Transcript pptx
Rhythm and Meter
Mike Oldfield, Tubular bells, theme song for the Exorcist
Note Perception of groupings
Beat
• Beat – underlying even pulse common in many types of music
• Range typical of that given on a metronome
frequency 30 to 200 beats/minute OR 0.5-4 Hz
periods between 250ms and few seconds.
For clicks closer together than 100 ms, they run together.
Separated longer than a few seconds we don’t feel that they are
associated
- same range as sung vibratro or tremolo, or heartbeat
- beats we feel are slower than frequencies we hear
-
• We tend to move spontaneously to the beat.
• Newborn babies respond to the beat (e.g. Winkler et al. 2009 –
recent press on this, as seen from electric signals picked up near the
brain).
Areas of the brain (as seen by fMRI (functional
magneto resonance imaging) respond to regular beats
Grahn & Brett (2007), Journal Cognitive Science 19:5, 893
Expectations and
Tapping experiments
• First listen.
• Then everybody tap after the sound file ends
• This is the first beat pattern in the next figure
and based on one of Dessain’s experiments
tapping
experiments
Expectancy of
next beat
Peter Dessain, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1992), pp. 439- 454
Tapping experiments
Dessain 92
Time shrinking
• Duration of short time intervals is conspicuously
underestimated if they are preceded by shorter
neighboring time intervals.
Figure by Petra
Wagner and
Andreas
Windmann
Sound clip from http://listverse.com/2008/02/29/top-10-incredible-soundillusions/
Subjective duration
Figure from Psychoacoustics
by Zwicker and Fastl
Note decaying envelopes are not heard as they are
equivalent to echoes and so are suppressed.
Because of this we would have expected that the flat
top would be half the interval for the perception of
1/8th note. But this is not the case.
Groupings
with different timbres
19/20
Images and three sound clips from W. Sethares book on Rhythm and Transform
Necklace Notation
With different timbre emphasis the
perceived starting position varies
Images and clips from Rhythm and Transform by W. Sethares
Necklace Notation
Images and clips from Rhythm and Transform by W. Sethares
Numerical Notations
Image and clip from Rhythm and Transform by W. Sethares
MIDI event data
MIDI = Musical Instrument Digital Interface)
image from audacity
MIDI DATA
CHANNEL
TIME
NOTE
Measures beat ticks
1
4:3:0
F2
A certain number of ticks makes up each beat
DURATION
VELOCITY
beats+ticks
velocity/off
1:100
100:64
Tabla
Talas
Image from
http://www.chandra
kantha.com/tablasit
e/quick.htm
Science of Tabla
Image and clip
from
http://www.ch
andrakantha.co
m/tala_taal/jho
omra/jhumra.h
tml
Figure From Rhythm and
Transforms by W. Sethares
Jhumra
Hierarchy of levels
David Rosenthal, Computer Music
Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1992), pp. 6476
Measures/Beats/Tatums
• Measures: groupings of beats, repeating
Cyclic pattern of rhythm if repetitive
• Beats: underlying pulse
• Tatums or Ticks. Small unit of time. Beats and note
onsets are described in units of tatums from the
beginning of measure or cycle
Above is an example of a hierarchy
• Classification of a series of onsets into a type of rhythm
based on minimizing the complexity of the required
hierarchy or minimizing the syncopation.
Microtiming measurements
for a Samba
While we might
perceive a
rhythm in terms
of regular
intervals,
however
musicians may
with systematic
small deviations
from calculated
intervals/durati
ons
Fabien Gouyon, SBCM 2007 proceedings
Microtiming Variations
Fabien Gouyon, SBCM 2007 proceedings
systematic shifts in timing of order
20ms associated with musicianship
and musical style/genre
time
Bar Wrapping Visualization of Meter
Matthew Wright
et al. 08
ISMIR 2008 –
Session 5c
tempo
Tempo is varying
Beat identification done in
software
Microtiming variations then
shown in this way
Musicianship in timing
Note double hits
by bass Percy
Jones
Differences in
timing of bass
compared to
drum make each
instrument stand
out yet rhythm is
still strong
Rubato
• Harpsichord and rubato,
• someday a good clip will illustrate this!
Onsets
Opposite of synthesis
Groups of overtones moving together appear as one
sound
Fast clicks appear as one element
Any factors that can create auditory boundaries can
create patterns in time that can be perceived as
rhythmic (following Sethares’s statement in 4.3.8).
-- Boundaries = Quick Variations in timbre, pitch or
loudness
Algorithms for Finding Onsets
Can be referred to as Feature vectors
• Reduce sampling rate
• Partition into frequency bands
• Search for variations in total energy (volume)
spectral mean or center, spectral dispersion or
large variations in energy in any particular band
• Software developed such as beatroot outputs a
MIDI event file of onsets
• With beatroot you can adjust location of
individual onsets and add or remove them
Finding meter and tempo
• For tempo:
– Autocorrelation or Fourier methods (J. Brown)
– Periodicity transforms (Sethares)
• These fail if the tempo is varying
– Adaptive oscillators work if tempo varies smoothly
– Perceptive idea of “internal clock”
• Hierarchy of levels to identify meter (Rosenthal)
• Minimization of number of syncopations (Longuet-Higgens & Lee
84)
• Statistical models
• If you have a score or a MIDI file then synching the sound file may
be more straightforward
• My impression is that this is an active area of research
Musicianship in rhythm
Not captured by simple descriptions or classifications of
rhythms:
- meter changes, accent changes
- accelerandos and ritardos (tempo variations)
- microtiming variations
Delays or jumps shifting the entire beat,
bending time
Displacements, delays or jump in onsets that don’t change
the beat
- timbre variations --- different types of sounds (like
different drums) substituted
- omissions, doublings of strokes
- graces notes added
- rhythm pattern reset (shifted?) or varied
Hacking a recording
to change meter
• James Bond Theme Song by
Monty Norman- arranged by John
Barry and from the movie Dr. No
• Bond Waltz - W. Sethares
Beat tracking allows interesting
composition experiments (such
as above)
-For other compositional ideas
see Sethare’s sound clips in his
book
Beat regularization or stretching for
effect can be done in the studio, but
software is not necessarily
standardized or cheep.
Remake atrocious
Lao Schifrim
Adam Clayton
Character of song can remain
despite large timbre changes
Christopher Tyng