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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 (15–25 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.

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, 599–615, (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.

This edited volume is based on a selection of contributions at an international seminar organized in May 2022 to celebrate the achievements of Professor Godøy upon his retirement from the University of ̽����ѡ. 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.

The TIME project: Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm (2017–2022) 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 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—“laidback,” “on-the-beat,” and “pushed”—in 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, reggaetón, 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 concrète, la musique électroacoustique, les musiques mixtes, le Live Electronics et à leur suite les courants populaires de la disco, de la techno, du rap et de l’EDM, désignent des styles musicaux qui ont radicalement changé les manières de faire et d’écouter la musique. En créant des situations nouvelles d’interaction entre les musiciens, les publics et les innombrables machines qui peuplent leur univers, ces répertoires ont modifié en profondeur l’ontologie et l’esthétique du fait musical. Ce livre, qui rassemble des contributions de musicologues français et internationaux (USA, Norvège, Australie, Royaume- Uni), propose ainsi une traversée des musiques électroniques savantes et populaires, de Luigi Nono à David Guetta, de Philippe Manoury à Brain Damage. Si la musique a pu un temps être pensée comme le produit de l’activité d’un compositeur unique, la médiation de l’électronique remet en pleine lumière la nature profondément collaborative et interactive de tout fait musical. Telle est l’hypothèse qui fonde l’ambition théorique de cet ouvrage. Publié avec le soutien de l’UR APP de l’université Rennes 2, de RASM-CHCSC de l’université d’Évry Val d’Essonne et du RITMO de l’université d’̽����ѡ.

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 – 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 – Organic, Electronic, and Neutral sounds – each of which had a 2 Å~ 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—the 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.

This article addresses the computational estimation of attack regions in audio recordings. Previous attempts to do so were based on the reduction of the audio waveform into an envelope curve, which decreases its temporal resolution. The proposed approach detects the attack region directly from the audio waveform. The attack region is modeled as a line starting from a low-amplitude point and intersecting one of the local maxima according to two principles: (1) maximizing the slope, while favoring, at the same time, a higher peak if the slope remains only slightly lower and (2) dismissing initial attack regions of relatively low amplitude. The attack start position is fine-tuned by intersecting the attack slope with the audio waveform. The proposed method precisely pinpoints the attack region in cases where it is unambiguously observable from the waveform itself. In such cases, previous methods selected a broader attack region due to the loss of temporal resolution. When attack regions are less evident, the proposed method’s estimation remains within the range of results provided by other methods. Applied to the prediction of judgments of P-center localization [Danielsen, Nymoen, Anderson, C^amara, Langerød, Thompson, and London, J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 45, 402–418 (2019)], the proposed method shows a significant increase in precision, at the expense of recall.

Previous studies have revealed uneven duration patterns at the sixteenth note level of samba. In the present study, we investigated the influence of tempo on such sixteenth-note patterns in a performed samba groove.The results revealed an uneven duration pattern in all tempi. Interestingly, the shortest note becomes relatively shorter and the longest relatively longer as the tempo increases. We suggest that the differences in relative durations between tempi reflect the need to maintain the samba sixteenth note ‘template’ in all tempi: producing the samba ‘feel’ requires that relative durations have to be adjusted to tempo.

MUSIC OFTEN TRIGGERS A PLEASURABLE URGE IN listeners to move their bodies in response to the rhythm. In music psychology, this experience is commonly referred to as groove. This study presents the Experience of Groove Questionnaire, a newly developed self-report questionnaire that enables respondents to subjectively assess how strongly they feel an urge to move and pleasure while listening to music. The development of the questionnaire was carried out in several stages: candidate questionnaire items were generated on the basis of the groove literature, and their suitability was judged by fifteen groove and rhythm research experts. Two listening experiments were carried out in order to reduce the number of items, to validate the instrument, and to estimate its reliability. The final questionnaire consists of two scales with three items each that reliably measure respondents' urge to move (Cronbach's ¼ :92) and their experience of pleasure (¼ :97) while listening to music. The two scales are highly correlated (r ¼ :80), which indicates a strong association between motor and emotional responses to music. The scales of the Experience of Groove Questionnaire can independently be applied in groove research and in a variety of other research contexts in which listeners' subjective experience of music-induced movement and enjoyment need to be addressed: for example the study of the interaction between music and motivation in sports and research on therapeutic applications of music in people with neurological movement disorders.

The GrooveToolbox is a new Python toolbox implementing various algorithms, new and pre-existing, for the analysis and comparison of symbolic drum loops, including rhythm features, similarity metrics and microtiming features. As part of the GrooveToolbox we introduce two new metrics of rhythm similarity and four features for describing the significant properties of microtiming deviations in drum loops. Based on a two-part perceptual evaluation, we show these four new microtiming features can each correlate to similarity perception, and be used with rhythm similarity metrics to improve personalized similarity models for drum loops. A new measure of structural rhythmic similarity is also shown to correlate more strongly to similarity perception of drum loops than the more com- monly used Hamming distance. These results point to the potential application of the GrooveToolbox and its new features in drum loop analysis for intelligent music production tools. The GrooveToolbox may be found at: https://github.com/fredbru/GrooveToolbox

This paper develops the hypothesis that symbolic drum patterns can be represented in a reduced form as a sim- ple oscillation between two states, a Low state (commonly associated with kick drum events) and a High state (often associated with either snare drum or high hat). Both an onset time and an accent time is associated to each state. The systematic inference of the reduced form is formal- ized. This enables the specification of a rhythmic struc- tural similarity measure on drum patterns, where reduced patterns are compared through alignment. The two-state representation allows a low computational cost alignment, once the complex topological formalization is fully taken into account. A comparison with the Hamming distance, as well as similarity ratings collected from listeners on a drum loop dataset, indicates that the bistate reduction enables to convey subtle aspects that goes beyond surface-level com- parison of rhythmic textures.

This paper reports on two experiments that investigated the expressive means through which musicians well versed in groove-based music signal the intended timing of a rhythmic event. Data were collected from 21 expert electric guitarists and 21 bassists, who were instructed to perform a simple rhythmic pattern in three different timing styles—“laidback,” “on-the-beat,” and “pushed”—in tandem with a metronome. As expected, onset and peak timing locations corresponded to the instructed timing styles for both instruments. Regarding sound, results for guitarists revealed systematic differences across participants in the duration and brightness [spectral centroid (SC)] of the guitar strokes played using these different timing styles. In general, laid-back strokes were played with a longer duration and a lower SC relative to on-the-beat and pushed strokes. Results for the bassists indicated systematic differences in intensity (sound-pressure level): pushed strokes were played with higher intensity than on-the-beat and laid-back strokes. These results lend further credence to the hypothesis that both temporal and sound-related features are important indications of the intended timing of a rhythmic event, and together these features offer deeper insight into the ways in which musicians communicate at the microrhythmic level in groove-based music.

In this music-analytic interpretation of two love songs from Prince’s Around the World in a Day album, we investigate the properties of groove, arrangement, and vocality, all of which contribute to the artist’s inimitable signature. With a disciplinary grounding in musicology, we demonstrate ways whereby musical features are associated with meaning in recorded songs. Underlying the approach is the notion that it is in the music where Prince’s ingenuity mainly lies. The analysis is informed by an understanding of the technological ramifications of the process on the part of Prince and his audio engineer Susan Rogers.

