• Question: Is there science behind making a good song?

    Asked by anon-187187 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: David Ho

      David Ho answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      As far as I know there’s no scientific recipe for making a good song, but I’m sure many people have studied it! One thing I do know is that certain patterns are in a lot of successful songs. Here’s a funny song that puts together a lot of songs with the same four-chord pattern in them together…

    • Photo: Stewart Martin-Haugh

      Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      There are definitely sounds that people find pleasant, but that seems to differ in different cultures. For instance, Indian classical music uses a different set of musical notes to European classical music:

      In European classical music, people have come up with different sets of rules about what sounds good, and what sounds you can and cannot make. People always end up breaking those rules, and what sounds like noise to some people will sound great to other people.

      I personally like a lot of music that uses very strange sounds, often computer-generated. For instance I bought this Aphex Twin album:

      when it came out in 2001 (yes, I’m old). A lot of the sounds are impossible to make with traditional instruments – it shows what you can do with computers!

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