Improving on the 1–10 rating scale for music

A new framework for interpreting the epicness of music

I love music. I have been an obsessive fanboy for literally as long as I can remember.

My first memory of the epicness of music came when I must have been 8 years old, listening to In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. I remember getting up early before school and sitting with my dad’s earphones, listening to In the Air Tonight, from start to finish. The way the song builds and the way it crescendos was such a transformative experience. The drama and development of Lady d’Arbanville from Cat Stevens. The heaviness of Hunting Girl from Jethro Tull.

I remember the feeling I get, the first time I heard The Unforgiven.

I remember my first live show.

Photo credit: Henk Kruger

Music is so much more than a linear scale. In fact, I am certain that there is no system reasonably capable of quantifying the subjective experience of music. However, improving on the 1–10 rating scale for music has been a part-time obsession of mine for many years, from blog posts, and Google+ communities to WhatsApp Groups for chatting about and sharing music with my friends and fellow music lovers.

As I endeavour to create a framework for assessing music as objectively as possible, I have come to realise, that the subjective experience of music is near-inextricably linked with the objective, such that I don’t think it is realistically possible to achieve such a system.

Perhaps the principle is better described as creating a systematic, granular framework for appreciating music. This is what I have set out to achieve, hopefully with the help of other music lovers.

A more technical perspective on “what is music”?

In order to get more insights into music and the magic it creates, I did some research.

In the book, This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin goes into some detail about the various features of music and the interpretation of the physical constructs by our brains.

This is a more technical perspective of the components that make up music and I have elected to extract this from Daniel Levitin’s book, for fidelity.

Pitch is a purely psychological construct, related both to the actual frequency of a particular tone and to its relative position in the musical scale. It provides the answer to the question “What note is that?” (“It’s a C-sharp.”) I’ll define frequency and musical scale below. (When a trumpet player blows in his instrument and makes a single sound, he makes what most of us call a note, and what scientists call a tone. The two terms, tone and note refer to the same entity in the abstract, but we reserve the word tone for what you hear, and the word note for what you see written on a musical score.) In the nursery rhymes “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Are You Sleeping?” pitch is the only thing that varies in the first seven notes — the rhythm stays the same. This demonstrates the power — and fundamentality — of pitch in defining a melody or song.

Rhythm refers to the durations of a series of notes, and to the way that they group together into units. For example, in the “Alphabet Song” (the same as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”) the first six notes of the song are all equal in duration as we sing the names of the letters A B C D E F and then we hold the letter G for twice the duration. Then we’re back to the standard duration for H I J K, and then the following four letters are sung with half the duration, or twice as fast per letter: L M N O and then ending on a held P (leading generations of schoolchildren to spend several early months believing that there was a letter in the English alphabet called ellemmenno). In the Beach Boys’ song “Barbara Ann,” the first seven notes are all sung on the same pitch, with only the rhythm varying. In fact, the seven notes after that are all sung on the same pitch as well (in the melody), as Brian Wilson is joined by other voices singing other notes (harmony). The Beatles have several songs in which pitch is held constant and only rhythm varies across several notes: the first four notes of “Come Together”; the six notes of “Hard Day’s Night” following the lyric “It’s been a”; the first six notes of “Something.”

Tempo refers to the overall speed or pace of the piece. If you were tapping your foot, dancing, or marching to the piece, it’s how fast or slow these regular movements would be.

Contour describes the overall shape of a melody, taking into account only the pattern of “up” and “down” (whether a note goes up or down, not the amount by which it goes up or down).

Timbre (rhymes with amber) distinguishes one instrument from another — say, trumpet from piano — when both are playing the same written note. It is a kind of tonal color that is produced in part by overtones from the instrument’s vibrations (more on that later). It also describes the way that a single instrument can change sound as it moves across its range — say the warm sound of a trumpet low in its range versus the piercing sound of that same trumpet playing its highest note.

Loudness is a purely psychological construct that relates (nonlinearly and in poorly understood ways) to how much energy an instrument creates — how much air it displaces — and what an acoustician would call the amplitude of a tone.

Reverberation refers to the perception of how distant the source is from us in combination with how large a room or hall the music is in; often referred to as “echo” by laypeople, it is the quality that distinguishes the spaciousness of singing in a large concert hall from the sound of singing in your shower. It has an underappreciated role in communicating emotion and creating an overall pleasing sound.

Meter is created by our brains by extracting information from rhythm and loudness cues, and refers to the way in which tones are grouped with one another across time. A waltz meter organizes tones into groups of three, a march into groups of two or four.

Key has to do with a hierarchy of importance that exists between tones in a musical piece; this hierarchy does not exist in-the-world, it exists only in our minds, as a function of our experiences with a musical style and musical idioms, and mental schemas that all of us develop for understanding music.

