This page uses a simple children’s song, Hot Cross Bun, to illustrate how the various metrics work in the context of the entire Skiptune database. Before you view this page, it would be best to familiarize yourself with the music metric definitions, which also use Hot Cross Buns to illustrate the individual metrics. Here, we compare the value of each metric for Hot Cross Buns with that of the whole database to illustrate how one may use the metrics to draw conclusions about tunes. This page was last updated in February 2026 with 82,000 tunes in the database.
How Hot Cross Buns Compares with All Tunes in Database
| Metric (“Patterns” refers to 2-Note Patterns) | Hot Cross Buns | 82,000 Tunes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | # Patterns per note (%) | 41 | 47 |
| 2 | # of Single-occurrence Patterns | 4 | 12 |
| 3 | Single-occurrence Patterns as % of Tune Patterns | 57 | 54 |
| 4 | Single-occurrence Patterns As % of Notes | 24 | 28 |
| 5 | # Rests Per Note (%) | 0 | 4 |
| 6 | Absolute Avg Pitch Change | 1 | 8 |
| 7 | Relative Avg Pitch Change | 1 | 3 |
| 8 | Use of Common Patterns (%) | 5.4 | 3.3 |
| 9 | % of Tunes with Unique Patterns | 0 | 1.4 |
| 10 | Range of Pitches (Lo/Hi Difference) | 4 | 16 |
| 11 | Average Duration Ratio | 1.2 | 1.3 |
| 12 | # Runs Per Note (%) | 29 | 42 |
| 13 | Average Run Length (%) | 1.8 | 2 |
| 14 | Max Run Length Average | 2 | 4.8 |
| 15 | Repetitive Durations (%) | 59 | 52 |
| 16 | Repetitive Pitches (%) | 41 | 13 |
| 17 | Variety of Two-Note Pattern Frequences (Weighted) | 3.6 | 3.2 |
| 18 | Variety of Two-Note Pattern Frequences (Unweighted) | 4.2 | 2.7 |
| 19 | Pick-up Duration | 0 | 2.2 |
| 20 | Pick-up % | 0 | 14 |
| 21 | Avg Duration Ratio Going to Rests | 0 | 0.56 |
| 22 | Avg Duration Ratio Coming from Rests | 0 | 0.48 |
| 23 | Avg # of Different Pitches | 3 | 11 |
| 24 | Avg # of Different Pitch Differentials | 4 | 11 |
| 25 | Avg # of Different Durations | 3 | 5 |
| 26 | Avg # of Different Duration Ratios | 4 | 7 |
| 27 | Avg Normalized # of Different Pitches (%) | 18 | 24 |
| 28 | Avg Normalized # of Pitch Differentials (%) | 24 | 25 |
| 29 | Avg Normalized # of Durations (%) | 18 | 12 |
| 30 | Avg Normalized # of Duration Ratios (%) | 24 | 17 |
| 31 | Avg # of Repeated Intervals (%) | 47 | 13 |
| 32 | Avg # of Repeated Duration Ratios (%) | 35 | 36 |
| 33 | 3-note Palindromes (%) | 0 | 7 |
| 34 | % Tunes with Same Patterns | 50 | 30 |
Preliminary Information
While not itself a metric, the total number of notes in a melody is sometimes used as a denominator to normalize (standardize) a metric. For Hot Cross Buns, there are 17 notes (refer to figure). In what follows on this web page, the word “patterns” always refers to two-note patterns.
1. Number of Patterns Within a Tune As Percent of Notes
The seven patterns in Hot Cross Buns is 41 percent of its number of notes, while the average tune in the database has 47 percent of its notes comprised of different two-note patterns.
