Things that Robert is thinking about that keep him from accomplishing anything.

 
Hit Parade
I know it has been a while since I posted. Somehow the Britney wedding didn't seem to merit the keystrokes.

One of my running discussions with my songwriter-guitar star buddy at work is whether there are patterns to songs that get cut and become hits. My theory was that you could look for commonalities in chords or beats or whatever (my musical lexicon is poor), and that you could simply look at a frequency distribution or a kind of factor analysis of those songs (or groups of frequency distributions since there are fast hits and ballad hits and so on) and voila, you have a hit record. At least, you'll have a hit tune to which you need to attach words, but the music is the most important part. He contended there may be, but that it'd be too much work (for me) to figure out, and anyway there's a lot of pretty unique stuff. He felt stuff that hits often has something characteristically unique, a slight (or not so slight) deviation from pattern that makes it memorable.

He may have a point, but somebody in the songwriting class in which I'm loosely participating has found a website for a company that does exactly what I proposed. The group is called Hit Song Science. There's nothing like being right to start the day.

Also, it looks like I'll get another freelance piece in the Tennessean this Sunday. This one is just a list of fun facts about hockey and the Nashville Predators. You know I'll post a link when it's available.
posted by RSaunders at 8:12 AM ⇒