In this article, we explore the extent to which dynamic range processing (such as compression and sidechain compression) influences our perception of a sound signal’s temporal placement in music. Because compression reshapes the sound signal’s envelope, scholars have previously noted that certain uses of sidechain compression can produce peculiar rhythmic effects. In this article, we have tried to interrogate and complicate this notion by linking a description of the workings and effects of dynamic range processing to empirical findings on the interaction between sound and perceived timing, and by analyzing multitracks and DAW project files, as well as released audio files, of selected EDM tracks. The analyses of the different EDM tracks demonstrated that sidechain compression affects the music in many possible ways, depending on the settings of the compressors’ parameters, as well as the rhythmic pattern and the sonic complexity of both the trigger signal and the sidechained signal. Dynamic range processing’s impact on groove and perceived timing indicates, in line with previous findings, that sound and timing interact in fundamental ways. Because of this interaction, then, we cannot limit ourselves to technical terms that describe how particular effects are achieved if we want to fully understand the grooves that are characteristic of EDM or other music. We must also consider how listeners experience these effects.

Popular Musicology and Identity paves new paths for studying popular music’s entwinement with gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, locality, and a range of other factors. The book consists of original essays in honour of Stan Hawkins, whose work has been a major influence on the musicological study of gender and identity since the early 1990s. In the new millennium, musicological approaches have proliferated and evolved alongside major shifts in the music industry and popular culture. Reflecting this plurality, the book reaches into a range of musical contexts, eras, and idioms to critically investigate the discursive structures that govern the processes through which music is mobilised as a focal point for negotiating and assessing identity. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, Popular Musicology and Identity accounts for the state of popular musicology at the onset of the 2020s while also offering a platform for the further advancement of the critical study of popular music and identity. This collection of essays thus provides an up-to-date resource for scholars across fields such as popular music studies, musicology, gender studies, and media studies.

The perceptual center (P-center) of a sound is typically understood as the specific moment at which it is perceived to occur. Using matched sets of real and artificial musical sounds as stimuli, we probed the influence of attack (rise time), duration, and frequency (center frequency) on perceived P-center location and P-center variability. Two different methods to determine the P-centers were used: Clicks aligned in-phase with the target sounds via the method of adjustment, and tapping in synchrony with the target sounds. Attack and duration were the primary cues for P-center location and P-center variability; P-center variability was found to be a useful measure of P-center shape. Consistent interactions between attack and duration were also found. Probability density distributions for each stimulus display a systematic pattern of P-center shapes ranging from narrow peaks close to the onset of sounds with fast attack and short duration, to wider and flatter shapes indicating a range synchronization points for sounds with slow attack and long duration. The results support the conception of P-centers as not simple time points, but "beat bins" with characteristic shapes, and the shapes and locations of these beat bins are dependent upon both the stimulus and the synchronization task.

In speech and music, the acoustic and perceptual onset(s) of a sound are usually not congruent with its perceived temporal location. Rather, these "P-centers" are heard some milliseconds after the acoustic onset, and a variety of techniques have been used in speech and music research to find them. Here we report on a comparative study that uses various forms of the method of adjustment (aligning a click or filtered noise in-phase or anti-phase to a repeated target sound), as well as tapping in synchrony with a repeated target sound. The advantages and disadvantages of each method and probe type are discussed, and then all methods are tested using a set of musical instrument sounds that systematically vary in terms of onset/rise time (fast vs. slow), duration (short vs. long), and center frequency (high vs. low). For each method, the dependent variables were (a) the mean P-center location found for each stimulus type, and (b) the variability of the mean P-center location found for each stimulus type. Interactions between methods and stimulus categories were also assessed. We show that (a) in-phase and anti-phase methods of adjustment produce nearly identical results, (b) tapping vs. click alignment can provide different yet useful information regarding P-center locations, (c) the method of adjustment is sensitive to different sounds in terms of variability while tapping is not, and (d) using filtered noise as an alignment probe yields consistently earlier probe-onset locations in comparison to using a click as a probe.

The present study tested two assumptions concerning the auditory processing of microtiming in musical grooves (i.e., repeating, movement-inducing rhythmic patterns): 1) Microtiming challenges the listener's internal framework of timing regularities, or meter, and demands cognitive effort. 2) Microtiming promotes a “groove” experience—a pleasant sense of wanting to move along with the music. Using professional jazz musicians and nonmusicians as participants, we hypothesized that microtiming asynchronies between bass and drums (varying from −80 to 80 ms) were related to a) an increase in “mental effort” (as indexed by pupillometry), and b) a decrease in the quality of sensorimotor synchronization (as indexed by reduced finger tapping stability). We found bass/drums-microtiming asynchronies to be positively related to pupil dilation and negatively related to tapping stability. In contrast, we found that steady timekeeping (presence of eighth note hi-hat in the grooves) decreased pupil size and increased tapping performance, though there were no conclusive differences in pupil response between musicians and nonmusicians. However, jazz musicians consistently tapped with higher stability than nonmusicians, reflecting an effect of rhythmic expertise. Except for the condition most closely resembling real music, participants preferred the on-the-grid grooves to displacements in microtiming and bass-succeeding-drums-conditions were preferred over the reverse.

It is not uncommon to hear musicians and audio engineers speak of warmth and brightness when describing analog technologies such as vintage mixing consoles, multitrack tape machines, and valve compressors. What is perhaps less common, is hearing this term used in association with retro digital technology. A question exists as to how much the low bit rate and low-grade conversion quality contribute to the overall brightness or warmth of a sound when processed with audio effects simulating early sampling technologies. These two dimensions of timbre are notoriously difficult to define and more importantly, measure. We present a subjective user study of brightness and warmth, where a series of audio examples are processed with different audio effects. 26 participants rated the perceived level of brightness and warmth of various instrumental sequences for 5 different audio effects including bit depth reduction, compression and equalisation. Results show that 8 bit reduction tends to increase brightness and decrease warmth whereas 12 bit reduction tends to do the opposite, although this is very much dependent on the instrument. Interestingly, the most significant brightness changes, due to bit reduction, were obtained for bass sounds. For comparison purposes, instrument phrases were also processed with both an analogue compressor and an equalisation plugin to see if any subjective difference was noticed when simulating sonic characteristics that might be associated with warmth. Greater significance was observed when the sound excerpts were processed with the plugins being used to simulate the effects of bit depth reduction.

We present a method for tempo estimation from audio recordings based on signal processing and peak tracking, and not depending on training on ground-truth data. First, an accentuation curve, emphasizing the temporal location and accentuation of notes, is based on a detection of bursts of energy localized in time and frequency. This enables the detection of notes in dense polyphonic texture, while ignoring spectral fluctuation produced by vibrato and tremolo. Periodicities in the accentuation curve are detected using an improved version of autocorrelation function. Hierarchical metrical structures, composed of a large set of periodicities in pairwise harmonic relationships, are tracked over time. In this way, the metrical structure can be tracked even if the rhythmical emphasis switches from one metrical level to another. This approach, compared to all the other participants to the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) Audio Tempo Extraction competition from 2006 to 2018, is the third best one among those that can track tempo variations. While the two best methods are based on machine learning, our method suggests a way to track tempo founded on signal processing and heuristics-based peak tracking. Moreover, the approach offers for the first time a detailed representation of the dynamic evolution of the metrical structure. The method is integrated into MIRtoolbox, a Matlab toolbox freely available.

This chapter provides an overview of the concept of groove, investigating musical and sonic components of grooves as well as aspects related to pleasure, process, and affect. It starts out by addressing three distinct general understandings of groove: (1) pattern and performance; (2) pleasure and “wanting to move”; and (3) a state of being. The authors then propose a set of typical (rhythmic) features that seem to be common to a wide range of groove-based styles, exploring five main categories: pulse or regular beat; subdivision of the beat; syncopation; counter-rhythm; and microrhythm. Finally, the chapter presents some viable approaches to the analysis of groove, focusing on swing and anticipated beats in James Brown’s “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine” (1970), aspects of counter-rhythm in Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” (1967), and the extending of beats into beat bins in D’Angelo’s “Left & Right” (2000) and Rihanna’s “Needed Me” (2016).

