Scientists say they have identified the reason\nsome songs become hits and others flop: the element of surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, a study was carried out where researchers\nfrom the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany\ntook 80,000 chords from 745 classic US Billboard pop songs and ran them through\na machine-learning model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lead researcher Vincent Cheung said the key\nfinding was that songs that were hits were more likely to have \u201csurprising\u201d\nelements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSongs that we find pleasant are likely those\nwhich strike a good balance between knowing what is going to happen next and\nsurprising us with something we did not expect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnderstanding how music activates our pleasure\nsystem in the brain could explain why listening to music might help us feel\nbetter when we are feeling blue.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Caleb James, a songwriting lecturer at Griffith\nUniversity\u2019s Queensland Conservatorium and a former member of Brisbane rock\nband Rhubarb, said the research was scientific confirmation of what many\nmusicians understood intuitively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s really challenging since the dawn of time\nfor songwriters is striking that balance between including enough familiar\nthings in a song so the audience understands it, with enough surprises that\nmakes the old stuff feel new again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSome people are more adept at including new\ninformation in a way that connects it to the stuff that\u2019s already well known \u2013\nit\u2019s the key between songs that technically have the same ingredients but one\nwas a hit and the other wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while science had identified the\nunderlying causes of why songs were pleasing to the brain, Mr James said there\nwas no \u201crecipe\u201d for a hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is a definite balance between having that\ntechnical focus but also letting the song develop naturally so that it feels\nlike it\u2019s being birthed, being created, rather than it being just a recipe,\u201d he\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study stripped out melody and lyrics and\nfocused on chord progressions to remove any associations people may have had for\ncertain songs, and then played those progressions for people attached to an MRI\nbrain scanner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study showed that a \u201csurprising\u201d musical\nmoment was pleasant to listen to; however, they also found that when listeners\nwere uncertain about what to expect next, they found it more satisfying to hear\n\u201cfamiliar\u201d chords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across the research subjects, three brain regions\nlit up during a musical \u201csurprise\u201d: the amygdala, the hippocampus and the\nauditory cortex, which are associated with emotions, learning and memory, and\nprocessing sound, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By contrast, activity in the nucleus accumbens,\nwhich had been identified in previous studies as a part of the brain that might\nbe involved in musical pleasure, activated only during uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers believe the findings could be\nused to enhance future studies on humans\u2019 appreciation of other art\nforms including dance and film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s also hoped the data can inform future work\non creating musical generation algorithms or even predicting musical trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the record, the research found the three\nhighest-rated chord progressions from the songs they used were from the Beatles\nclassic Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Invisible Touch<\/em> by Genesis and Hooked on a\nFeeling<\/em> by B.J. Thomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Mr James said for his money, one of\nthe best songs ever written, which was also a good example of the phenomenon in\nthe study, was Somewhere over the Rainbow<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe melody, lyrics and chord progression in that\nis unbelievable \u2013 it has lots of \u2018normal\u2019 parts in it but also lots of little\nmelodic surprises; certain intervals, certain chord movements that make it\nsound really mature and modern,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAny songwriter worth their salt, there\u2019s no way you could listen to that song and say it\u2019s poorly written.\u201d
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