2.Number of Single-occurrence Patterns in Tune
Of its seven total two-note patterns, Hot Cross Buns has four that occur exactly one time in the tune. The corresponding metric for the average tune is 12 once-occurring patterns. In a children’s song, patterns are often repeated for ease of learning, so there are likely to be fewer patterns that occur just once in a tune like Hot Cross Buns. For your convenience, these patterns in the Hot Cross Buns notation, above, are the half note G to quarter note B in the first measure, the half note G to the eighth note G in the second to third measure, the G eight note to the A eighth note in the middle of the third measure, and finally the eighth note A to the quarter note B in the third to fourth measure.
3. Single-Occurrence Patterns As a Percent of Tune Patterns
Tunes in the database on average have 54 percent two-note patterns that are used exactly once in the tune, when expressed as a percent of all different two-note patterns per tune. That same metric for Hot Cross Buns is 57 percent, slightly higher. This appears to be a counter-intuitive result because simple children’s songs tend to have many repeating patterns and should result in a lower percent devoted to patterns that occur only once. It would be worth at some future point exploring this metric for other nursery songs to see if Hot Cross Buns is an anomaly.
4. Single-Occurrence Patterns As a Percent of Notes
Tunes in the database on average have 28 percent two-note patterns that are used exactly once in the tune, when expressed as a percent of the number of notes in a tune. That same metric for Hot Cross Buns is 24 percent. In contrast to the previous metric (#3), the result here is intuitive. You’d expect a nursery song to have fewer non-repeating patterns, and that’s the case for Hot Cross Buns.
5. Number of Rests per Note
Children’s songs often have no rests because of their simplicity, and this is true for Hot Cross Buns, leaving a value of zero for this metric. However, for the database as a whole, where rests are common, the average number of rests per note is 3 to 4 percent. While this number is low, rests are used sparingly in general, and we see elsewhere in the “Findings” menu on this website that there’s quite a bit of variation in how rests are used by composers.
6. Absolute Pitch Change Average
When songs have no rests, such as Hot Cross Buns, they tend to have smaller average changes in pitches. For Hot Cross Buns, the average pitch change is 1 (rounded to the nearest integer), whereas the Skiptune database has an average pitch change (including rests) of 7. The database metric is larger than our example tune because many tunes have rests in them and that tends to increase the value of this metric relative to a tune like Hot Cross buns with no rests.
7. Relative Pitch Change Average
When rests are excluded from the previous metric, it becomes a Relative Pitch Change Average. In the new metric, Hot Cross Buns has the same average pitch change of 1 when compared to the previous metric because there are no rests in the tune to exclude. For the database as a whole, however, this metric has a value of 3. This means that even though we’ve eliminated the effects of rests, our simple Hot Cross Buns tune has a smaller average pitch change than most tunes in the database. If we compare the Absolute Pitch Change Average for the database, 7, to the Relative Pitch Change Average for the database, 3, we see the effect of including or excluding rests, respectively. Including rests will always result in a larger metric, other things being equal, because jumping to or from rests is at least 42 in value, whereas the vast number of other changes in pitch are less.
8. Use of Common Patterns (%)
This metric measures how common the patterns are in the tune, with higher numbers associated with more commonly used patterns. Hot Cross Buns, a simple song, uses many common patterns and has a value for this metric of 5.4. The database as a whole has a value of 3.4, indicating that most tunes use less common patterns. In the future we may square this metric before using it to highlight the differences.
9. Percent of Tunes with Unique Patterns
This metric reflects the number of tunes with unique patterns. The denominator is the total number of tunes. For an individual tune this metric has a value of either 0 or 100 percent. For Hot Cross Buns, it is zero. For the database as a whole, this metric has a value of 1.6 percent, which means that fewer than two percent of the tunes have at least one unique pattern. This metric somewhat duplicates the previous metric and has not proved to be useful.
10. Range of Pitches
The range of pitch values in Hot Cross Buns is four, while it is 16 for the average tune in the database. Hot Cross Buns has an especially small range, even for a children’s song. A value of 15 for the entire database means that the average tune has a range of roughly an octave and a quarter. This metric is useful when comparing musical genres.
