[HN Gopher] Shared DNA in Music
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Shared DNA in Music
Author : ksampath02
Score : 240 points
Date : 2025-04-01 21:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pudding.cool)
(TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
| echelon wrote:
| This is an incredibly cool idea. I would love to see this applied
| to music, but also literary structure, film, etc.
| HeliumHydride wrote:
| https://tvtropes.org/
| mazdayasna wrote:
| WARNING WARNING
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'd like to see a tvtropes for rhetorical tricks. That way
| every time a politician dished out a creative lie it could be
| mapped to a curated pile of historical references for the
| last time that lie was told and we can see how it worked for
| the lied-to the last time it came around.
| andrefuchs wrote:
| Incredible project.
| xnx wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my all-time favorites sites:
| https://www.whosampled.com/
| Vaslo wrote:
| Wasn't this Pandoras original claim to fame - that they used 30
| or 40 different aspects of music to categorize music and help you
| find what you liked?
| Loughla wrote:
| The secret to Pandora is to never give thumbs up but
| religiously thumbs down anything you don't like. Then it's
| constantly searching for new things you like related to the
| original theme!
|
| But also, yes that was the original thought process.
| freedomben wrote:
| 100%. I bought into the "thumbs up what you like and get more
| of it" when I signed up for Pandora, and that quickly led to
| getting the same thumbs up songs over and over...
|
| Fortunately with Pandora you could create a new station that
| wasn't aware of the thumbs so it was able to work around, but
| it took me a while to figure that out and stop thumbing up
| hserang wrote:
| This is wonderful. I have wanted to make some version of this for
| years. Thank you for sharing!
| nodra wrote:
| This was done so well. Congrats!!!
| reassess_blind wrote:
| Huh, I never put together "Inspector Gadget" and "In the Hall of
| the Mountain King".
| nodompa wrote:
| This is amazing and something I personally love to do myself, and
| it's great to see a website that encourages engaging with culture
| and art in a deeper and historical level, I feel like that's
| something that we need more and more of nowadays.
|
| Just wanted to let you know that I'm getting a pretty big audio
| pop when I scroll through the mountain king section on my phone,
| like my speaker is getting blown out a little, maybe some
| clipping or weird audio initializing going on.
| trial3 wrote:
| when i gave a presentation on sampling for a public speaking
| class in college i played the amen break, then slowed it down to
| show it was used in Fuck Tha Police, then sped it up to show it
| was used in the powerpuff girls theme song
| Kye wrote:
| Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY
|
| The presenter chose different songs, but the concept is the
| same.
| securingsincity wrote:
| This is my favorite video on the Amen break from about 20 years
| ago that explains the history and more of the context
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac
| maxweylandt wrote:
| Thanks for teaching me about this! I listened to it and
| immediately thought I recognized it from Jamie XX's Oh my Gosh.
| In the event I was wrong, it samples Lyn Collins -- another
| classic sample I believe, certainly in hip hop. But I'm sure
| I'll hear it pop up in lots of places now, always nice to learn
| a piece of history.
|
| https://www.whosampled.com/sample/343380/Jamie-xx-Gosh-Lyn-C...
| jqr- wrote:
| I got curious and tried searching for it, ended up finding out
| they actually sample James Brown's "Funky Drummer". Very
| interesting either way. Thanks!
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Wow this is super cool!
|
| They primarily used the genius.com API, which I didn't know
| existed. Anyone built any other cool projects with it?
|
| Is there a "discovery" player that plays your own Spotify
| library, but shows you all related tracks by sample,
| interpolation, cover, etc from the Genius API that you can
| explore? Kind of like a wikipedia rabbithole, but for music?
| freedomben wrote:
| We used it to allow pepole to include song lyrics in their
| letters sent to loved ones. Unfortunately it was a constant
| source of breakage in the app and we eventually removed it when
| they pushed a very breaking change and there wasn't any
| availability to rewrite that part of the app.
| danwills wrote:
| Reminds me of 'Wonder Riff' by Baterz, although it's mainly about
| arguing with David Whiffler about how it's not actually a copy of
| Stevie Wonder, just slightly similar. Good fun Aussie pub-rock
| vibe tho I reckon it's great:
|
| https://youtu.be/Pe5x6asEkgs?si=qTfwIva1_fRY6973
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| I once had the realization that a riff from Metallica's "The Four
| Horseman" was the same as that from Tom Petty's "Last Dance With
| Mary Jane" except, as I learned several years after the
| realization, it is actually the riff from "Sweet Home Alabama"
| which was introduced in a session as a joke by the guitarist to
| make fun of the drummer for having narrow musical knowledge. He
| was correct in his assumption that the drummer wouldn't recognize
| it, and it was included in the final version of the song.
