Let's work together on more detailed Hooktheory analysis :)

1

I have been contributing Theorytabs to help the community and improve my understanding of what makes each song special. I have noticed that most of the theory tabs on the site do not have much information on the song. This is where we can all help improve and gain a deeper understanding of the Hooktheory songs by providing what each person thinks makes the song so special.

With that being said I would like to offer some keywords to use when doing a Hooktheory analysis. This information can then be parsed for a more detailed Hooktheory analysis.

SSL - What is the Song Section Length in bars?
MM - What is the Melodies Movement type Stepwise, Skips or Leaps?
NOP - What is the Number Of Phrases in the melody?
MR - Is the Melodies Rhythm mostly Syncopated or Not.

SOP - When is the Start Of each melodic Phrase in reference to beat 1 which is the strongest beat in each measure. This can either start Before, On or After beat 1 which I call BOA.

So an example would be SOP1B which decodes to "The Start Of Phrase 1 is Before the downbeat. IMHO, this is one of the most overlooked areas when analyzing melodies. Some singers have a signature that is based on this concept like starting most of their most of their melodies On, Before or After the downbeat. Just this simple awareness has dramatically improved my understanding of melodies.

Here are some sample queries that could be done with this information.

What percentage of songs use the standard eight bar section?
What percentage of songs do not follow the standard eight bar song section?
What percentage of songs use mostly stepwise motion in the melody?
What percentage of songs use mostly skips in the melody?
What percentage of songs use mostly leaps in the melody?
What percentage of songs use mostly syncopated rhythms in the melody?

This is a start to get this project up and running. I am not sure if the Hooktheory team can add these as dropdown options and also have an option for us to add more options. If not, we can start by adding this information when we submit a Hooktheory Tab.

I look forward to your constructive feedback so we can all learn together.

Musically yours,
Stephen J. Souza

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Seems like a nice tagging system. Might need some work to implement, though.

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Thanks bigyihsuan.

I am willing to work together with others to come up with a more extensive standard that we can follow. Once we have a standard, parsing the information shouldn’t be too much of an issue. I have a good feeling that this will truly help us get a deeper understanding of music and songwriting.

Musically yours,
Stephen J. Souza

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Some interesting ideas here. I will brainstorm more with the rest of the team on this.

Dave

1 Like
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Hello Dave,

Thanks for brainstorming this idea and bringing it to the team :smile: How about the acronym of AHA for Advanced Hooktheory Analysis? I look forward to your response.

Musically yours,
Stephen J. Souza

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Hello everyone,

I put together an Advanced Hooktheory Analysis to get some feedback. For this example I decided to go with explaining my analysis without the use of the acronyms above for now. I find that the more detailed analysis that I do, the deeper understanding and appreciation I have for the songs and songwriters. I look forward to getting some constructive feedback on this advanced analysis.

Musically yours,
Stephen J. Souza

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