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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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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].