|
| The story:
| https://youtube.com/shorts/nY6CPOtN47w?si=K_9EKvKGbgnuGKSg
|
| The riffs:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6HbSkAD5g&pp=ygUgZm91ciBob3J...
| KurSix wrote:
| Like a game of telephone but with guitar riffs
| n4r9 wrote:
| This is surprisingly common with Metallica for some reason.
| Could just be that they have so many tracks that statistically
| there's bound to be some overlaps.
|
| Another example is "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiIc0HuJ78Q
|
| Whose intro sounds the same as "Rainbow Warrior" by Bleak
| House, released 5-6 years earlier:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zowid7KAmnM
| basisword wrote:
| Funny you mention "Mary Jane's Last Dance". The Red Hot Chili
| Peppers song "Dani California" overlaps with that (the chord
| progression is the same and rhythm style is pretty close too).
| xeromal wrote:
| I've showed a few people this and I'm surprised that so many
| people don't notice that it's sweet home alabama. I am from
| Georgia though and that song used to be an anthem. lol
| shriracha wrote:
| Great great project, as usual by the pudding
| memalign wrote:
| In a similar vein, I maintain a website[0] where users can submit
| songs that sound like other songs. Several times this has helped
| me figure out where I've heard a riff or melody before (when it's
| not a direct sample, which I usually find on whosampled.com).
|
| 0: https://memalign.github.io/m/similarsongs.html
| crawsome wrote:
| Why is it "Shared DNA" if all rappers do is sample and totally
| rip-off music (Logos, artist names etc) before them?
|
| The concept of "DNA" with music goes much deeper than some lucky
| nobody who sampled someone's life work so they could pollute it
| with lowest common denominator poetry and a Roland Drum Machine.
|
| I submit that oogling over people who steal music by sampling is
| not that deep, and there's deeper methods of musical analysis
| than "This band sampled this beat, this means they're a natural
| progression of art".
|
| Every example I skimmed over was some hiphop artist who ripped
| off music before them.
|
| Other artists have some shame and just copy chord progressions,
| but rappers went so far to just completely steal parts of the
| song.
| recursive wrote:
| Your cutoff is somewhat arbitrary.
|
| Whatever artist you think is legitimate never did anything
| fully original either. The only original musician may have been
| the first caveman to hit two logs together.
| autoexec wrote:
| I agree that rap/hiphop artists are often guilty of just
| gracelessly slapping a beat over some one else's hook or chorus
| and it really does come off as lazy and disrespectful. This is
| especially true when the sample is of something that is (or
| was) already popular and easily recognizable.
|
| That said, samples can be used in a lot of creative ways and
| even some very straightforward ones while still creating
| something unique/transformative. I still think it's a good
| thing that artists can use samples in their work since it does
| expand what's possible and I can always just ignore the low
| effort garbage.
| kaeruct wrote:
| Some sampling might be lazy, but there's plenty of impressive
| producers which take the art to the next level. Some
| suggestions you can sample: DJ Shadow, J Dilla, Madlib, The
| Avalanches, Statik Selektah. And as a bonus, an artist
| definitely not hip hop which makes beautiful use of sampling is
| Jens Lekman.
|
| I will be charitable even though you called rap "lowest common
| denominator" poetry.
|
| If you are genuinely interested, I suggest you look into the
| history of hip hop. IMO, the point of early hip hop was not to
| create sophisticated music, but to connect people by using
| sounds they were already familiar with. More important was the
| message and vocal delivery of the MC.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I use the Roland 505ii looper, and do massive 'samples' -
| whole verses etc, great for song analysis, practice etc. If I
| could incorporate something into a hit song, I'd happily pay
| the royalties to the 'samplee'. I rather suspect the early
| days of sampling/ hip hop etc, it was the "how do we get
| paid...they're ripping us off" panic that created issues.
| Now, the money-flow has been standardised, and sped up, there
| are considerably less problems. Oh, my favourite example of
| extreme sampling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYeSpyRpR
| A&list=PLXa6-G1Tk7...
| lawgimenez wrote:
| May I add some awesome producers: Sounwave, DJ Dahi, The
| Alchemist, Kanye West, DJ Premier, 9th Wonder
| holri wrote:
| > Every example I skimmed over was some hiphop artist who
| ripped off music before them.
|
| Mozart ripped of Handel. For example parts from his famous
| Reqiuem are a rip of of Handels Messiah. And a lot of classical
| Composers (ex. Beethoven) ripped of from their "godfather": J.S
| Bach. Altough they did not call it rip of, but learning.