Head movements of groups of participants moving to music allowing for both duple and triple subdivisions were analysed using Recurrence Quantification Analysis. As expected the maximum recurrence rate varied between participant, position in the music, and between groups. The lags of maximum recurrence were only partly corresponding to the metrical levels of the music and syncopated sections confused participants so that they moved to 4/4 rather than 6/8.

The attack phase of sound events plays an important role in how sounds and music are perceived. Several approaches have been suggested for locating salient time points and critical time spans within the attack portion of a sound, and some have been made widely accessible to the research community in toolboxes for Matlab. While some work exists where proposed audio descriptors are grounded in listening tests, the approaches used in two of the most popular toolboxes for musical analysis have not been thoroughly compared against perceptual results. This article evaluates the calculation of attack phase descriptors in the Timbre toolbox and the MIRtoolbox by comparing their predictions to empirical results from a listening test. The results show that the default parameters in both toolboxes give inaccurate predictions for the sound stimuli in our experiment. We apply a grid search algorithm to obtain alternative parameter settings for these toolboxes that align their estimations with our empirical results.

The perception of musical meter is fundamental for rhythm production and perception in much music. Underlying structures such as pulse, meter, and metrical subdivisions are often described as successive points in time. This paper investigates whether experienced musical meter may not only include such points in time, but also trajectories between the points–that is, metrical shapes. Previous studies have pointed out that there seems to be a relationship between musical meter and periodic body motion like foot tapping, head nodding and dancing. This paper investigates musical meter in music styles with an intimate relationship with dance, and whether metrical points and trajectories can be understood by investigating performers’ periodic body motion. Two motion capture studies form the empirical basis of this paper; first, a percussionist and a dancer performing Brazilian samba; second, a fiddler and two dancers performing Norwegian telespringar. The analysis showed that it seemed to be a relationship between the periodic fluctuation in audio amplitude and the performers’ periodic foot motion on sixteenth note level in samba. Furthermore, motion analysis revealed similar periodic shapes in both percussionist and dancer foot motion. In telespringar there seemed to be a relationship between the metrical beat level and the fiddler’s foot stamping. In addition, the beat duration pattern, as indicated by the fiddler’s periodic foot stamping, seemed to correspond to the shape of the dancers’ vertical body motion. The results support the view that there is a close relationship between musical meter and performers’ periodic body motion. This suggest that the underlying meter may not only include metrical points in time, but that each metrical beat/subdivision duration has a corresponding metrical trajectory with a certain shape. If this is the case, then perceivers’ and performers’ implicit knowledge of the underlying reference structure in samba and telespringar might incorporate knowledge about the underlying metrical shape.

A techno-cognitive look at how new technologies are shaping the future of musicking. “Musicking” encapsulates both the making of and perception of music, so it includes both active and passive forms of musical engagement. But at its core, it is a relationship between actions and sounds, between human bodies and musical instruments. Viewing musicking through this lens and drawing on music cognition and music technology, Sound Actions proposes a model for understanding differences between traditional acoustic “sound makers” and new electro-acoustic “music makers.” What is a musical instrument? How do new technologies change how we perform and perceive music? What happens when composers build instruments, performers write code, perceivers become producers, and instruments play themselves? The answers to these pivotal questions entail a meeting point between interactive music technology and embodied music cognition, what author Alexander Refsum Jensenius calls “embodied music technology.” Moving between objective description and subjective narrative of his own musical experiences, Jensenius explores why music makes people move, how the human body can be used in musical interaction, and how new technologies allow for active musical experiences. The development of new music technologies, he demonstrates, has fundamentally changed how music is performed and perceived.

How does the dynamic shape of a sound affect its perceived microtiming? In the TIME project, we studied basic aspects of musical microrhythm, exploring both stimulus features and the participants’ enculturated expertise via perception experiments, observational studies of how musicians produce particular microrhythms, and ethnographic studies of musicians’ descriptions of microrhythm. Collectively, we show that altering the microstructure of a sound (“what” the sound is) changes its perceived temporal location (“when” it occurs). Specifically, there are systematic effects of core acoustic factors (duration, attack) on perceived timing. Microrhythmic features in longer and more complex sounds can also give rise to different perceptions of the same sound. Our results shed light on conflicting results regarding the effect of microtiming on the “grooviness” of a rhythm.

There is currently a gap in rhythm and timing research regarding how we perceive complex acoustic stimuli in musical contexts. Many studies have investigated timing acuity in non-musical contexts involving simple rhythmic sequences comprised of clicks or sine waves. However, the extent to which these results transfer to our perception of microrhythmic nuances in multilayered musical contexts rife with complex instrumental sounds remains poorly understood. In this talk we will present an overview of a planned series of just-noticeable difference (JND) experiments that will generate ecologically valid perceptual heuristics regarding timing discrimination thresholds. The aim is to investigate the extent to which microrhythmic timing and sonic nuances are perceived in groove-based music and connect these heuristics to the pleasurable urge to move in groove-based contexts, as well as acoustic (e.g., intensity, duration, frequency) and musical features (e.g., tempo, genre), and listener factors (e.g. musical training, stylistic familiarity). Overall, we expect timing thresholds to be higher for polyphonic/musical than for monotonic/non-musical stimuli/contexts and higher for pulse attribution (whether one can perceive a “beat”; Madison & Merker 2002, Psychol Res) than for simple detection of asynchrony and anisochrony (whether one can perceive “rhythmic irregularities”). Thresholds will likely be modulated by intensity (Goebl & Parncutt 2002, ICMPC7), tempo (Friberg & Sundberg 1995, J Acous Soc Am), instrumentation (Danielsen et al. 2019, J Exp Psychol), and genre/stylistic conventions (Câmara & Danielsen 2019, Oxford). Musically trained/stylistically familiar listeners may also display style-typical sensitivity to microrhythmic manipulations (Danielsen et al. 2021 Atten Percept Psychophys; Jakubowski et al. 2022; Cogn). In terms of subjective experience, we expect that onset asynchrony exaggerations will likely elicit lower pleasure and movement ratings compared to performances with idiomatic timing profiles (Senn et al. 2018, PLoS One). Higher ratings should also be biased in favor of familiar styles (Senn et al. 2021) and rhythmic patterns that do not engender excessive metrical ambiguity are likely to elicit higher ratings (Spiech et al. 2022, preprint; Witek et al. 2014, PLoS One).

This study 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—“laidback,” “on-the-beat,” and “pushed”—in 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).

The notion of groove is key to both musicians’ and academics’ discourses on musical rhythm. In this keynote, I will present groove’s historical grounding in African American musical practices and explore its current implications by addressing three distinct understandings of groove: as pattern and performance; as pleasure and “wanting to move”; and as a state of being. I will point out some musical features that seem to be shared among a wide range of groove-based styles, including syncopation and counterrhythm, swing and subdivision, and microrhythmic qualities. Ultimately, I will look at the ways in which the groove experience has been approached in different disciplines, drawing on examples from musicology / ethnomusicology, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.

