Perception and Production of Musical Rhythm
Timing Meter vs. Melody Meter
- Two pitches
- XX-OO-XO-XO- vs. XXO-OXO-XOX-XOO-XOX-OXX-OOX-OXO-XXO-
- Multiple pitches
- Listeners have more difficulty reproducing and identifying
sequences in which the timing and melody meter conflicted
Perception of Musical Rhythm
- Experiment asked subjects to group notes in selections
from Western classical music
- Listeners' responses often differed from music as written
- Listeners seem to find it difficult to hear units of more than 1
or 2 seconds
Perception and Production of Musical Rhythm
- Measurements of durations of notes and intervals in performances
- Performer's goal: convey hierarchical structure of music
to listeners
- Performers deviate from musical notation, lengthening some
notes and intervals, shortening others, in order to emphasize
the phrases
- There is phrase-final lengthening, and the amount of lengthening
increases with the importance of the break in the hierarchy
- Listeners' preferences tend to agree with performers'
- Preference for deviation from the precise timing expressed in
the noation may
increase with experience (at least for listening to
Viennese waltzes)
- The "beat": a level of explicit and precise timing;
this may be the highest level at which a performer controls
timing variation
- Divisions with the beat may correspond to learned "procedures"
and not be precisely timed
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Last updated: 17 October 1995
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~gasser/music2.html
Comments: gasser@salsa.indiana.edu
Copyright 1995, The Trustees of
Indiana University