A Pop Music Progression in Recent Popular Movies and Movie Trailers

Murphy, Scott

doi:10.3828/msmi.2014.9

Cited by 37 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This symmetric set of chord progressions had three important characteristics. First, the initial chord in short chord progressions has been argued to be particularly important in creating the feeling of a tonal center in popular music (Doll, 2017;Murphy, 2014;Stephenson, 2002;Temperley & de Clerq, 2013). Having an equal number of chord progressions starting on C and Am chords, meant that any response bias related to chord quality (major vs. minor) of the first chord and the general mode of the chord progression (major vs. aeolian) would be more evenly distributed and easier to detect during our analyses.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Common Chord Progressions and Feelings of Remembering

2020

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Although Western tonal syntax can generate a very large number of chord successions of various lengths and degrees of complexity, some types of music, from Renaissance dances to recent pop, tend to rely more heavily on the repetition of relatively simple, short harmonic patterns. Doll recently identified short chord progressions commonly found in North American and British popular music and proposed that these chord progressions can be stored in long-term memory in the form of harmonic schemata that allow listeners to hear them as stereotypical chord progressions. However, considering the challenges that many listeners face when trying to consciously grasp harmony, it seems likely that the feelings of remembering chord progressions varies from listener to listener. To investigate these potential differences, we asked 231 listeners with various levels of musical training to rate their confidence on whether or not they had previously heard six diatonic four-chord progressions. To control for the effect of extra-harmonic features, we instantiated the chord progressions in a way that resembled the piano of a famous song and controlled for participants’ familiarity with that song and whether they had played its chords. We found that ratings correlated with typicality for the two groups of participants who had played an instrument for at least one year and to a lesser extent for the other participants. Additionally, all our players thought of specific songs more often and mentioned songs that better matched the stimuli in harmonic terms. What we did not find, however, was any effect associated to how long participants had played an instrument or the type of the instrument they had played. Our research supports the notion that both musical training and extra-harmonic features affect listeners’ feelings of remembering chord progressions.

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Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Common Chord Progressions and Feelings of Remembering

2020

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“…In the same way, certain groups of notes (i.e., chords) sound more pleasant than others. As highlighted in the song "Four Chords" by The Axis of Awesome, it is for this reason that formulaic instrumentation (Percino, Klimek, & Thurner, 2014) and the so-called "pop-punk chord progression" 3 is seen in many contemporary pop and rock songs (Murphy, 2014;Wikipedia, 2015b). This suggests a property of music is agreeableness:…”

Section: The Nature Of Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the invisible visible: visualization of music and lyrics for deaf and hard of hearing audiences

Fourney¹

2021

Preprint

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Music is a major art form present in all cultures. It is nearly ubiquitous in Western culture. As a shared social experience, music is a shared knowledge space. Some music is so well recognized that people may refer to it by name (e.g., Beethoven’s 5th symphony, the Star Wars theme). Signing Deaf communities have indigenous forms of lyrical music. While these may not be melodic in the Western expectation, they still conform to the idea of music as metrical lyrics accompanied by instrumentation. Music is a system made up of several elements and attributes containing discrete information chunks that can be perceived by a human listener. Music communicates complex emotional signals and, in some cultures, has specific conventions designed to manipulate emotions. However, deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people are unable to fully access the richness of the aural musical experience. This dissertation explores ways to make information that is presented in an auditory modality accessible to those who cannot fully perceive it due to hearing loss or environmental barriers; making the invisible visible. A multi-disciplinary, multi-method project, this research examines the design of visualizations intended to present different kinds of otherwise invisible music information in a visible, entertaining form. Ninety-four people, 66 women and 28 men, who identified themselves as Hard of Hearing (46), Deaf (38), Cochlear Implantees (8), or Deafened (2), participated in one of four experiments. Eight of the 94 participated in a fifth experiment. Research questions included determining the fundamental properties of music that visualizations must present, determining what emotional responses users might have to visualizations of music information, and determining whether a music experience similar to that of hearing audiences can be experienced via visualizations of music information. Among several findings, this project learned that many deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people are active consumers of music; lyrics represent a key piece of music information hard of hearing people require of any visualization; different visualizations might be better suited to different musical genres or emotional moods; and the set of music visualizations tested convey some types of emotional information but do not obviously communicate the emotional component of the music.

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“…Additionally, Murphy acknowledges that the harmonic progression I–♭VI–IV ‘has risen to challenge and perhaps even replace Ex. ’s [i–VI–III–VII] [heroic] role in popular movies, if not in trailers’ (Murphy , p. 144).…”

Section: The ‘Hero’ Motion (M3)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Chromatic Mediants and Narrative Context in Film

Heine¹

2018

Music Analysis

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This article examines specific narrative connotations associated with chromatic mediant motions in film music. Following the neo‐Riemannian work of theorists such as David Kopp and Richard Cohn, and film‐music theorists such as Scott Murphy and Frank Lehman, I propose a lexicon of harmonic motions and associative connotations. The article provides a survey of both major‐mode and minor‐mode chromatic mediant relationships in as many different genres of film as possible, with science‐fiction and fantasy films being most common. Through this survey I aim to demonstrate not only the extent to which chromatic mediants have become staple devices of film‐scoring harmonic practice, with meanings so consistent that they can be subverted for ironic and satirical purposes, but also to lay out a speculative path for future film‐music theorists to use these connotations in additional film contexts.

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A Pop Music Progression in Recent Popular Movies and Movie Trailers

Cited by 37 publications

References 3 publications

Common Chord Progressions and Feelings of Remembering

Common Chord Progressions and Feelings of Remembering

Making the invisible visible: visualization of music and lyrics for deaf and hard of hearing audiences

Chromatic Mediants and Narrative Context in Film

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