As a prélude for Norway's Constitution Day, this special event celebrated the Norwegian folk music tradition, showcasing our new online archive and demonstrating the richness of Hardanger fiddle music, with live performance. One aim of the project is to conceive new technologies allowing to better access, understand and appreciate Norwegian folk music. In this event, we introduced a new online version of the Norwegian Folk Music Archive and discuss underlying theoretical and technical challenges. A live concert/workshop, with the participation of Olav Luksengård Mjelva, offered a lively introduction to Hardanger fiddle music and its elaborate rhythm. The interests and challenges of automated transcription and analysis were discussed, with the public release of our new software Annotemus. The symposium was organised in the context of the MIRAGE project (RITMO, in collaboration with the National Library of Norway's Digital Humanities Laboratory).

In musical genres such as neo-soul and hip-hop, beats often have a temporal shape that makes their placement in time difficult to locate relative to a single point in time. This is often due to «muddy», processed sounds or asynchronies between events at beat-related metric positions. The beat bin theory suggests that the perceptual counterpart to such beat asynchronies or muddy beat shapes in a sounding groove is an internal (perceptual) reference structure of beat bins of considerable ‘width’ and a distinctive ‘shape’. I will start by pre- senting the theory and then focus on how various acoustic factors influence the beat bin, using examples from computer-based musical grooves. Ultimately, I argue that micro-level perception of, and synchronization to, sound is opti- mized for the task at hand, in line with the flexibility and dynamic nature of the human apparatus in perceiving, predicting, and processing rhythm.

This paper develops the concept of groove politics to investigate how the rhythmic qualities of shared musical experiences influence participatory democracy. Groove Politics is grounded in an analysis of listening and draws on recent studies on how music grooves, creates pleasure, and produces affective communities. Groove Politics understands musical sounds as complex signs that operate thanks to an interplay between rhythm, melody, harmony, lyrics, and local cultural meanings in which political expressions gain affective force as they bring people together. I apply this lens to performances of the Cuban band Interactivo and their musical dialogues with political and cultural changes in Cuba over the last two decades. Interactivo has been among the most innovative, controversial, and popular bands in the country of late thanks to their unique mixture of timba, rumba, jazz, funk, trova, hip-hop and world music. The study illuminates how Interactivo’s grooves both nurture and contest people’s sense of revolutionary values thanks to particular organizations of musical sound. While existing scholarship on the politics of music elaborates upon the ways in which music is “articulated,” “mediated,” or “embedded” in larger political contexts and discourses, few studies have shown how music shapes political experience. Groove Politics fills this lacuna by taking seriously music’s ability to move us and create affective communities of political expression. The paper questions the established truism within popular music studies that the political meaning of music cannot be found in “the music itself”. Instead, Groove Politics takes its cue from John Street’s remark that what is lacking in existing scholarship is a “musical theory of politics [that takes seriously] the political possibilities inherent in pleasure”. Conceptually, Groove Politics builds on arguments within political theory by Arendt and Rancière that underscore the importance of aesthetics in politics coupled with research on how music grooves. It uses this frame to study how grooves redefine community and political discourse. The paper adds to existing musicological scholarship on popular music by drawing attention to how music moves us politically and aesthetically, coupled with analysis of the artistic and ethical judgements that give rise to and result from such practices.

An introduction to the inter-trial coherence measure (ITC) and how it is applied to EEG data (with example code/scripts in MATLAB). Furthermore caveats of the measure are discussed along with it's relation to phase opposition measures.

An introduction to the Phase Amplitude Coupling (PAC) measure and how it is applied to EEG data (example code in MATLAB). The caveats of the measure are covered and which sanity checks might be necessary.

An introduction to the Fourier transform and how it is applied to EEG data. The short time fourier transform (STFT) and different measures (phase and amplitude) derived from it are explained.

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.

Lyrikken er den mest populære og utbredte av alle diktarter – vel å merke sanglyrikken, den som fremføres til musikk og formidles gjennom radio, grammofonplater, CD-er og strømmetjenester. Den omgir oss til daglig og er samtidig den eldste formen for lyrikk vi kjenner til. I det gamle Hellas ble diktene fremsagt til lyrespill. Til tross for dette har sanglyrikken vært mindre utforsket enn skriftlyrikken, og det har skortet på teoretiske og metodiske perspektiver. Det søker denne boka å råde bot på. Her diskuteres først de grunnleggende likheter og forskjeller mellom skrift- og sanglyrikk, mellom øye- og ørekunst. Videre drøftes metodiske innfallsvinkler til studiet av sanglyrikk, med tanke på samspillet mellom ord og musikk. Deretter gjør boka rede for en rekke kjente sanglyriske sjangrer: ballader, skillingsviser, salmer, joik, viser, blues, rock, indie-folk og rap. Boka er den første i sitt slag i Norge. Den er særlig rettet mot forskere og studenter i høyere utdanning, og lærere som vil arbeide med sanglyrikk i skoleverket. Men alle som interesserer seg for sanglyrikkens sjangrer, vil finne noe å glede seg over her.

The internal beat or pulse in the listener is not a single point in time, but has a shape and a width and can be described via a probability distribution. This phenomenon has been conceptualized in the beat bin thoery (Danielsen 2010). The internal beat bin of the listener varies systematically with the precision needed in the given musical or sonic context. Anne and Sabine will present behavioral evidence for this phenomenon and a first attempt to reveal the underlying neural mechanism behind the flexible adaptation to the precision of the current beat bin context. They will present effects of acoustic factors on the perceptual center and the beat bin, as well as preliminary results on how neural oscillatory activity might represent a neural mechanism behind this phenomenon.

Background and Aim: Findings from performance timing experiments have shown that drummers are able to systematically play stroke onsets significantly earlier and later than an instructed on-the-beat performance (Câmara et al., 2020; Danielsen et al., 2015), and purportedly able to further control the degree of onset asynchrony between the various constituent instruments of the drum-kit (Câmara and Danielsen, 2019). Previous investigations have focused on comparing average statistical trends of onset timing between timing styles across entire groups of drummers. In this study, we map performance strategies present at the individual participant level and categorize the different archetypical ways in which drummers express different timing styles. We focus on the onset asynchrony and intensity of strokes between drum-kit instruments, and in relation to a metrical grid, and hypothesize that drummers employ consistent strategies to achieve different desired timing styles, choosing different instruments (snare/kick/hi-hat) in the rhythmic pattern to generate in-sync, late, and early timing performances. Methods: In a previous experiment (Câmara et al., 2020), twenty-two drummers were instructed to play a basic “back-beat” pattern along to a metronome and a pre-recorded instrumental track in three different timing conditions: laid-back, on-the-beat, and pushed. Here, we conduct a hierarchical cluster analysis of various onset and intensity features in this data set, combined with phylogenetic tree visualizations to provide an overview of the strategies used by the drummers to distinguish laid-back/pushed from on-the-beat performances. Furthermore, we encode the features of the onset or intensity clusters into microtiming archetypes that visually summarize the general characteristics of the drummers’ strategy in each cluster. Results: Overall, three overarching onset strategies were used to distinguish pushed/laid-back from on-the-beat performances: (1) strong “general earliness/lateness” strategies: most instruments are consistently played earlier/later in time relative to the grid; (2) subtler “early/late flam” strategies: most instruments are played synchronously with the grid but at least one instrument is played distinctively early/late ; and (3) even subtler “ambiguously early/late compound sound” strategies: two instruments are played synchronously in relation to each other as a compound sound, but one instrument is played synchronous with the grid and the other is played early/late. While no clear intensity manipulation patterns emerged to exclusively distinguish laid-back/pushed timing, they serve as a means of enhancing or diminishing the effect of intentionally produced asynchronies. Conclusion: Results indicate that performers utilize a range of inter-instrument onset timing and intensity relationships to express microrhythmic feel in groove performance, that is, different drummers use different means to achieve the same desired feel. Implications: The novel methods developed in this study may be applied to analysis of commercial recordings to provide insight into the idiomatic timing–sound strategies of influential performers and/or genres/styles more generally. References: Câmara, G. S., & Danielsen, A. (2019). Groove. In A. Rehding & S. Rings (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of critical concepts in music theory (pp. 271–294). Oxford University Press. Câmara, G. S., Nymoen, K., Lartillot, O., & Danielsen, A. (2020). Timing Is Everything . . . or Is It? Effects of Instructed Timing Style, Reference, and Pattern on Drum Kit Sound in Groove-Based Performance. Music Perception, 38(1), 1–26. Danielsen, A., Waadeland, C. H., Sundt, H. G., & Witek, M. A. G. (2015). Effects of instructed timing and tempo on snare drum sound in drum kit performance. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(4), 2301–2316.