11. Note Duration Ratio
The average duration ratio (length of each note, where a quarter note is valued at “one”) in Hot Cross Buns is 1.2, whereas it is 1.3 for the entire database. This is one of the few instances where Hot Cross Buns does not differ too much from the rest of the database. In both cases, the average length of a note is a little more than a quarter note.
12. Number of Runs Per Note
Hot Cross Buns has five runs, which divided by the 17 notes in the tune equals 29 percent. (Skiptune counts every direction change in pitch as a new run.) The database as a whole has a value of 42 percent for this metric. Another way to express this metric is that Hot Cross Buns reverses the direction of its notes fewer times per note than the average tune in the database.
13 Average Run Length
Hot Cross Buns has a shorter run length (the number of notes counted before a change in pitch direction) than the average tune in the database, 1.8 notes versus 2.0 notes, respectively. That is, most tunes have, on average, longer runs than the simple Hot Cross buns.
14. Max Run Length
The value of this metric for Hot Cross Buns is two because the longest run is just two patterns (three notes). Observe that repeated pitches, such as the G or A eighth notes in the tune, don’t count toward run length. For the entire database, the average max run is 4.8, a much larger value. Because Hot Cross Buns is an extremely short tune (which we chose for its compactness to use as our example), the runs are necessarily shorter than the runs in most tunes.
15. Repetitive Note Durations
The percent of note durations in Hot Cross Buns that repeat the previous note is 59 percent, whereas the metric for the whole database is 52 percent. Not surprisingly, there are a more repeats of durations in the simple children’s song than in songs in general.
16. Repetitive Note Pitches
The percent of notes that repeat the previous note’s pitch is 41 percent in Hot Cross Buns, but a much lower 13 percent for the average tune in the database. While one would expect a children’s song to have more repetition, this is a large difference, perhaps explained by our choice of example. Hot Cross Buns is a short tune even when compared to other children’s tunes, so the repetitive notes in the tune make up a large percent of the tune itself.
17. Spread of Two-Note Pattern Frequencies, Weighted
For Hot Cross Buns, this metric has a value of 3.6, and for the database as a whole a value of 3.2. Remember that this metric measures the spread of the two-note pattern frequencies, counting repetitions, as found in the entire database, so these numbers suggest that the children’s song Hot Cross Buns tends to use a wider spread of patterns than most tunes. While children’s songs in general tend to use a small variety of common patterns, it may be that the brevity of Hot Cross Buns renders this tune an anomaly with respect to this metric.
18. Spread of Two-Note Pattern Frequencies, Unweighted
Again, Hot Cross Buns has a higher value for the variety of two-note patterns even when repetitive patterns are eliminated from the metric (unweighted). The value is 4.2 for Hot Cross Buns and 2.7 for the whole database for this metric, an even larger difference than measured by the previous weighted metric.
19. Pick-up Duration
There is no pick-up note at the beginning of Hot Cross Buns, so the value of this metric is zero for the tune. In the database as a whole, this metric has a value of 2.4, which means that on average tunes have a pick-up duration of a little more than an eighth note. Because of the arbitrariness of pick-up notes, this metric has not proved to be useful.
20. Pick-up Percent
Again zero for Hot Cross Buns because there’s no pick-up note, this metric has a value of 14 percent for the database as a whole. In other words, about 14 percent of the duration of the first measure of the average tune is made up of a pick-up note(s). Again, this metric has proved to be unuseful.
21. Going to Rests
Hot Cross Buns has no rests, so this metric is zero for that tune. For the database as a whole, the average duration ratio of the notes followed by a rest in tunes has a value of 0.55. This means that on average a rest following a note has a duration value a little more than half that of the duration value of the note preceding it.
22. Coming from Rests
Zero for Hot Cross Buns because of the lack of rests in that tune, the average of duration ratios of rests followed by notes has a value of 0.48 for the database as a whole. That means that on average the note following a rest has a little less than half the duration value of the rest.
