Music psychology defines groove as humans’ pleasureable urge to move their body in synchrony with music. Past research has found that rhythmic syncopation, event density, beat salience, and rhythmic variability are positively associated with groove. This exploratory study investigates the groove effect of 248 reconstructed drum patterns from different popular music styles (pop, rock, funk, heavy metal, rock’n’roll, hip hop, soul, R&B). It aims at identifying factors that might be relevant for groove and worth investigating in a controlled setting in the future. Drum patterns of eight bars duration, chosen from 248 popular music tracks, have been transcribed and audio reconstructions have been created on the basis of sound samples. During an online listening experiment, 665 participants rated the reconstructions a total of 8,329 times using a groove questionnaire. Results show that, among 15 tested variables, syncopation (R2 = 0.010) and event density (R2 = 0.011) were positively associated with the groove ratings. These effects were stronger in participants who were music professionals, compared to amateur musicians or mere listeners. A categorisation of the stimuli according to structural aspects was also associated with groove (R2 = 0.018). Beat salience, residual microtiming and rhythmic variability showed no effect on the groove ratings. Participants’ familiarity with a drum pattern had a positive influence on the groove ratings (η2 = 0.051). The largest isolated effect was measured for participants’ style bias (R2 = 0.123): groove ratings tended to be high if participants had the impression that the drum pattern belonged to a style they liked. Combined, the effects of style bias and familiarity (R2 = 0.152) exceeded the other effects as predictors for groove by a wide margin. We conclude that listeners’ taste, musical biographies and expertise have a strong effect on their groove experience. This motivates groove research not to focus on the music alone, but to take the listeners into account as well.

The theory of Participatory Discrepancies (or PDs) claims that minute temporal asynchronies (microtiming) in music performance are crucial for prompting bodily entrainment in listeners, which is a fundamental effect of the “groove” experience. Previous research has failed to find evidence to support this theory. The present study tested the influence of varying PD magnitudes on the beat-related body movement behavior of music listeners. 160 participants (79 music experts, 81 non-experts) listened to 12 music clips in either Funk or Swing style. These stimuli were based on two audio recordings (one in each style) of expert drum and bass duo performances. In one series of six clips, the PDs were downscaled from their originally performed magnitude to complete quantization in steps of 20%. In another series of six clips, the PDs were upscaled from their original magnitude to double magnitude in steps of 20%. The intensity of the listeners' beat-related head movement was measured using video-based motion capture technology and Fourier analysis. A mixed-design Four-Factor ANOVA showed that the PD manipulations had a significant effect on the expert listeners' entrainment behavior. The experts moved more when listening to stimuli with PDs that were downscaled by 60% compared to completely quantized stimuli. This finding offers partial support for PD theory: PDs of a certain magnitude do augment entrainment in listeners. But the effect was found to be small to moderately sized, and it affected music expert listeners only.

This study tested the influence of expert performance microtiming on listeners' experience of groove. Two professional rhythm section performances (bass/drums) in swing and funk style were recorded, and the performances' original microtemporal deviations from a regular metronomic grid were scaled to several levels of magnitude. Music expert (n = 79) and non-expert (n = 81) listeners rated the groove qualities of stimuli using a newly developed questionnaire that measures three dimensions of the groove experience (Entrainment, Enjoyment, and the absence of Irritation). Findings show that music expert listeners were more sensitive to microtiming manipulations than non-experts. Across both expertise groups and for both styles, groove ratings were high for microtiming magnitudes equal or smaller than those originally performed and decreased for exaggerated microtiming magnitudes. In particular, both the fully quantized music and the music with the originally performed microtiming pattern were rated equally high on groove. This means that neither the claims of PD theory (that microtiming deviations are necessary for groove) nor the opposing exactitude hypothesis (that microtiming deviations are detrimental to groove) were supported by the data.

Groove is a common experience in music listeners, often described as an enjoyable impulse to move in synchrony with the music. Research has suggested that the groove experience is influenced by listeners’ musical taste and their familiarity with a musical repertoire. This study reports the results from an online listening experiment in which 233 participants rated the groove quality of 208 short clips from different Western popular music styles. Findings show that participants’ familiarity with a song, its musical style, and listeners’ preference for that style have a considerable effect on the groove experience. Overall, pop and funk stimuli triggered a stronger groove experience than rock stimuli. Listeners had a tendency to give high groove ratings to music they had heard before and to music that belonged to a style they liked. Results also show that professional musicians had a tendency to experience more groove in response to funk compared to pop music, whereas non-musicians experienced more groove with pop compared to funk. Together, these effects explained approximately 15% of the groove ratings’ variance. In sum, listeners’ attitudes and their musical backgrounds have a considerable impact on their experience of groove.

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