Musicians can place the time-position of events with high precision and according to personal preference, genre and tempo [1]. For instance, the swing ratio is not kept constant, but it is systematically adapted to a global tempo [2]. In contemporary music, drummers can achieve a specific feel by manipulating the timing of rhythms in different ways and placing event onsets earlier or later compared to the time reference [1]. These small adjustments in time are also referred to as micro-timing variations. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of micro-timing variations in live-played rhythms on the perceived danceability and timing precision. The stimuli were chosen from Câmara et al. [1] where drummers were playing two different patterns with different timing styles (laid-back, pushed, on-beat). Two drummers’ performances were selected based on their reported average systematic timing. These 12 recordings were mixed with the instrumental backing track (bass and guitar) heard by the drummers to form the stimuli. Forty participants (M = 28.23 years, SD = 11.80), 28 males and 12 females, with varying musical background were recruited via social media (Facebook pages, groups and direct messages to chat groups). Participants were sent a link to the online listening test using Google Forms with modifications that presented the stimuli as embedded videos. Each video started with a prompt to wear headphones followed by 4 bars of groove for a total of 11 seconds (with a static image). For each page, the participant was presented with a reference track (on-beat timing) and a “beat” track (laid-back or pushed timing) and asked to rate the perceived danceability from 1 (not danceable at all) to 5 (very danceable). Additionally, listeners were asked to compare the beat with the reference track and indicate whether this was pushed (ahead), laid-back (behind) or on-beat (synced with) the reference in terms of timing. Preliminary results indicate that micro-timing variations affect the perceived danceability. On-beat patterns were rated with the highest danceability, followed by laid-back and pushed styles. The drummer that obtained the highest danceability rating for the laid-back performance is also the one that was mainly recognized as on-beat performer. As expected, identification of timing (ahead, behind or on) proved to be difficult. Using the instrumental backing track as a time reference could possibly have made the task even harder for untrained listeners. Future research could address this by comparing danceability ratings for the grooves mixed with different backing tracks. References [1] G. S. Câmara, K. Nymoen, O. Lartillot, and A. Danielsen, “Timing Is Everything…Or Is It? Effects of Instructed Timing Style, Reference, and Pattern on Drum Kit Sound in Groove-Based Performance,” Music Percept., vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 1–26, Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1525/mp.2020.38.1.1. [2] H. Honing and W. B. de Haas, “Swing Once More: Relating Timing and Tempo in Expert Jazz Drumming,” Music Percept., vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 471–476, Jun. 2008, doi: 10.1525/mp.2008.25.5.471.

Norwegian Hardanger fiddle music is typically played by a solo fiddler, without rhythmic accompaniment except for the musician’s discreet foot stomping. Some of its repertoire features an asymmetrical ternary meter, with an uneven proportion of durations between the three beats of each bar, and with varying degrees of fluctuation of those proportions throughout each piece. In addition, there is often no clear audible onset corresponding to the beat position. As a result, many listeners find it difficult to hear the beats without experience from playing or dancing, and the beat onsets cannot be properly tracked by state-of-the-art beat trackers. The aim of this study is to develop a computational model of beat tracking of Hardanger fiddle music. Due to the rhythmic irregularity of the music, computational approaches relying on the detection of regular periodicities cannot be used. The proposed strategy adopts a cognitive perspective, modeling processes that progressively infer beats while scanning the music sequence chronologically. To each successive note is associated a tentative metrical position, which is determined based on a set of rules, using various input data such as (1) the ratio of the inter-onset interval (IOI) from the previous beat onset to the current note onset and the preceding inter-beat-onset interval and (2) the ratio of the IOI from the bar onset to the current note onset and the preceding inter-bar-onset interval. Successive repetition of eighth notes (as well as of eighth-note triplets) induce specific states that also guide the subsequent extension of the sequence. Multiple beat tracking scenarios can coexist at particular moments in the tune for very short periods. In particular, the very first notes at the beginning of the tune may initially imply conflicting metrical structures and tempi. The conflicting parallel beat tracking scenarios are progressively extended note after note in parallel. A scenario ends whenever it reaches a dead-end situation where the music is in total contradiction. Multiple scenarios are fused when they are continued exactly the same way, and only the scenario deemed the most congruent is retained. One particularity of Hardanger fiddle music is that beat onsets are not precise points in time but rather diffuse temporal extension, closely related to the notion of beat bin (Danielsen, 2010). Sometimes, multiple successive notes can all be considered as possible onsets for a given beat (Johansson, 2010; Stover et al., 2021). This multiplicity of beat onsets has been integrated into the model. Most of the analysis can be carried out using solely note onset time as input data, although more challenging cases occasionally require taking into account note duration or higher structure such as motivic repetition. This indicates that a proper beat tracker needs to be integrated as a module within a comprehensive music analysis framework, with bidirectional dependencies with the other modules of the framework. The model has so far been tuned and tested on a couple of tunes only. Its application to the automated analysis of a larger corpus is under investigation. Danielsen, Anne (2010). “Here, there, and everywhere. Three accounts of pulse in D'Angelo's 'Left and Right’.” In A. Danielsen (Ed.), Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Farnham: Ashgate/Routledge, UK. Johansson, Mats (2010). “The Concept of Rhythmic Tolerance – Examining Flexible Grooves in Scandinavian Folk-fiddling.” In A. Danielsen (Ed.), Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Farnham: Ashgate/Routledge, UK. Stover, Chris; Danielsen, Anne & Johansson, Mats (2021). “Bins, Spans, Tolerance: Three Theories of Microtiming Behavior.” [under review in Music Theory Spectrum].

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The focus of the paper will be analytical and experiential aspects of repetition and difference in grooves. Inspired by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, I will discuss the difference between static and dynamic repetition and develop the idea of repetition as production, which will then be applied to various musical examples of African-American groove-based music.

Recent studies have revealed that systematic non-isochronous duration patterns on sixteenth note level in samba, seems to be a prominent feature of this style (e.g., Gerischer, 2006; Gouyon, 2007; Haugen and Godøy, 2014; Naveda, 2011). Present study investigates the effect of tempo on the duration pattern on sixteenth note level in a performed samba groove. Some previous studies conducted in other genres have found that uneven duration patterns seem to become more even as tempo increases. It has been suggested that this effect might be due to perceptual constraints producing a lower limit for duration (e.g., Friberg and Sundström, 1997) or a reduction of rhythmic categories when two initially uneven short notes become so similar in fast tempi that they merge into one single category (Clarke, 1985). Two samba performers from São Paulo in Brazil, a percussionist and a dancer, were recorded. The percussionist played a samba groove on a Brazilian hand drum called pandeiro and the dancer performed the dance in samba no pé style. The samba groove was performed at three different tempi: fast (133 bpm), preferred (100 bpm), and slow (69 bpm). The results are based on an analysis of the recorded sound. The temporal positions of the played sixteenth notes were detected using the MIRtoolbox (Lartillot and Toiviainen, 2007). The results show that all the sixteenth notes were significantly different in all tempi, suggesting a medium/long– short–medium/short–long duration pattern. We found that the second sixteenth note becomes relatively shorter and the fourth relatively longer as the tempo increases. This is in contrast with previous research, which suggest that non-isochronous duration patterns become more even as tempo increases. We suggest that the non-isochronous duration pattern must become more pronounced when tempo increases in order to maintain the specific ‘feel’ of the samba groove. This implies that the duration pattern have to be consistent at a categorical level across tempi: the groove pattern is a pattern of duration categories and does not rely on fixed percentages or ratios. Future work will include more recordings in order to be able to draw more general conclusions.

