MUSC 2911 Music Perception and Cognition

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MUSC 2911Music Perception and Cognition

• Rhythm II metre and grouping

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Overview

• What is metre?
• What is grouping?
• Metre theories
• Metre experiments
• Grouping theories
• Grouping experiments
• Rhythm perception and representation

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What is metre?

• Periodic
• Patterned
• Made up from beats
• Beats are strong and weak
• Beats are accented metrically and phenomenally
• Hierarchical
• Allows syncopation

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What is grouping?

• Sequential events are grouped
• Division of sequence into segments
• Hierarchical
• Can be aperiodic (unlike metre)
• Can coincide with or conflict with metre

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Metre theories

• Explicit hierarchies of events
• Longuet-Higgins and Lee (1982)
• Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983 68-104)
• Rule-based
• From events to tree-diagram
• Implicit hierarchies
• Desain (1992)
• Large and Kolen (1994)
• No metrical rules
• Metre emerges for expectations
• Metre emerges from tracking behaviour

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Metre experiments

• Palmer and Krumhansl (1990)
• Where do we think the next event will happen?
• Looked at distributions of onsets (profiles)
• Looked at listeners expectations
• Hierarchy of stronger and weaker beats
• Parncutt (1994)
• Looked at salience of different events within a
  metre
• Critical region for pulse tempo sensitivity
• Desain and Honing (2003 also see Clarke 1987)
• Category boundaries change with different
  metrical contexts
• Metrical perception affects beat tracking

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Desain and Honing (2003)
Reproduced with permission from
www.nici.kun.nl/mmm
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Desain and Honing (2003)
Reproduced with permission from
www.nici.kun.nl/mmm
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Grouping theories

• Fraisse (1982 162)
• Longer sounds or rests create a boundary between
  groups
• Any qualitatively distinct sound will start a
  group
• Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983 36-67)
• Build on these
• Complex rule-based theory
• Hierarchical

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Grouping experiment

• Clarke and Krumhansl (1990)
• Real Music (Stockhausen and Mozart)
• Experienced listeners (foot switch)
• Listeners seemed to use Lerdahl and Jackendoffs
  criteria (but also motivic structure)
• Weak evidence for hierarchical listening
  (problems with design)

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Rhythm perception and representation

• Top-down (knowledge driven)
• We seem to (need to) impose hierarchical order
• We know about musical structure
• Bottom-up (information driven)
• Music is (largely) ordered and hierarchical (or
  is it?)
• Many processes dont require much knowledge?
• Coding
• Chunking

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Summary

• Last week
• Categorisation
• Short and long durations
• Today
• Periodic structures above the level of the
  pulse
• Effects of pulse on metre and vice-versa
• Hierarchical organisation of events