The Hidden History of Pop Music | Matthias Mauch | TEDxGoodenoughCollege

Everyone has an opinion on music; people enjoy it daily all around the world. Matthias Mauch enjoys it too, but he also likes to look at it from a slightly different perspective. By using quantitative analyses, he looks a little closer on what is actually happening in popular music during the last 50 years. His analyses show remarkable findings in the structure and diversity of music. It is almost like looking at music with a pair of evolutionary biologist eyes…well…that IS what he eventually did - he utilised selection, recombination and mutation, to explain the evolution of music.
Matthias Mauch is a researcher in music informatics. As an undergraduate mathematics student in Rostock, Germany, he earned his pocket money as an amateur musician. Combining his passions for maths and music he went on to do a Ph.D. in electronic engineering at Queen Mary University of London - on algorithms to automatically transcribe chords from music recordings.
After a post-doc in Japan and a Research Fellowship at Last.fm returned to Queen Mary in 2012 on a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship, investigating music signal processing, human singing, and the evolution of musical style. He’s published over 40 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers.
Together with his research collaborators from Imperial College London he’s a recipient of a 2012 Cozzarelli Prize for scientific excellence and originality from the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx

[@jimcatalfamo8034]

Styles of music usually stick around. A lot of changes usually start Midway in each decade and towards the end of each decade you start seeing obvious changes when music is going into new directions. What you're seeing in your charts that the computer is not analyzing is the influence of the times. It's an aldis in that music is changing. People are changing. Attitudes are changing. And the biggest thing that your computer is missing is that the youth is starting to change. Music is a reflection of us. So in reality what's your charts are showing is the change in us. But that went over your head it seems.

[@VishalDas09]

You had me at "Mama, ooooh"

[@stanley-5323]

He's the third member of Flight of the Conchords

[@DJEverLee]

As a Dj I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciate this!

[@ReidGarwin]

Hip hop and rap wasnt my first reasoning with the change from 85 up, I thought it was grunge lol

[@sabrinasjourney]

Grunge still had some blues influence

[@jeromebrooks7]

Tambra colors must mean fast forward

[@gunajitthebiglicagentsungl7200]

I don,t know pop music but like pop music

[@hxd3620]

Great talk!

[@tokesnationpropagandaminis1665]

“In 1992, I was a 12-year-old sheltered young boy, growing up in a small town in Germany”. I’m not sure whether I’m going to get the fourth estate or the fourth Reich, but he sure has got my attention : )

[@IndieGuvenc]

see that dip at 12:46, that's indie rock

[@IndieGuvenc]

also at 15:16 you see it

[@abuAbduAllah100]

You should answer one single question sir, why do we feel that all music sound alike?!

[@kaganmutu7801]

you like it too, search IWAN LOVYNSKY - DOESNTMATTER

[@hkl614]

Wayne's world was 92? whaaaa?

[@bobbyd7524]

No diversity in the 80's? Bogus! Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Los Lobos, Tone Loc, De La Soul, Run-DMC, Young MC.

[@MrThedonhead]

Different singing voice but could all be using the same instruments and studio . All could be using the same computer

[@sauravligal5809]

observe musical science...

[@OneAdam12Adam]

Disco music came from Gospel music. Pure and simple.

[@naphtalilucky2050]

Nope Disco came from classical music

[@greenkostia]

Erm