In this keynote I will discuss interdisciplinarity as a methodological approach in music studies. I begin by outlining different forms of collaboration across disciplines. Then I will share my experiences with designing and leading the project TIME: Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm, funded by the NFR-TOPPFORSK scheme. The project draws on a wide variety of disciplines that have been central to the study of rhythm in music and explores a broad methodological palette: from musical analysis and aesthetic interpretation, to qualitative interviews, controlled experiments and cross-cultural comparative approaches. I will focus on how different methods can be combined to provide richer answers to the same research questions, and how to organize research to achieve collaboration across traditions. The challenges facing interdisciplinary research will also be addressed. In the last part of the lecture, the focus will be on interdisciplinarity across disciplines based on our experiences of running the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion at the University of ̽����ѡ, where music scholars collaborate with researchers from other fields, such as informatics and cognitive psychology.

Humor or fun are at the very heart of popular music and prompts its embrace, in turn, of playfulness. This paper points to musical examples that expose their fragmented construction and discusses how such mosaic rhythms and grooves can create a feeling of humor and playfulness, as well as unique feelings of pleasurable beauty. I argue that the aesthetics of this music to a large extent relies on the listener’s conceptions of two or more simultaneous “time planes” with two different sets of logic––the logics of the experienced now and the logics of some actual or imagined past. That is, fragmented rhythms are experiences as a parallel and contrast to some model or background text; their meaning relies on hearing them within two different contexts. Moreover, despite being experienced as fragmented, they are also experienced as coherent; a coherent fragmentedness that amounts to a mosaic flow. The dual nature or doubled experience of fragmented rhythms, which differs from music representing a coherent temporal structure, arguably creates a tension that is at the center of the vigor and the enjoyment of these playful rhythms. These discussions will draw on, in particular, Michael Apter’s (1982) theory of synergies and Brian Sutton-Smith’s (2001) notion of imaginative worlds, Yury Tynyanov and other parody scholars’ notions of a doubled-planed existence, and Victor Shklovsky’s (1989) notion of defamiliarization.

Kan en AI lage bedre tekster enn en visesanger? Og bedre drinker enn en bartender? Vi tester begge deler. Prøvekanin er Pål Moddi Knudsen. En AI har tygd seg gjennom de gamle tekstene hans, og spytta ut en splitter ny. Dessuten - Hvorfor hører man bare bassen fra festen ved siden av? - Konsentrer man seg bedre med musikk? - Løper man raskere med musikk? - Hvorfor har vi så ulik musikksmak? - Hvorfor er Moddis gitar alltid sur? - Hvor varmt blir det i en peisovn? I panelet Visesanger Pål Moddi Knudsen Datalog Morten Goodwin Musikkviter Anne Danielsen Fysiker Ole Martin Løvvik Hjerneforsker Per Brodal

Musical synchronization may be achieved with greater or lesser precision. Previous research has shown that acoustic factors systematically influence where a musician places one sound in relation to another in order to hear them as perfectly synchronized. However, it remains unclear how synchrony is affected by musical enculturation. In this talk, Anne Danielsen will present results from a comparative study where expert musicians and producers from jazz, folk music, and EDM/hip-hop did click alignment and tapping to different musical and quasi-musical sounds.

The GrooveToolbox is a new Python toolbox implementing various algorithms, new and pre-existing, for the analysis and comparison of symbolic drum loops, including rhythm features, similarity metrics and microtiming features. As part of the GrooveToolbox we introduce two new metrics of rhythm similarity and four features for describing the significant properties of microtiming deviations in drum loops. Based on a two-part perceptual evaluation, we show these four new microtiming features can each correlate to similarity perception, and be used with rhythm similarity metrics to improve personalized similarity models for drum loops. A new measure of structural rhythmic similarity is also shown to correlate more strongly to similarity perception of drum loops than the more com- monly used Hamming distance. These results point to the potential application of the GrooveToolbox and its new features in drum loop analysis for intelligent music production tools. The GrooveToolbox may be found at: https://github.com/fredbru/GrooveToolbox

MIRtoolbox is a Matlab toolbox dedicated to the analysis of music and sound from audio recordings and to the extraction of musical features such as tonality, rhythm, or structures. It has also been used for non- musical applications, such as in Non Destructive Testing, and with non-audio signals. In this issue of the newsletter, the YAN discusses the MIRtoolbox with Olivier Lartillot (RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, University of ̽����ѡ, Norway) and Petri Toiviainen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) You can also check out the MIRtoolbox website at: shorturl.at/oA038

This paper develops the hypothesis that symbolic drum patterns can be represented in a reduced form as a sim- ple oscillation between two states, a Low state (commonly associated with kick drum events) and a High state (often associated with either snare drum or high hat). Both an onset time and an accent time is associated to each state. The systematic inference of the reduced form is formal- ized. This enables the specification of a rhythmic struc- tural similarity measure on drum patterns, where reduced patterns are compared through alignment. The two-state representation allows a low computational cost alignment, once the complex topological formalization is fully taken into account. A comparison with the Hamming distance, as well as similarity ratings collected from listeners on a drum loop dataset, indicates that the bistate reduction enables to convey subtle aspects that goes beyond surface-level com- parison of rhythmic textures.

Bedroom pop: En undergrunnskultur.

Technology and Studio Practices in Record Production Research: Object, Subject, Variable and Data Collection Tool.

Recent research points towards a relation between syncopation and groove (Witek et al., 2014; Madison and Sioros, 2014), i.e. the pleasurable sensation of wanting to move to music (Janata et al., 2012). We aimed at confirming the inverted-U shape relation found in previous research, using more controlled music examples (MEs). To this end, we asked twenty-seven participants to listen to and rate variations of MEs that only differ in their syncopation. Ten short funk and rock loops consisting of drums, bass and keyboards were algorithmically transformed (Sioros and Guedes, 2014) to 1) remove the original syncopation, and 2) introduce various amounts of new syncopation: 25% (roughly equal amount to the original), 50%, and 70%. The MEs were produced using professional sound samples. The participants rated the groove of the original versions higher than all the transformed versions, including the version with a similar amount of algorithmic syncopation, while the 50% and 70% versions had the lowest scores. Statistically significant differences were observed between 1) the original and the rest, and 2) the 25% and the 50% and 70%, but not between the 25% and the deadpan. To understand this result, we compared the original and algorithmic syncopation. Our findings include: 1) The algorithmic syncopation is relatively uniformly distributed. In contrast, the original versions have less syncopated drums with almost no syncopated hi-hats. Certain metrical positions in the drums are never syncopated, e.g. the back-beat snare. 2) The original syncopation forms more and longer cross-rhythmic or metrically shifted patterns, as often encountered in the funk style (Danielsen, 2006). 3) The micro-timing alignment of sounds differs between versions. This experiment concludes that groove is increased by syncopation, however, not every pattern will do. Our analysis calls attention to the complex nature of syncopation and its possible dependence on structural factors.

