TIME - Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm

Musical expertise affects the perception of the temporal location of a musical sound, often to a significant degree. In a study involving jazz musicians, electronic dance music (EDM) music producers, and Norwegian folk musicians, Danielsen et al. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 84, 599¨C615, (2022) found significant between-group differences regarding the mean location as well as the variability around that mean for a set of control and genre-specific musical sounds. The present study extends these findings to singers who are experts in jazz versus classical music genres. In two experiments participants were presented with sung (Exp. 1) and sung and spoken (Exp. 2) syllables. In both the task was to synchronize either taps or a click track with a looped target sound. In both experiments, we found that classical participants tended to place the mean location later (relative to the acoustic onset) than jazz participants, and likewise had greater variability. Interestingly, and contra to our hypothesis, this between-group difference persisted even when the stimuli were spoken rather than sung. The current study gives further insights into how musical expertise impacts the low-level processing of musical sounds and provides a window into the interaction between top-down and bottom-up aspects of music and auditory perception more generally. In addition, it provides insight into how musicians approach musical and quasi-musical tasks, as well as the way they perceive the acoustic aspects of sound both as a musical object in its own right as well as a cue for perception-action coupling with their fellow musicians.

Periodic sensory inputs entrain oscillatory brain activity, reflecting a neural mechanism that might be fundamental to temporal prediction and perception. Most environmental rhythms and patterns in human behavior, such as walking, dancing, and speech do not, however, display strict isochrony but are instead quasi-periodic. Research has shown that neural tracking of speech is driven by modulations of the amplitude envelope, especially via sharp acoustic edges, which serve as prominent temporal landmarks. In the same vein, research on rhythm processing in music supports the notion that perceptual timing precision varies systematically with the sharpness of acoustic onset edges, conceptualized in the beat bin hypothesis. Increased envelope sharpness induces increased precision in localizing a sound in time. Despite this tight relationship between envelope shape and temporal processing, it is currently unknown how the brain uses predictive information about envelope features to optimize temporal perception. With the current EEG study, we show that the predicted sharpness of the amplitude envelope is encoded by pre-target neural activity in the beta band (15¨C25 Hz), and has an impact on the temporal perception of target sounds. We used probabilistic sound cues in a timing judgment task to inform participants about the sharpness of the amplitude envelope of an upcoming target sound embedded in a beat sequence. The predictive information about the envelope shape modulated task performance and pre-target beta power. Interestingly, these conditional beta-power modulations correlated positively with behavioral performance in the timing judgment task and with perceptual temporal precision in a click-alignment task. This study provides new insight into the neural processes underlying prediction of the sharpness of the amplitude envelope during beat perception, which modulate the temporal perception of sounds. This finding could reflect a process that is involved in temporal prediction, exerting top-down control on neural entrainment via the prediction of acoustic edges in the auditory stream.

The TIME project: Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm (2017¨C2022) studied microrhythm; that is, how dynamic envelope, timbre, and center frequency, as well as the microtiming of a variety of sounds, affect their perceived rhythmic properties. The project involved theoretical work regarding the basic aspects of microrhythm; experimental studies of microrhythm perception, exploring both stimulus features and the participants¡¯ enculturated expertise; observational studies of how musicians produce particular microrhythms; and ethnographic studies of musicians¡¯ descriptions of microrhythm. Collectively, we show that: (a) altering the microstructure of a sound (¡°what¡± the sound is) changes its perceived temporal location (¡°when¡± it occurs), (b) there are systematic effects of core acoustic factors (duration, attack) on microrhythmic perception, (c) microrhythmic features in longer and more complex sounds can give rise to different perceptions of the same sound, and (d) musicians are highly aware of microrhythms and have developed vocabularies for describing them. In addition, our results shed light on conflicting results regarding the effect of microtiming on the ¡°grooviness¡± of a rhythm. Our use of multiple, interdisciplinary methodologies enabled us to uncover the complexity of microrhythm perception and production in both laboratory and real-world musical contexts.

This edited volume is based on a selection of contributions at an international seminar organized in May 2022 to celebrate the achievements of Professor God?y upon his retirement from the University of Oslo. The 17 chapters cover different approaches to sonic design practice and theory, giving readers historical backdrops and an overview of the current state of both artistic and scientific research in the field.

This paper reports on an experiment that investigated how guitarists signal the intended timing of a rhythmic event in a groove-based context via three different features related to sound-producing motions of impulsive chord strokes (striking velocity, movement duration and fretboard position). 21 expert electric guitarists were instructed to perform a simple rhythmic pattern in three different timing styles¡ª¡°laidback,¡± ¡°on-the-beat,¡± and ¡°pushed¡±¡ªin tandem with a metronome. Results revealed systematic differences across participants in the striking velocity and movement duration of chords in the different timing styles. In general, laid-back strokes were played with lower striking velocity and longer movement duration relative to on-the-beat and pushed strokes. No differences in the fretboard striking position were found (neither closer to the ¡°bridge¡± [bottom] or to the ¡°neck¡± [head]). Correlations with previously reported audio features of the guitar strokes were also investigated, where lower velocity and longer movement duration generally corresponded with longer acoustic attack duration (signal onset to offset).

