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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Universal patterns in sound amplitudes of songs and music genres
R S Mendes1, H V Ribeiro, F C M Freire
1Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Av. Colombo 5790, 87020-900, Maringá, Paraná, Brazil.
Abstract:
We report a statistical analysis of more than eight thousand songs. Specifically, we investigated the probability distribution of the normalized sound amplitudes. Our findings suggest a universal form of distribution that agrees well with a one-parameter stretched Gaussian. We also argue that this parameter can give information on music complexity, and consequently it helps classify songs as well as music genres. Additionally, we present statistical evidence that correlation aspects of the songs are directly related to the non-Gaussian nature of their sound amplitude distributions.
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