23. Number of Different Pitches
The number of different pitches used to compose the simple Hot Cross Buns is only three. Not many tunes are comprised of so few pitches. The average tune in the database uses 11 pitches, so you can appreciate that there’s quite a variety in how many pitches are used to create tunes.
24. Number of Different Pitch Differentials
Hot Cross Buns has only four different pitch changes (differentials), whereas the database as a whole has around 11. This difference again reflects the simplicity of our example versus most tunes.
25. Number of Different Durations
The tune Hot Cross Buns has three different note durations, whereas the typical or average tune in the database has about five. This difference between our example and the average tune is not as pronounced as it is for the number of pitches, and we would indeed expect there to be less variety among tunes for this metric because there are more pitch possibilities than durations.
26. Number of Different Duration Ratios
While Hot Cross Buns has four different duration ratios, the average tune in the database has around seven. This difference is much larger than for the number of durations themselves (see previous metric). Composers draw from a much larger palette of duration ratios than durations because there are far more duration ratios than durations themselves. We would expect this metric to be more useful than the number of different durations in describing tunes or genres of tunes.
27. Normalized Number of Different Pitches
When you account for the number of notes in the tune, the three different pitches in Hot Cross Buns represents 18 percent of its notes. In the database as a whole, this metric is 24 percent. We would expect nursery songs to have a lower value for this metric because mosts such songs use few pitches so children can sing them.
28. Normalized Number of Pitch Differentials
Likewise, taking into account the brevity of Hot Cross Buns means its four pitch differentials represent 24 percent of the total notes in the tune. The database as a whole has a 25 percent figure for this metric. Contrasting this metric with number of different pitch differentials (#24 above), you see that normalizing for tune length eliminates the disparity between a simple, short tune like Hot Cross Buns and the average tune.
29. Normalized Number of Durations
Dividing the number of different durations in Hot Cross Buns by its number of notes yields a value of 18 percent, whereas this metric for the entire database has a value of 12 percent. In other words, Hot Cross Buns uses a larger variety of note lengths than the average tune when the brevity of the tune is taken into account.
30. Normalized Number of Duration Ratios
This metric, which normalizes for the number of notes in the tune, has a value of 24 percent for Hot Cross Buns. This metric has a value of 17 percent for the database as a whole, again indicating that Hot Cross Buns uses a wider variety of duration ratios than the average tune when the number of nots in the tune is taken into account.
31. Number of Repeated Intervals (%)
Hot Cross Buns has almost half (47 percent) of its notes in the form of repeating intervals, whereas the average tune in the database has 13 percent. This observation is in keeping with the idea that children’s songs are generally simple, repetitive tunes.
32. Number of Repeated Duration Ratios (%)
Hot Cross Buns has 35 percent of its notes in a formation where the duration ratio is repeated. In the database as a whole, that number is very close at 36 percent, suggesting that there is not much difference with respect to this metric between this particular tune and all tunes in the database.
33. Percent of 3-Note Palindromes.
There are no palindromes in Hot Cross Buns, so the value of this metric is zero. For the database as a whole, the average is 7 percent. That is, on average 7 percent of a the number of notes in a tune equal the number of three-note palindromes. As a reminder, a palindrome is defined as a sequence of three notes with the following characteristics:
- The pitch of the first and third notes are the same
- The duration ratio of the first two notes is the reciprocal of the duration ratio of the second and third notes
34. Percent of Tunes with the Same Individual Patterns
As a already noted, Hot Cross Buns contains relatively common patterns, which explains why this metric is relatively high at 50 percent. For the database as a whole, this metric has a value of 31 percent. Most tunes are more complicated than Hot Cross Buns and use more and rarer patterns, which lowers the value of this metric. This metric is consistent with the “Use of Common Patterns” metric in that both metrics have a higher value than the corresponding value for the whole database.