Predictability of Harmonic Complexity Across 75 Years of Popular Music Hits
Karl Kristoffer Jensen, David G. Hebert · 2015
This study applies a novel computational strategy––Jensen Chroma Complexity (JCC)––to develop robust harmonic profiles of music recordings. This feature has been calculated on all US Billboard Top 100 hits across a 75-year period (n=6,394). Results indicate a clear historical trajectory of harmonic profiles, with strong predictability. From the 1940s is a sustained increase in JCC that nearly doubles, peaking in the 1980s, and gradually decreasing into the 21st century. Each decade was also deter- mined to correlate to a statistically distinctive harmonic profile. The find- ings presented here corroborate the effectiveness of JCC in generating ro- bust harmonic profiles that enable identification of the approximate year in which a hit song was popularized.