Groove is the pleasurable sensation of wanting to move to music. A series of studies has attempted to understand the function of this phenomenon by examining its relation to physical properties in the sound signal and found, among other things, that groove increases at optimal levels of syncopation. Here, we tested if the amount of syncopation is the critical factor, rather than the specific pattern of notes that are syncopated. To this end, our algorithm transformed ten short funk and rock loops consisting of drums, bass and keyboards to 1) remove the original syncopation, and 2) introduce various amounts of new syncopation: 0%, 25% (similar amount to the original), 50%, and 70%. All the examples were produced using profes- sional sound samples and were rated by 27 listeners. The ratings were highest for the original versions, next highest for the 0 and 25% versions, and lowest for 50% and 70% versions, with statistically significant differences between the original and the rest, and the 25% and the 50% and 70%, but not between the 0% and 25%. Apparently, our algorithm failed to recreate the groove of the original music. Comparing the origi- nal and algorithmic syncopation we found: (1) The algorithmic syncopation is relatively uniformly distributed across the instruments, while the original versions have less syncopated drums with almost no syncopated hi-hats, and the back-beat snare never syncopated. (2) The original syncopation forms more and longer cross-rhythmic or metrically shifted patterns, as often encountered in the funk style. (3) Differences in the micro-timing alignment of sounds. In conclusion, groove is greatly increased by syncopation; although, not necessarily by syncopation per se, as the results point to several structural factors that may be important and can be further tested and add to our understanding of the functional properties that underlie the sensation of groove.

Timing is an important aspect of groove music. The relationship between musicians’ body motion in performance and timing is, however, as yet not well understood Timing and drummers’ movement: A novel methodology for performance analysis . In the present study we recorded movement of 20 drummers performing the same rhythmic pattern under four different timing instructions: natural, on- the-beat, laid-back and pushed. Motion capture data synchronized to audio recordings of their performances were collected as part of a larger experimental project. This presentation focuses on our method for analyzing motion capture data. The aim of the analysis is a) to identify common movement strategies for sub-groups of drummers, and b) to identify strategies for achieving the four different timing conditions across drummers. In this presentation we focus on the movement of the left arm, and particularly on the preparation and rebound phase of the snare strokes. To explore and analyze the data without statistically testing a priori hypotheses about specific performance techniques, we combined existing practices from different disciplines into a novel methodology. First, we reduce the data into motion templates (Müller and Röder 2006). We design a set of 22 binary features to describe the movement of the arm. Second, we perform a phylogenetic analysis of the motion templates, in which we identify clusters within each timing condition. A comparison between clusters reveals differences in the coordination of the participants’ movements that correspond to the different performance strategies. Preliminary analysis has shown distinct clusters within all timing conditions that differ in specific features. For instance, we observe three groups of participants within the “natural” condition that differ in the flexion of the wrist and elbow. Besides our findings we will present the details of the methodology, which can be applied in the study of music-related movements beyond the scope of this project.

Computational models for the analysis of tempo, metre and the tracking of beats have made significant progress during the last decades. I first present a synthetic overview of the state of the art. Up to recently, classical approaches were based on signal processing, with the integration of heuristics based on assumptions related to music perception and cognition. The standard approach is to first detect percussive events through the establishment of an accentuation curve, followed by periodicity detection, and the construction and tracking of meter. Because rhythmic emphasis can develop on various metrical levels across time, it is necessary to track the metrical structure on multiple levels. I show the benefit of such detailed analysis with the use of a model I have developed, and which obtained one of the highest grades in the MIREX tempo estimation competition. New approaches based on deep learning have achieved impressive progress and have largely surpassed signal-processing-based approached (including mine) in the recent yearly editions of MIREX. One limitation of these approaches, at least in their current stages, is that they appear as black boxes able to imitate a particular behaviour for which they were trained on particular examples. As such, they hardly offer insight on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the perception of metre. I will discuss the limitations of signal processing approaches and highlight the complexity of the musical structure. Pulsation in music is not always expressed through a periodic repetition of percussive events, but may emerge from a subtle propagation of motivic or harmonic structures. I present an approach under development that models the different components of music analysis and combine them altogether, extending further Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s vision. Motivic repetition, which plays a core role, is also one of the dimensions that is the most difficult to model and automate.

During this presentation, Dr. Olivier Lartillot will give an overview of MIRtoolbox - a Matlab application enabling the extraction of a large range of audio and musical descriptions from recordings. MIRtoolbox is designed to be easy to use both for teaching at any level and for advanced research in musicology, signal analysis and music cognition. One initial aim of MIRtoolbox was to study the relationship between musical features and emotions evoked by music. MIRtoolbox focuses on signal-processing-based approaches that offer limited understanding of music. Lartillot is also developing computational methods for the analysis of notated music, starting from motivic analysis and aiming at building a comprehensive framework where audio and score are combined together.

Sensory consequences of actions are predicted by the brain via an internal forward model to prepare sensory cortical areas, referred to as motor prediction. In a similar vein, the predictive coding framework suggests that perception is based on internal models making predictions about sensory events, based on statistical probabilities of the stimuli. In the current study we investigated action-based sensory predictions. We used a self-paced, two-choice random generation task, infrequently inducing deviant outcomes of voluntary action. Participants repeatedly pressed a right and a left button normatively associated with a 70 ms long 1 kHz and 2 kHz tone, respectively. Occasional deviants occurred, inverting the learned button-tone association. Participants were instructed that their button presses should be random, at a regular but self-paced tempo of one press per 1-2 s, and that they should press both buttons with equal probability. They were informed that the tones are task-irrelevant. We used intracranial EEG (iEEG) data recorded from 10 adult patients with electrodes localized in frontal and temporal lobes. The patients had drug resistant epilepsy and were undergoing presurgical monitoring via implanted stereotactic electrodes. Electrode coordinates and anatomical labels were obtained from coregistered MRI and CT images using iElectrodes toolbox. Initial results indicate that violations of action intentions modulated high frequency band activity (HFA, 75-145 Hz) in distributed brain regions including temporal and prefrontal cortices.

Rhythm and groove are at the heart of many African-American musical traditions. In this lecture, I will discuss the ways in which creative use of new digital technology has changed how music sounds. As my examples I will use contemporary African-American popular music that have been produced through unorthodox application of the digital audio workstation. I will also touch upon how sound processing can be used to alter the perceived timing of rhythmic events.