| rongrobert wrote:
| Exactly. The attitude is just so totally ignorant. Otherwise,
| just consider practically all equal temperament western music
| a ripoff of J.S Bach.
|
| Of course, someone who knows nothing about music like this
| wouldn't know that.
|
| The irony is that it could be argued hip hop is one of the
| few western pop musical art forms that isn't a complete J.S
| Bach ripoff.
| emmelaich wrote:
| The very first rap/hip-hop song, Rapper's Delight is itself ...
| inspired by previous a song or two.
|
| But that's ok, since they absolutely added improvements.
| Applejinx wrote:
| The 'haha! ha!' from Genesis's 'Mama' is quite literally
| taken out of 'The Message' by Grandmaster Flash and the
| Furious Five (the first rap hit song): I just think it's neat
| Genesis were listening to that. They don't seem like they'd
| be listening to rap and yet it's well documented in their own
| words that they'd not only heard it, but were that into it
| that they kept sticking that riff in 'Mama' and it stuck.
| abap_rocky wrote:
| I'm glad you mentioned Genesis because they're the subject
| of one of my favorite samples. OutKast's famous track
| "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" contains a sample from Genesis's
| "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" and upon learning this, I
| just thought it was so cool that OutKast listened to Peter-
| Gabriel-era Genesis when Genesis was very much a
| progressive rock band rather than the pop powerhouse most
| know them as today.
| tsumnia wrote:
| There's a great video essay series known as "Everything is a
| Remix" by Kirby Ferguson [1] if you have an hour to spare.
| Ferguson uses the trends of music sampling as a base for how
| artists draw inspiration from others. The controversy of
| sampling has been used across genres, include around minute 9
| Ferguson points out that Led Zepplin were considered ripoffs
| for their appropriation of Jake Holmes. Axis of Awesome also
| has a "chord progression song" [2] that makes fun of how
| similar many pop songs are.
|
| The video draws a nice parallel to how so much in our world
| serves as "inspiration" for our own works, but acknowledges the
| controversy around using a single source as "too much
| inspiration". Especially as we move into whatever copyright
| arguments are getting made toward AI right now, I think it
| serves as a nice outline on why this is such a complicated
| matter.
|
| [1] https://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-
| remix-20...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| this is a weirdly anti art view of music as a whole, do you
| just not enjoy organized sound?
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'm always weirded out by such "domain-specific knowledgey"
| statements like this.
|
| I just don't get how someone simultaneously e.g. knows what a
| Roland Drum Machine is, but also manages to stay wildly
| ignorant about an _entire genre of established music_ to make
| such a sweeping statement.
| audiodude wrote:
| What really blows my mind is not the fact that all these songs
| borrow from and remix one another, but the overall "problem of
| universals" from metaphysics. In the realm of music, how do we
| even identify specific characteristics that lead to properties of
| resemblence? How does your brain know "Oh, that's the Funky
| Drummer beat" when it's played on a different drum kit or at a
| different tempo, etc etc.
|
| edit: Would love to see an AI driven project where you drag a
| slider to "mutate" a sample until it's no longer that sample but
| another piece of music. A "boil the frog" type thing.
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| I actually think what your asking for exists, I cant remember
| the name but I think Aphex Twin was involved?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| What a cool project. I really think music is one of our greatest
| examples of shared heritage.
|
| My only comment is I think this would of benefited from some
| interviews or commentary by actual musicians. It felt really
| really surface level.
| KurSix wrote:
| Music cuts across time, geography, and culture in a way very
| few things do. Even when artists are worlds apart, they end up
| building on the same rhythms, motifs, or emotions
| TheRealQueequeg wrote:
| Nah, we'd rather remove the human from the loop and stroke our
| egos with technical achievements.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Apparently the Smoke on the Water riff is Beethoven, sorta.
| According to Ritchie Blackmore.
|
| _" It's an interpretation of inversion, You turn it back and
| play it back and forth. It's actually Beethoven's 5th. So, I owe
| him a lot of money."_
| jl6 wrote:
| What this mostly seems to demonstrate is that hip-pop is
| endlessly derivative. That might be a consequence of their data
| source:
|
| > To build this project, we used the dataset of hundreds of
| thousands of songs on Genius.com accessible through their API,
| over 200,000 of which were "connected" in some way by sample,
| interpolation, cover, or remix.
|
| Genres where sampling is openly and explicitly acknowledged are
| going to be massively over-represented. It would be cool build a
| relationship network using feature extraction on the actual
| audio.