Melody is the main theme of a musical piece, the part you sing along with, the succession of tones that are most salient in your mind. The notion of melody is different across genres. In rock music, there is typically a melody for the verses and a melody for the chorus, and verses are distinguished by a change in lyrics and sometimes by a change in instrumentation. In classical music, the melody is a starting point for the composer to create variations on that theme, which may be used throughout the entire piece in different forms.

Harmony has to do with relationships between the pitches of different tones, and with tonal contexts that these pitches set up that ultimately lead to expectations for what will come next in a musical piece — expectations that a skillful composer can either meet or violate for artistic and expressive purposes. Harmony can mean simply a parallel melody to the primary one (as when two singers harmonize) or it can refer to a chord progression — the clusters of notes that form a context and background on which the melody rests.

— Levitin, Daniel J. . This is Your Brain on Music (p. 15–17). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Complexity is probably the most elusive of these features to quantify objectively. Complexity in music creates a subjective Goldilocks zone for each person, which creates a stage where they are likely to find their favourite songs. Moreover, as you spend time with music your tolerance for complexity increases and the listener is capable of dissecting and appreciating more and more complex pieces of music.

“The orderly relationship between complexity and liking is referred to as the inverted-U function because of the way a graph would be drawn that relates these two factors.”

— Levitin, Daniel J. . This is Your Brain on Music (p. 240). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

There is a lot we can learn from musicians, and their ability to dissect music into substructures, but for the everyday music fan, this becomes very academic.

Principally, it fails to account for why we like specific songs more than others.

More importantly, it also fails to produce the vocabulary for us to communicate why we should recommend it to our friends and fellow music lovers. Adding adjectives and expletives to how “good” a song is, appears to be the best recommendation system we have.

The origins of a new framework for evaluating music

During my time with several companies, either as a founder or employee, I have been confronted with several difficult business decisions. In the past, I used to make intuitive risk-adjusted decisions for the business, but it soon became apparent that decision-making becomes infinitely complex and it is easy to end up in a combinatorial explosion of “what if” considerations.

During one particular dire bout of frustration with my cofounder, I decided to write a decision-making framework for our company. The principles that guided that framework, are the very principles I then tried to use to differentiate between the quality and likability of different songs.

For lack of a better description, let’s call it the FBR (Finding Bohemian Rhapsody) framework.

The guiding principles of the FBR framework

The framework is a system that tries to account for the complexity of the assessment landscape, whilst at the same time creating simplicity and focus on specific important features of the music in question.

Caveat:

I have tried to create a system that is capable of rating music of all genres, but this first (actually 8th) version of the framework is heavily geared towards metal, and specifically, things I think are important in metal. You be the judge.

Principle 1 — Creating categories for assessment

Dissecting a piece of music into sensible parts that can each be appreciated as solo features. These are listed as follows:

• Sonic Magic — This is a comment on the production of the music. It is the first thing you hear, explicitly or implicitly. There are so many things that go into production, but this is an appreciation for the massiveness of the soundscape, the guitar tone, the drums sound, the bass sound, the vocals, etc. It is a comment on how good it sounds, and this can be evaluated irrespective of whether or not you even like the song. If you are lucky enough to listen to Metallica, you will know that a big part of what makes the Black Album so incredible, is the fact that it sounds incredible. It may also reflect in the incredible tone/sound of an individual instrument, like a massive bass sound, a gnarly guitar tone, an epic synth tone, or even the massiveness of the vocals.
• Musicianship and technical proficiency — Some musicians are just better than others, on a technical level. Appreciation for the uniqueness of their physical prowess in one or more instruments, should not go underappreciated. Steve Vai’s guitar prowess, or Adele’s vocals, are things that leave us in awe, and it makes a massive difference in how we experience music.
• Overall composition & Surprise — This is a feature that comments on complexity and it is a difficult one to account for. There are songs that follow a very standard formula, Intro; Verse; Chorus, Verse; Chorus; Bridge; Chorus. These songs are easy to get familiar with and quicker to be liked. Then there are songs that break all the rules. They typically take longer to appreciate, because we first have to become familiar with this new narrative, but the investment is worth the effort. Think of songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, or Four Seasons by Vivaldi, or Pneuma by Tool. These songs all violate the comfort of our expectations and we love them for it.
• Vocals — Vocals are a critical part of what makes music spectacular. Some of the best songs in history are instrumentals, but I don’t believe that we can ever really connect with equal emotion to instrumentals as we can with songs with great vocal delivery. Important also, is that vocal delivery is distinct from lyrics. You don’t need to understand the Italian that is sung by Pavarotti to appreciate his incredible vocal delivery. Vocal delivery, though not inclusive of lyrics, is also a comment on the vocal cadence and syllable choice. Great vocalists, in my opinion, all have the ability to choose and emphasise syllables to great effect.
• Lyrics — Lyrics are the poetry of music. Great lyrics can elevate a song into the stratosphere, and cheesy lyrics ruin it completely (unless it is intentional like Electric Callboy). Lyrics can create a deeply emotional connection between the musician and the listener, and as Daniel Levitin remarks: “One of the reasons that we’re willing to make ourselves vulnerable to our favorite musicians is that they often make themselves vulnerable to us”, “When I listen to the music of a great composer I feel that I am, in some sense, becoming one with him, or letting a part of him inside me.”. I feel that lyrics have the most significant influence on this aspect of emotional connection.
• Melody/Riff — This is a comment on the melodic hook of the song, the part that first grabs your attention and sets the stage for what the song is about, musically. If you think about the opening melody of Shape of My Heart by Sting or the haunting acapella vocals of The Pot by Tool, or the Synths in Take on Me by A-ha. It is inescapable, and there may be more than one such hook in the song.
• Drums & Percussion — This is an interesting section, and arguably the most personal section in the list. I am quite obsessive about drums and little percussive nuances in music, and I am quite sensitive to picking it up in music. (See my dedicated post about the topic). Also, metal is very percussive-driven, from guitars (James Hetfield) to drummers, and even bassists (Fieldy from Korn). I have added it as a standalone section, but it can be argued that it should not be there at all.
• Feel — This is a comment on the rhythm of the track. In essence, it is tempo, rhythm, time signatures rolled into the moniker of “feel”. It also incorporates features of “drive”, which I can only describe as wanting to bang your head to Pantera, Lamb of God, Rammstein, or the danceability of David Guetta’s music. Great musicians create great “feel”, from Rock ‘n Roll to Nu Metal.
• Emotional epicness — This is possibly another debatable section, perhaps redundant given the sections already listed, but it still feels like it is important. This is a comment on the emotional impact of the art. It may take many forms and translates sensations of Aggression, Theatre, Storytelling, Pain, Excitement, Drama or even Disgust. It is the combination of all the aforementioned, rolled into the sensation of hearing the music. Think about the aggression in Sic from Slipknot, the arrogance in Walk from Pantera, the theatre of Bohemian Rhapsody, or the pain in Gone with the Wind from Architects.

Principle 2 — Creating a relative scale for each category

The principle here is a relative scale for each category, with 0 being par, negative as detracting from the experience, and 5 being the best in class (on as objective a basis as can be quantified)

Each category has a scoring range of [-2; 5]. For each song, I assign a number in each category. If a song’s production is very amateur, then it will detract significantly from the experience I will assign that category a negative 2. Amateur musicians and beginner producers usually get scores in this range. 0 is reserved for commercially appropriate productions.

Using production as an example.

• -2: Amateur sounding
• -1: Just missed the mark (Amateur producers & mixers or bad commercial albums/songs)
• 0: Commercially appropriate.
• 5: The full package (Metallica—Black Album, Rammstein—Zeit, Adele — 30)

Then it is up to the listener to assign a value on a relative basis. It is not an exact science, but it should create a mechanism to differentiate between better and worse.

There are similar scales for the other categories, although admittedly, on occasion it becomes a bit obscure and seemingly non-sensical. Hopefully, in time, we can fix it.

Principle 3—Tallying overall scores

Overall scores are simply added together. Right now, there are 9 categories and a maximum total score of 45.

In cases where songs do not have vocals, that section is skipped and the sum is scored is out of 40. For instrumentals with no drums/percussion, and no vocals, like classical music, for example, it would be scored only out of 35.

The total is converted to a score out of 20, with one decimal point, for standardisation.

Principle 4 — Community collaboration

The framework is open for discussion. The scoring sheet is open source and I will readily accept contributions to the framework where sensible. It will follow software development principles of open-source contributions and you can see version 1 in this Google Sheet. If you want to make a contribution, get in touch and we will make it happen.

The reality is that as the framework develops, scores may change on a relative basis, so we may have to release updates and timestamp our scores. It is a living system.

For now, this is V1.0

Version 1 with some examples can be found on Google Docs here.

Invitation to join

If you have made it this far, and you would like to make a contribution to this process, by assessing and rating songs for Finding Bohemian Rhapsody, you can join the publication as a writer, and share your opinion of music with the world.

I am just excited to talk about music and share my appreciation (and criticism) of my favourite artist with those who care to listen.

To all those bands that have, and continue to, enrich my life with your incredible art, may we share that experience far and wide.