Target Spectrums For Mastering : A comparison of spectral stylistic conventions between rock and vocal-based electronic music

Abstract: Through the analysis of the spectral characteristics of thousands of mastered (or remastered) commercial recordings from a variety of genres over the history of popular music, researchers have studied stylistic trends and spectral conventions. The aim of this study was to further explore, analyse and compare the spectral characteristics of two broad but distinct popular music genres: rock and vocal-based electronic music. The main reason for this choice of genres being that rock generally predominantly is based on (amplified) acoustical elements (e.g. acoustic drums and acoustic/electric bass/guitars) and that electronic music generally predominantly is based on electronic elements (e.g. beats and synthesizers). The stimuli for the study consisted of 24 top-five hit songs from the Billboard charts between 2016-2020, divided by genre. A fast fourier transform approach was used for the computation of target spectrums as well as low level descriptors for the two independent datasets of recordings. Spectral analysis followed with the goal of answering the following research questions: What do the spectral stylistic conventions appear to be in rock versus vocal-based electronic music and what spectral differences/similarities exists between these two distinct popular music genres? The results showed that there were some significant spectral differences between the two genres, especially noticeable in the low end of the frequency spectrum. Other genre-specific spectral trends and overall spectral conventions were found as well.