¡°212¡± is the first single from Azealia Banks¡¯ debut album Broke with Expensive Taste (2014), co-written and produced by the Dutch electro-house duo Lazy Jay who first released its beat under the title Float My Boat (2009). The aim of this chapter is to unpack the secrets to success of ¡°212¡± by focusing in particular on the track's groove, production, vocal delivery, and overall stylistic fusion of rap, reggaet¨®n, pop, and house. We argue that Banks¡¯ expressive range and seamless fusion of singing and rapping, her negotiations between confirming and protesting hip-hop norms, in combination with the style mix inherent in both Lazy Jay's original beat and her own rendition, were key to the track's success. An important aspect is the mix of musical forms typical of song and groove-directed repertoires, which allowed for many different interpretations and uses.

We present an ongoing project dedicated to the transmutation of a collection of field recordings of Norwegian folk music established in the 1960s into an easily accessible online catalogue augmented with advanced music technology and computer musicology tools. We focus in particular on a major highlight of this collection: Hardanger fiddle music. The studied corpus was available as a series of 600 tape recordings, each tape containing up to 2 hours of recordings, associated with metadata indicating approximate positions of pieces of music. We first need to retrieve the individual recording associated with each tune, through the combination of an automated pre-segmentation based on sound classification and audio analysis, and a subsequent manual verification and fine-tuning of the temporal positions, using a home-made user interface. Note detection is carried out by a deep learning method. To adapt the model to Hardanger fiddle music, musicians were asked to record themselves and annotate all played note, using a dedicated interface. Data augmentation techniques have been designed to accelerate the process, in particular using alignment of varied performances of same tunes. The transcription also requires the reconstruction of the metrical structure, which is particularly challenging in this style of music. We have also collected ground-truth data, and are conceiving a computational model. The next step consists in carrying out detailed music analysis of the transcriptions, in order to reveal in particular intertextuality within the corpus. A last direction of research is aimed at designing tools to visualise each tune and the whole catalogue, both for musicologists and general public.

Music often evokes a regular beat and a pleasurable sensation of wanting to move to that beat called groove. Recent studies show that a rhythmic pattern¡¯s ability to evoke groove increases at moderate levels of syncopation, essentially, when some notes occur earlier than expected. We present two studies that investigate that effect of syncopation in more realistic polyphonic music examples. First, listeners rated their urge to move to music excerpts transcribed from funk and rock songs, and to algorithmically transformed versions of these excerpts: 1) with the original syncopation removed, and 2) with various levels of pseudorandom syncopation introduced. While the original excerpts were rated higher than the de-syncopated, the algorithmic syncopation was not as successful in evoking groove. Consequently, a moderate level of syncopation increases groove, but only for certain syncopation patterns. The second study provides detailed comparisons of the original and transformed rhythmic structures that revealed key differences between them in: 1) the distribution of syncopation across instruments and metrical positions, 2) the counter-meter figures formed by the syncopating notes, and 3) the number of pickup notes. On this basis, we form four concrete hypotheses about the function of syncopation in groove, to be tested in future experiments.

In this article, we explore the various ways in which drummers express a simple ¡®backbeat¡¯ pattern when asked to play with different timing styles (laid-back, on-beat, pushed) via manipulation of stroke onset and intensity features. Based on hierarchical clustering analyses and phylogenetic tree visualizations, we found three main strategies used to distinguish pushed/laid-back from on-the-beat performances: (1) strong ¡®general earliness/lateness¡¯ strategies, where most instruments are consistently played earlier/later in time relative to a metrical grid; (2) subtler ¡®early/late flam¡¯ strategies, where most instruments are played synchronously with the grid but at least one instrument is distinctively played as an early/late flam ; and (3) even subtler ¡®ambiguously early/late compound sound¡¯ strategies, where two instruments form a compound sound, but one is played synchronously with the grid, while the other is played early/late. The majority of drummers used additional consistent intensity strategies, the most common being greater hi-hat or snare intensity, which might enhance the effect of laidback and pushed rhythmic events. However, intensity was not used uniformly to exclusively distinguish laid-back/pushed from on-beat timing.

La musique concr¨¨te, la musique ¨¦lectroacoustique, les musiques mixtes, le Live Electronics et ¨¤ leur suite les courants populaires de la disco, de la techno, du rap et de l¡¯EDM, d¨¦signent des styles musicaux qui ont radicalement chang¨¦ les mani¨¨res de faire et d¡¯¨¦couter la musique. En cr¨¦ant des situations nouvelles d¡¯interaction entre les musiciens, les publics et les innombrables machines qui peuplent leur univers, ces r¨¦pertoires ont modifi¨¦ en profondeur l¡¯ontologie et l¡¯esth¨¦tique du fait musical. Ce livre, qui rassemble des contributions de musicologues fran?ais et internationaux (USA, Norv¨¨ge, Australie, Royaume- Uni), propose ainsi une travers¨¦e des musiques ¨¦lectroniques savantes et populaires, de Luigi Nono ¨¤ David Guetta, de Philippe Manoury ¨¤ Brain Damage. Si la musique a pu un temps ¨ºtre pens¨¦e comme le produit de l¡¯activit¨¦ d¡¯un compositeur unique, la m¨¦diation de l¡¯¨¦lectronique remet en pleine lumi¨¨re la nature profond¨¦ment collaborative et interactive de tout fait musical. Telle est l¡¯hypoth¨¨se qui fonde l¡¯ambition th¨¦orique de cet ouvrage. Publi¨¦ avec le soutien de l¡¯UR APP de l¡¯universit¨¦ Rennes 2, de RASM-CHCSC de l¡¯universit¨¦ d¡¯?vry Val d¡¯Essonne et du RITMO de l¡¯universit¨¦ d¡¯Oslo.

