexity of a style is related to the set of specialized skills that are typically required of musicians to play that style. Instrumentational complexity of a style increases with (i) the number of skills required for the style and (ii) the degree of specialization of these skills. A highly complex music style, in terms of instrumentation, requires a diverse set of skills that are only relevant for a small number of other styles. A style of low instrumentational complexity requires only a small set of generic and ubiquitous skills, that can be found in a large number of other styles. If a music style requires a highly diverse set of skills, this will to some degree also be reflected in a higher number of different instruments and production technologies. In general, demand for variety translates into a larger number of instruments used in the production process. Desire for uniformity favors a limited variability in instrumentation in a production. Music styles with high instrumentational complexity therefore have large instrumentational variety and at the same time low instrumentational uniformity. It follows that the desire for variety and uniformity are not only relevant for the perception of musical patterns. The notions of variety and uniformity also apply to the instrumentations that musicians use for their pieces. Note that instrumentational complexity can be regarded as a timbral complexity measure and is not informative about, for example, rhythmic, tonal, melodic, or acoustic complexity [12].

In this work we quantify the variety and uniformity of music styles in terms of instrumentation that is typically used for their production... We characterize the instrumentational complexity of each music style by its instrumentational variety and uniformity and show (i) that there is a remarkable relationship between instrumentational varieties and uniformities of music styles, (ii) that the instrumentational complexity of individual styles may exhibit dramatic changes across the past fifty years, and (iii) that these changes in instrumentational complexity are related to the typical sales numbers of the music style.

Instrumentational complexity of a music style can be expressed as the property of having high variety and low uniformity in terms of instrumentation, i.e. the music is produced with a large number of different instruments which only appear in a small number of other styles. Such production processes require musicians with a diverse and highly specialized set of skills.

By the study's own admission, "instrumentational complexity can be regarded as a timbral complexity measure" and is just one form of quantitatively evaluating the complexity of music, which the study solely focuses on. Timbre as in "the source of the sound and the way that this source is excited." So complexity referenced in this study is merely how big or small the variety of musical instruments is utilized in any given music style. The study doesn't ever attempt to quantify musical complexity beyond that except to focus on how timbre spurs more musical complexity by the sheer number of different musical instruments or voices it can present in instrumentational variety, completely ignoring melody, harmony, and so forth. In other words, new instruments or sounds give new sound to a music style or genre simply because of its timbre. And it's true to a certain degree, spawning new music genres by invention of a new timbre, but is that itself actually musically complex if there isn't melody, harmony, tonality, etc? Depends on the definition of music in question.

 

[Thug Waffle]

is that why there isn't a copy of The Fall of Troy's "Doppelganger" album if every household worldwide?

it's gotta be...