| Agraillo wrote:
| I wonder whether a possible audio similarities analyzer would
| be capable of detecting influences described by the creators
| themselves. For example, in a podcast, Tal Bachman said that
| making his most famous hit "She's So High" started when he
| heard the chorus of "If It Makes You Happy" by Sheryl Crow in a
| supermarket. After that revelation I now can not unhear it and
| the choruses of those songs are connected in my brain. But the
| connection is not that obvious.
| breakbread wrote:
| There's also https://www.whosampled.com/
| nyrikki wrote:
| The same applies to risk-adverse, high profit genres and/or
| producer heavy ones like pop country. Obviously zeitgeist and
| even conventions and music theory play a role.
|
| Sir Mashalot had a few videos a while ago.
|
| https://youtu.be/FY8SwIvxj8o
|
| The Blues Traveler trolling with the song _Hook_ using the
| melody from Pachelbel 's Canon with lyrics explicitly calling
| this out wasn't noticed by almost anyone.
|
| https://youtu.be/pdz5kCaCRFM
|
| Obviously Pop heavily samples too, E.G. Tom Tom Club Genius of
| Love being used by Mariah Carey's Fantasy, but it goes beyond
| sampling.
|
| The Rolling Stones pulling from artists like Fred McDowell and
| Led Zeppelin settled copyright suits on Lemon Song, Whole Lotta
| Love, Bring it on Home and Dazed and Confused etc...
|
| The invention of the Fairlight Sampler may have lead to groups
| like the Pet Shop Boys sampling dozens of other works, but as
| the Stones and Led Zeppelin show it wasn't unique.
|
| Well I guess the Pet Shop Boys were inspired by Grandmaster
| Flash, and if you listen to the original recording of West End
| Girls you can hear James Brown samples...not sure if that
| counts as "hip-hop" in that case or not.
|
| https://youtu.be/PKB2bYYYTYw
|
| As a bad guitar player, I can understand why even Rock and Roll
| pretty much grew out of artists copying R&B/Gospel artists like
| Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but inspiration vs copying is a fuzzy
| line.
|
| But basically the tooling changed, not the methods which have
| complex and intertwined causes, motivations, and effects.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I wonder, do you find Outkast's ATLiens album to be derivative?
| Especially "Elevators" and "Wheels of Steel". I certainly don't
| know enough music to answer that question definitively, if
| anyone does.
|
| Even though some of the lyrics have certainly not aged well, I
| do like its minimal aesthetic, and I was in Decatur, GA at the
| time, and it sure beat the crap Diddy and Mase were putting out
| at the time.
|
| Side note: WCLK Clark Atlanta University radio station was the
| absolute best radio station I've ever heard, where I found my
| favorite music of all-time: AfroCuban jazz. Their Hip Hop and
| Jazz programs were fantastic. That's also where I learned of
| the magical spoken word intro version of Louis Armstrong's
| "What A Wonderful World".
|
| "No one's musical education is complete."
| underlines wrote:
| reminds me of a mix between ishkur's guide to EDM and
| whosampled... :) in Flash.
| yapyap wrote:
| wow this is such SUCH a neat project, I never realized the music
| game was this incestuous (not necessarily in a bad way).
|
| One tiny tip though, when you have the buttons in the text to
| play the songs, the green buttons, you don't really know how long
| that'll go on for so a playtime indicator just by having the
| lightgreen button fill with dark green over time from left to
| right, 0 at the start 100 at the end would be great.
|
| All in all really neat!
| tomrod wrote:
| This is really cool!
| MrMcCall wrote:
| My kids and I were kind of flabbergasted after listening to the
| "Song Exploder" podcast's episode on the Weezer song "Summer
| Elaine and Drunk Dori" about how Rivers Cuomo writes songs.
|
| Basically, he obscures interesting chord progressions of songs he
| finds by recording his own simplified version without the song's
| original rhythm. Then he takes his spreadsheet he made over
| years, of lyrical phrases he came up with that he thinks will
| sound good in a song, organized by number of syllables and where
| the accent lands. Then, finally, some time in the futuer, once he
| has forgotten the original song's construction, he takes out the
| chord progression and finds places to fit different kinds of
| lyrical phrases.
|
| It blew us away to know that his lyrics have _no meaning
| whatsoever_. In fact, that particular song was the result of a
| conversation between two teachers he overheard at one of his
| children 's end of year gettogether.
|
| It is quite extraordinary, and he is quite good at it, though we
| have few Weezer songs in our playlist.
|
| https://songexploder.net/weezer
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