This chapter analyzes ¡°1 bit Blues¡± (12 bit Blues, 2012, Ninja Tune) by the Canadian turntablist and music producer Kid Koala (aka Eric San). Kid Koala is not a blues musician but is instead known for his eclectic selection of samples, his virtuosic turntable techniques, and his intriguingly playful music. 12 bit Blues was primarily created using the E-mu SP-1200 drum machine and sampler to manipulate and juxtapose samples from old blues records. The sonic result of that approach initiates a dialogue between two quite distinct aesthetic paradigms. The focus of this chapter, then, is on this particular dialogue, including the ways in which this track reimagines the blues by embracing the aesthetic potential of the temporally fragmented.

Musical expertise improves the precision of timing perception and performance ¨C but is this expertise generic, or is it tied to the specific style(s) and genre(s) of one¡¯s musical training? We asked expert musicians from three musical genres (folk, jazz, and EDM/hip-hop) to align click tracks and tap in synchrony with genre-specific and genre-neutral sound stimuli to determine the perceptual center (¡°P-center¡±) and variability (¡°beat bin¡±) for each group of experts. We had three stimulus categories ¨C Organic, Electronic, and Neutral sounds ¨C each of which had a 2 ?~ 2 design of the acoustic factors Attack (fast/slow) and Duration (short/long). We found significant effects of Genre expertise, and a significant interaction for both P-center and P-center variability: folk and jazz musicians synchronize to sounds typical of folk and jazz in a different manner than the EDM/hip-hop producers. The results show that expertise in a specific musical genre affects our low-level perceptions of sounds as well as their affordance(s) for joint action/synchronization. The study provides new insights into the effects of active long-term musical enculturation and skill acquisition on basic sensorimotor synchronization and timing perception, shedding light on the important question of how nature and nurture intersect in the development of our perceptual systems.

Time series averaging is a crucial part of series summarization with important applications in data mining, signal noise suppression and information retrieval. Current averaging methods employ dynamic time warping (DTW) to correct for nonlinear phase variation between the sequences. They consider phase differences to be accidental and reduce durational information to sequential. Thus, they introduce time distortion that hinders the accurate estimation of the mean shape of the signals, its distinctive durational features, and the mean location of landmarks, all of which are required in many summarization applications. To address this problem, we propose a novel averaging method which preserves durational information due to a simple conversion of the output of DTW into a time sequence and an innovative iterative averaging process. We show that our method accurately estimates the ground truth mean sequences and mean temporal location of landmarks in synthetic and real-world datasets and outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

Researchers have argued that temporal microdeviations from the metric grid, such as those producedby musicians in performance, are crucial to making a musical rhythm groovy and danceable. It is curious, then, that the music currently dominating the dance floor, ¡°electronic dance music¡± or EDM, is typically characterized by grid-based rhythms. But is such a ¡°mechanistic,¡± grid-based aesthetic necessarily devoid of microrhythmic nuance? In this article, we aim to show that the microrhythmic component of an engaging groove involves the manipulation of more than simply the onset locations of rhythmic events¡ªthe sonic features fundamentally contribute to shaping the groove as well. In particular, we seek to demonstrate that EDM producers, with their preference for a grid-based microtiming aesthetic, are very sensitive to and adept at manipulating such sonic features for expressive effect. Drawing on interviews with EDM producers, we show that producers are often concerned with both sonic and temporal features, as well as their interactions. We argue that sonic features are crucial to shaping groove and feel at the micro level of rhythm. Moreover, such features also tend to introduce an indirect microtiming aspect to the grid-based aesthetic of EDM through the ways in which they shape timing at the perceptual level.

This article studies the rhythm of Norwegian telespringar, a tradition with an intimate relationship between music and dance that features a nonisochronous meter; that is, the durations between adjacent beats are unequal. A motion-capture study of a fiddler and dance couple revealed a long-medium-short duration pattern at the beat level in both the fiddler's and the dancers' periodic movements. The results also revealed a correspondence between how the fiddler and the dancers executed the motion patterns. This correspondence suggests that the performers share a common understanding of the underlying ¡°feel¡± of the music. The results are discussed in light of recent theoretical perspectives on the multimodality of human perception. It is argued that the special feel of telespringar derives from embodied sensations related to the dance and how music and dance have developed in tandem over time. The study advocates a holistic view of music and dance, the importance of insider experience, and the role of embodied experience in guiding our understanding of the music as such.