Pachelbel Rant
Why Hacker News recommends it
Brought up in threads about chord progressions and musical copyright as the funny canonical version of the idea.
What it is
Comedian and cellist Rob Paravonian rants about having to play Pachelbel's Canon in D, and shows how many pop songs reuse its chord progression. It was recorded live at Penn State.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2012 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends lotharbot · 2012-06 · on “I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.”
Related: [this video] - Rob Paravorian on how so many songs have the same chord sequence as Pachelbel's Canon in D
Recommends naravara · 2019-03 · on “How did classical music in movies and TV become synonymous with villainy?”
There was a relevant and entertaining stand-up bit about this: [this video] This might partly be why people love the music they heard as teens first. I hear a lot of stuff now that just seems like riffs on stuff I’ve heard before. I don’t have the nostalgia of first being exposed to it in my formative years to carry me through.
Recommends aidenn0 · 2023-11 · on “Google Sues Men Who Weaponized DMCA Notices to Crush Competition”
I like the live version of that better[1], and while the Axis of Awesome wins in the shear number of songs, I like Rob P's presentation[2] of the same idea more. 1: [LINK] 2: [this video]
Cites evanb · 2014-01 · on “One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last 20 Years.”
That axis of awesome video reminds me of [this video] by Rob Paravonian. Also, the article reminds me of a parody video about the prolific nature of Bob Dylan: [LINK]
Cites woliveirajr · 2016-12 · on ““BRAAAM”: The Sound That Invaded the Hollywood Soundtrack”
One problem is that you can't stop hearing it, after you know. Like Pachelbel Canon [1]. Like orange and blue scenes and posters [2] [3]. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
Cites iheartmemcache · 2017-06 · on “Generating music with expressive timing and dynamics”
> "It's sort of convincingly improvisatory." I'm not sure if it was the dynamics specifically, but it was clear to me that A was human. Within 30 seconds I was so sure, I hit pause and loaded the answer to see if I was right (I was, and I'm likely the worst pianist on these forums and only a casual fan of music that falls into the 'classical' genre.) Here's[0] a fabulous physics paper that analyses the 16th notes by a studio drummer widely considered one of the best in his field. IIRC, the paper mentions he couldn't record with a click because it'd throw him off. That being said, the quality of the recording didn't suffer (his 2nd take of the track was more than good enough for the rest of t
Cites saurik · 2018-03 · on “Appeals Court Says It's Okay to Copyright an Entire Style of Music”
Which is itself meta-interesting, as it is a "style of joke" done by others (and a far as I'm concerned, often better), such as Rob Paravonian. [this video]