If you ever wondered about how composers use recurring patterns to write a tune, theme, or melody, this is the place to explore. Under this tab we discuss some of the results of the Skiptune music project. Topics to be covered under the menu “Findings” include
A ‘unique pattern’ is a series of notes that is used in one tune and one tune only, though it may occur multiple times in that one tune. Some of these are highly unusual formations of notes that a composer has used to achieve an unusual effect, and it is not surprising that other composers have not used it. But sometimes a unique pattern looks like it would be common, so much so that it’s hard to believe that it has used in only one tune in history. Over time, of course, as more tunes are entered, such patterns may not sustain their uniqueness. But with 82,000 tunes entered in the Skiptune database, it’s still surprising how many such unique patterns there are. Go to Unique Patterns to learn more.
Each tune has a set of notes that must be different from all other tunes–otherwise it would be a duplicate tune, and all the tunes in the database are unique. The smallest series of such notes identifies a tune. Our algorithms have culled through the entire Skiptune database and captured the shortest series of notes in each tune that makes it unique. This page is an introduction to that topic and shows how many notes it takes to uniquely identify the tunes in the database. The results may surprise you.
A ‘common pattern’ is a series of notes that are used over and over again by composers, sometimes within the same tune. You might suspect that one of the most common 2-note pattern is a duplicated note (such as a quarter note C followed by another quarter note C), but you’d be wrong. Interestingly, we find that an interval of a major second with both notes having the same duration is the most common 2-note pattern, such as a quarter note C followed by a quarter note D. We also explore how composers, famous or not, have altered their use of patterns over the centuries.
Intervals are the difference in pitch between two consecutive notes, and it is possible to examine all intervals in the database. Check this page out to find out some surprising things about how composers have used intervals over the centuries.
The variation in patterns used in tunes related to the genre that tune happens to be in. Some common genres are rock, jazz, irish, and classical. Musicologists have long described the differences between genres. The Skiptune project seeks to quantify those differences in measurable terms that can be verified.
We can’t really measure creativity of course, but one important aspect of musical creativity is using a pattern of notes that no other composer had ever used before. Each 2-note pattern in history had to be in a tune where it was first used. With the Skiptune database it’s possible to look at each year and count the number of new patterns that have been used for the first time. This page shows now creativity with respect to the use of brand new patterns ebbs and flows over time.
As noted above, sometimes patterns look as though they’d be quite common, but are in fact rarely used by composers. We catalogue many of those on this page. We think you’ll agree that many of these are surprising in their rarity.