Category: Case Studies

Hip Hop and the LAPD

/ Andrew Gustar / Leave a comment

I was recently asked whether I had any data to support the claim that the number of mentions of the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) in hip hop lyrics has fallen off in recent years, after peaking in the mid-1990s. The LAPD attracted a lot of angry attention from hip hop artists in the wake of the 1992 LA riots, triggered when four LAPD officers were acquitted of using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. 

On the face of it, this claim should be easy to check: use a lyrics database to search for hip hop songs mentioning “LAPD”, find when they were released, and look at the trend. In practice, it turns out to be rather more complicated.

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Lute Music Analysis

/ Andrew Gustar / Leave a comment

I have recently exchanged a couple of emails with Jakob Hausladen, who has written a fascinating and enjoyable article on lute music, as part of a course on the philosophy of data science. The article draws on some of the techniques discussed on this site (including composers’ dates and nationalities, text analysis, publication network analysis), and also includes a section looking at a comparison of composers’ styles based on MIDI data. The article explains things well (including the risks and caveats), and makes excellent use of interactive graphics and sounds.

Like any good research, it raises lots of interesting questions for further investigation (some of which I have added to my list!)

I would recommend it for anybody interested in the use of statistics / data science to study music history. Or in lute music!

The Lark Ascending Premiere

/ Andrew Gustar

Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending was first performed, in a version for violin and piano, at Shirehampton Public Hall on 15th December 1920. This page gives details of that concert, based on the original programme, which is held in the Philip Napier Miles Archive in Bristol University Library.

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Desert Island Discs Revisited

/ Andrew Gustar / Leave a comment

My article on Desert Island Discs from April 2020 has been, by some margin, the most popular page on this site, in terms of number of visitors. Last year, I was approached by some researchers from the Alan Turing Institute about sharing the data with them so that they could do their own analysis. I was delighted to see this Turing Data Story appear on their website in March this year – they have updated my dataset, added further information from Wikipedia and Spotify, and looked at some different questions. Excellent stuff!

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Eurovision Voting: a likely cliff-hanger

/ Andrew Gustar / Leave a comment

As in several recent Eurovision Song Contest finals, this year’s competition in Rotterdam ended with a cliff-hanger, with the result being uncertain right up until the last few votes were revealed. The Italian group Måneskin finally triumphed with their song Zitti E Buoni. In this article I will discuss how the Eurovision voting system is very likely to result in uncertainty until the very last minute.

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The Voice UK: 10 Years of Blind Auditions

/ Andrew Gustar / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago saw the final of the tenth series of The Voice UK – a reality TV singing competition. The first stage of The Voice consists of blind auditions, where contestants sing, unseen by the four coaches whose chairs face away from the stage. If a coach likes what they hear, they press a button to turn around. If more than one coach turns, the contestant chooses which team to join. The blind auditions finish when each coach has a team of ten. Subsequent rounds reduce the field until four remain for the final, with the winner chosen by public vote. This article looks at the blind audition rounds over the ten series.

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