Several empirical studies have investigated the role of tempo on the characteristic non-isochronous long–short duration pattern on eight note level in jazz. Friberg and Sundström (1997) found an approximately linear decrease of swing ratio with increasing tempo and suggest a lower limit to the duration of the short second eight note around 100 ms. Honing and Haas (2008) found that the swing ratio is adapted to the overall tempo, but did not find that it scaled linearly with tempo. Non-isochronous subdivision patterns have also been found in samba groove (e.g., Gerischer, 2006; Haugen, 2016; Naveda, 2011)–that is, at the level of sixteenth notes. In samba groove the fourth sixteenth note seems to be longer in duration than the others. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of tempo on the duration pattern on sixteenth note level in a performed samba groove. Two professional samba performers, a percussionist and a dancer, participated in the study. The analysis in present paper is based on the recorded sound. The percussionist played a samba groove at three different tempi: 133, 100, and 69 BPM. Since all the sixteenth notes are played in this recording, their temporal position could be detected using onset detection. Subsequently, the inter-onset-intervals (IOIs) between the sixteenth notes were calculated and converted into percent values according to their percentage of the beat. The analysis showed significant differences between all the sixteenth note durations in all three tempi–that is, a medium/long–short–medium/short–long duration pattern on sixteenth note level were found at all tempi. In addition, a significant interaction between sixteenth note type and tempo were found. The analysis showed that as the tempo increases the short second sixteenth note became shorter and the long fourth sixteenth note became longer. In the fastest tempo, the short second sixteenth note’s mean duration is only 68 ms, something that is much shorter than 100 ms that has previous been suggested to be the shortest interval that we can hear and perform. The results suggest that the non-isochronous duration pattern on sixteenth note level in samba becomes even more non-isochronous with increasing tempo. In addition, the results indicate that the lower limit for IOIs in samba groove is below 100 ms. REFERENCES: Friberg & Sundström. (1997). Preferred swing ratio in jazz as a function of tempo. Speech, Music, and Hearing: Quarterly Status and Progress Report (TMH-QSPR), 4, 19–27. Gerischer (2006). O suingue baiano: Rhythmic feeling and microrhythmic phenomena in Brazilian percussion. Ethnomusicology, 50(1), 99–119. Haugen (2016). Music–Dance. Investigating Rhythm Structures in Brazilian Samba and Norwegian Telespringar Performance. (Ph.D. Thesis), University of ̽����ѡ, ̽����ѡ. Honing & Haas (2008). Swing Once More: Relating Timing and Tempo in Expert Jazz Drumming. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25(5), 471–476. doi:10.1525/mp.2008.25.5.471 Naveda (2011). Gesture in Samba: A cross-modal analysis of dance and music from the Afro-Brazilian culture. (Ph.D. thesis), Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, Belgium, Ghent, Belgium.

Får prisen for tverrfaglig, banebrytende og innovativt arbeid.

Hvorfor opplever vi rytmer og tid slik vi gjør? "RITMO Senter for tverrfaglig forskning på rytme, tid og bevegelse" vil gi oss svaret.

Creative use of new digital technology has changed how music is produced, distributed, and consumed, as well as how music sounds. In this keynote, I will analyse some examples of new sonic expressions within the field of popular music that have been produced through unorthodox application of the digital audio workstation. I will also touch upon new patterns of personalised use and the so-called “prosumption” practices that have arised in the digital era in the form of remix, sample and mashup.

Hvorfor får vi lyst til å bevege oss når vi hører musikk? Vinnerne av UiOs innovasjonspris, Anne Danielsen og Alexander Refsum Jensenius, finner forhåpentligvis svaret når de fordyper seg i mennesket og rytmens mysterier.

Head movements of groups of participants moving to music allowing for both duple and triple subdivisions were analysed using Recurrence Quantification Analysis. As expected the maximum recurrence rate varied between participant, position in the music, and between groups. The lags of maximum recurrence were only partly corresponding to the metrical levels of the music and syncopated sections confused participants so that they moved to 4/4 rather than 6/8.

The perception of musical meter is fundamental for rhythm production and perception in much music. Underlying structures such as pulse, meter, and metrical subdivisions are often described as successive mental beats. This paper investigates whether experienced musical meter may not only include such mental points in time, but also trajectories between the points–that is, metrical shapes. Previous studies have pointed out that there seems to be a relationship between musical meter and periodic body motions like foot tapping, head nodding and dancing. This paper investigates whether metrical shapes might also be present in performers’ periodic body motions. Two motion capture studies form the empirical basis of this paper; first, a percussionist and a dancer performing Brazilian samba; second, a fiddler and two dancers performing Norwegian telespringar. Motion analysis of the samba performers’ periodic body motion revealed similar periodic shapes in both percussionist and dancer foot motion on sixteenth note level. In telespringar there seemed to be a relationship between the beat durations indicated by the fiddler’s periodic foot stamping and the shape of the dancers’ vertical body motion. The results support the view that there is a close relationship between musical meter and performers’ periodic body motion. The analysis of the performers’ periodic body motions revealed periodic motion shapes on beat level in telespringar and on sixteenth note level in samba. This suggest that the underlying meter may not only include metrical points in time, but that each metrical beat/subdivision duration has a corresponding metrical trajectory with a certain shape. If this is the case, then perceivers’ and performers’ implicit knowledge of the underlying reference structure in samba and telespringar might incorporate knowledge about the underlying metrical shape.

Digital music technology has brought about unforeseen possibilities for manipulating sound, and, as a consequence, entirely new forms of musical expression have emerged. Among them are new rhythmic feels produced by either inserting glitches into the post-production of a played groove or by warping samples. Such rhythmic feels have been a striking aspect of African-American popular music styles such as, hip-hip, neo-soul, and contemporary R&B from the turn of the millennium onward. In this paper I present an analysis of the song ‘1000 Deaths’ from the album Black Messiah (2014) by D’Angelo. The analysis draws on previous work on D’Angelo’s microrhythms by Danielsen (2010). I will, first, map the micro-rhythmic relationship of the groove, and, secondly, relate its microrhythmic design to examples of similar past and present practices. The aim is to explore the wide array of musical and cultural meanings that such microrhythmic practices have taken on, from an experimental attitude (D’Errico) or political activism to black badness (West) or overtly sexual activities. The paper aims at bridging the gap between analysis of ‘the music itself’ and interpretations of its cultural and contextual meanings, demonstrating the ways in which they can be brought in touch with each other and mutually enhancing.

The attack phase of sound events plays an important role in how sounds and music are perceived. Several approaches have been suggested for locating salient time points and critical time spans within the attack portion of a sound, and some have been made widely accessible to the research community in toolboxes for Matlab. While some work exists where proposed audio descriptors are grounded in listening tests, the approaches used in two of the most popular toolboxes for musical analysis have not been thoroughly compared against perceptual results. This article evaluates the calculation of attack phase descriptors in the Timbre toolbox and the MIRtoolbox by comparing their predictions to empirical results from a listening test. The results show that the default parameters in both toolboxes give inaccurate predictions for the sound stimuli in our experiment. We apply a grid search algorithm to obtain alternative parameter settings for these toolboxes that align their estimations with our empirical results.

This thesis investigates the expressive means through which musicians well versed in groove-based music shape the timing of a rhythmic event, with a focus on the interaction between produced timing and sound features. In three performance experiments with guitarists, bassists, and drummers, I tested whether musicians systematically manipulate acoustic factors such as duration, intensity, and volume when they want to play with a specific microrhythmic style (pushed, on-the-beat, or laid-back). The results show that all three groups of instrumentalists indeed played pushed, on-the-beat, or laid-back relative to the reference pulse and in line with the instructed microrhythmic styles, and that there were systematic and consequential sound differences. Guitarists played backbeats with a longer duration and darker sound in relation to pushed and laid-back strokes. Bassists played pushed beats with higher intensity than on-the-beat and laid-back strokes. For the drummers, we uncovered different timing–sound combinations, including the use of longer duration (snare drum) and higher intensity (snare drum and hi-hat), to distinguish both laid-back and pushed from on-the-beat strokes. The metronome as a reference pulse led to less marked timing profiles than the use of instruments as a reference, and it led in general to earlier onset positions as well, which can perhaps be related to the phenomenon of “negative mean asynchrony.” We also conducted an in-depth study of the individual drummers’ onset and intensity profiles using hierarchical cluster analyses and phylogenetic tree visualizations and uncovered a diverse range of strategies. The results support the research hypothesis that both temporal and sound-related properties contribute to how we perceive the location of a rhythmic event in time. I discuss these results in light of theories and findings from other studies of the perception and performance of groove, as well as research into rhythm and microrhythmic phenomena such as perceptual centers and onset asynchrony/anisochrony.