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Comment by Skunkleton | Hacker News Reader

Not to say that I think modern pop is anything special, but how do these three categories of measurements correlate? How do you compare something like Dr. Dre's 2001 to Led Zeppelin 3 with only these measurements? I would imagine that 2001 would rank lower on these metrics, but I don't think anyone would describe it as "worse".

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I suspect you need a different measure for the vocals, as opposed “music” itself.

The sounds other than vocal part of Dr Dre’s album probably wouldn’t really stand on their own and much is quite repetitive (as noted in the study).

Led Zeppelin Immigrant Song can definitely be enjoyed without the vocals, though the vocals really make it recognizable.

Similarly, there are quite a few rock songs that have been made into pretty interesting orchestra pieces.

Would be interesting to see if there any hip hop masterpieces that have been arranged for classical music.

> Would be interesting to see if there any hip hop masterpieces that have been arranged for classical music.

Nas with National Symphony Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei_l3h4J-Ck Deltron 3030: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7FxVSDLonY

The TV series Westworld had a scene where they had Shogun era musicians playing a Wu Tang Clan song on traditional Japanese instruments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__DEAK3AinM

It's shocking how if you take a song from a genre that is focused heavily on vocals and take out the vocals, it's not a very interesting song anymore. I think rap -> poetry is a more common conversion than rap -> orchestral music because the latter is just crossing too big of a divide between music styles.

Yeah, that sounds right. There are some producers that can stand on their own though too, but they would probably do well in the metrics in TFA.

When a piece of music is both simple and captivating, I view that as a huge achievement. I can play simple songs, but no one wants to listen to them (and rightly so!). The Ramones can play even simpler songs, and they are special. I have no idea how to measure something like this.

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