Hit music formula
 

http://www.platinumblueinc.com/tabid/63/Default.aspx

I heard about Platinum Blue and their system of determining hit music.
Is the human mind so simple that anything that is appealing can be formulated?

That's not really a question that can have a definite answer,
but if you're talking about the common MTV watching vapid teen who's
most important thought is where they'll be eating for lunch, then Yes.

Most interesting. I can certainly see where they're coming from. I have no doubt that there are unique combinations of the criteria they listed (Melody, Chord progression, etc) that are intrinsically pleasing to the human brain, and groups of songs that exhibit these same characteristics may be similar on a mathematical level. Music and math are very closely related, and the human auditory system is very sensitive to this, even if the listener isn't aware of it on a conscious level.

I am also surprised at how much the image of the music universe resembles pictures I've seen of the structure of the actual universe, with superclusters of galaxies with voids between them.

The human mind is incredibly easy to cater to. It's been done with all sorts of things, really.

I mean, take one guy with an idea outside the establishment. Torture him. Kill him. Pretend like he came back from the dead. Build religion +1. People fall for the same shit over and over again, why should music be any different? Or course you can cater to the multitudes by figuring out what appeals to the brain patterns of the majority.

Yeah, I had this stoner tell me about the subliminal message in Aerosmiths "sweet emotion". He said he could hear it better with the stuff he was smoking.
I like old NES Mega Man music. There is something about the math that keeps the tunes fresh for me.

This made me think of a story I heard about black holes and B flat.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...holesounds.htm

lol are you full of absynthe or something ? :tpg:

Yeah, humans are sensible to "math" when it comes to pleasing their senses. The Greeks already came up with that a couple millenniums ago. Why is a building or a woman's curves visually appealing can be calculated with equations etc ... So yeah, I guess that according to certain parameters, it is possible to determine if a song (or anything else really) will have success or not.

However, I don't believe in this product because I believe there are a good amount of guys in the music industry that are able to not only tell what will be a hit, but to make the hit happen. People who not only have the ear for it, but are also able to detect the new trends before they explode, and who occasionally launch fully manufactured bands with great success.

In that field, I'm really doubtful that the machine is ready to replace human, because human can already do that, and a good amount of other stuff as well. =/

Machines won't really be able to replace humans in this regard until you can build a machine that will go scouting. A machine can only compare the mathematical aspects of music to existing data. In other words, a machine won't be able to discern whether a song which has no relevant data (a new kind of music) can be a hit or not.

I agree with Bradylama. A computer won't understand what to do if it comes upon something that sounds good for the first time. It might trash something beneficial or innovative without being programmed to determine what constitutes a good song from bad. Can a computer have taste and make comparisons like a human? The ability to say, "No, this will not work for such and such reason..." No, it can't.

It might be able to process a series of familiar chord progressions, but that tells little about writing a song which people might actually be able to relate to. Besides that, there other areas of song writing apart from structure and mathematics.
For instance, how would a machine determine that the snare drum is cancelling out the melody in the b section? Or perhaps that the high hats and the bass are too up front in the mix. In regards to fleshing a song together, these are parts of the equation that I simply can't see a computer being very discerning.

A computer is a computer, not a person.

That doesn't mean a computer will be capable of it. A computer can do a lot of things...writing music that caters to the human mind isn't necessarily one of them. I mean, humans can program a computer to write music. To design a program which throws a series of chords and melody types together. And it might do a decent job. But even if the music is grand...is the computer truly writing the music itself, or is it a result of its parent programming which was conducted by a human? I tend to think the latter.

This program just calculates the technical stuff, they even mention in the FAQ that a song has a potential to be a hit based on whatever the software does and on the kind of promotion it recieves.

This is a pretty neat program and I would love to play with it for lesser mainstream songs to determine their potential hit power. I just don't want to fork over the cash.

A b flat that's 57 octaves too low for any human to hear. They just throw in the note to give it a more human interest appeal. =\/

I'm not so sure. In some language theories, it is posited that there is a sort of "metalanguage" that is programmed into the human brain that allows a multitude of languages to be built from this preexisting framework. What if something similar exists for music? (I believe that something like this does exist). If the parameters of the universal musical language could be determined and programmed into a computer, you could indeed have a computer that could not only determine the worth of any type of song, (even songs from genres with small or nonexistent data pools) but could itself compose exceptionally pleasing music, as least as far as things such as instrumentation, melody, and whatnot are concerned.

Perhaps this universal musical framework could even be determined by analyzing and compiling all of the positive mathematical aspects of all of the songs currently in the musical universe.

The computer could perform a frequency analysis of the song to see if any particular band of frequencies dominate any other. If the computer knows the frequency components of the individual instruments, it can locate the problem and adjust the amplitude and/or frequency response of the instrument in question. Ideally, a song's frequency readout should have a gradually falling characteristic, resembling the readout from a pink noise graph.

You DO understand that there aren't 57 octaves in the audible range? Plus the human ear can hear notes at like 10 Hertz, right.






Lol. 10 Hertz at very high volume levels == Crap Your Pants, Fall Over, Possibly Have A Heart Attack.

Sssh! The 'terrists might hear you and get ideas!

But on a more serious note, suppose that the data found within music can be quanitifed based on abstract notions of popularity and success rates, what then would be the measuring stick? I'm sure listening to a hundred tiny variations on a rock song would be grating to any listener.

Of course the top 100 songs of all time or some such list like that could also be used as a sort of 'base' for the song hit-or-miss program.

I think you misread my post.

A bit lower than 10Hz, too. :p

Most humans can't discern sounds below 20 Hertz