Tap along to which beat? – How spontaneous motor tempo and musicianship add to the influence of metrical structure on beat perception in polyrhythms

Beskrivelse

Tap along to which beat? – How spontaneous motor tempo and musicianship add to the influence of metrical structure on beat perception in polyrhythms

Cecilie Møller, Jan Stupacher, Alexandre Celma-Miralles, and Peter Vuust
Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark

Background
When moving in time with music, listeners synchronize with one of several possible metrical levels. In polyrhythms, two metrical structures co-exist, increasing the range of metrical levels available to tap along with. Yet, Western listeners limit tapping to pulses that admit binary (1-and-2-and-3-and…) rather than ternary (1-and-then-2-and-then-3-and-then…) subdivision grouping.1 In addition to such stimulus-driven effects, individual factors may also influence the perceived salience of the different metrical levels in music.

Aim
We used polyrhythms to investigate whether participants’ spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) and musicianship rank relate to their choice of metrical level when asked to tap along to the beat of rhythms with equal timbre, pitch, and amplitude.
Method
To measure SMT, 300 online participants tapped at a steady comfortable rate. Then they tapped the perceived beat of 2:3 (80:120 and 90:135 BPM) and 3:4 (90:120 BPM) polyrhythms and stated their level of musicianship. Using four separate multinomial logistic regression models we investigated whether the tapped metrical level in the two polyrhythms varied as a function of SMT and musicianship.

Results
In the 2:3 polyrhythm, SMT significantly predicted the tapped metrical level (χ2(3) = 10.85, p = .013). The probability of synchronizing with the fast 3-pulse train was larger for participants with faster SMT. In comparison, participants with slower SMT more often tapped every other beat of the 3-pulse train or the cycle level, i.e. the shared initial downbeat. Participants generally avoided synchronizing with the 2-pulse train. There was no significant effect of SMT in the 3:4 polyrhythm where participants generally preferred the slow 3-pulse train and avoided the 4-pulse train. The effect of musicianship was significant in the 2:3 polyrhythm (χ2(6) = 27.82, p < .001) and the 3:4 polyrhythm χ2(10) = 31.56, p < .001). In both cases, more non-musicians than amateur and professional musicians tapped the simplest cycle level (all pairwise comparisons: p < .007)

Discussion and conclusion
The large proportion of non-musician cycle-tappers provides evidence for greater metrical flexibility in musicians. Moreover, we show that SMT significantly influences beat perception in polyrhythms. However, participants consistently favored binarized over ternarized pulse trains even though tapping the ternarized pulse train would align more closely with their SMT. This shows that their responses were strongly constrained by the effect of metrical structure.

References
1) Møller, C., Stupacher, J., Celma-Miralles, A., & Vuust, P. (2021). Beat perception in polyrhythms: Time is structured in binary units. Plos One, 16(8), e0252174.

Periode	3 jul. 2024
Begivenhedstitel	12th triennial conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Konferencenummer	12
Placering	York, StorbritannienVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International