Beat alignment ability is associated with formal musical training not current music playing

Abstract

The ability to perceive the beat in music is crucial for both music listeners and players with expert musicians being notably skilled at noticing fine deviations in the beat. However, it is unclear whether this beat perception ability is enhanced in trained musicians who continue to practice relative to musicians who no longer play. Thus, we investigated this by comparing active musicians’, inactive musicians’, and nonmusicians’ beat alignment ability scores on the Computerized Adaptive Beat Alignment Test (CA-BAT). 97 adults with diverse musical experience participated in the study, reporting their years of formal musical training, number of instruments played, hours of weekly music playing, and hours of weekly music listening, in addition to their demographic information. While initial tests between groups indicated active musicians outperformed inactive musicians and nonmusicians on the CA-BAT, a generalized linear regression analysis showed that there was no significant difference once differences in musical training had been accounted for. To ensure that our results were not impacted by multicollinearity between music-related variables, nonparametric and nonlinear machine learning regressions were employed and confirmed that years of formal musical training was the only significant predictor of beat alignment ability. These results suggest that expertly perceiving fine differences in the beat is not a use-dependent ability that degrades without regular maintenance through practice or musical engagement. Instead, better beat alignment appears to be associated with more musical training regardless of continued use.

Unravelling individual rhythmic abilities using machine learning

“…The final model included perceptual and motor measures derived from tasks which were shown to be affected by musical training in prior work. The detection of the alignment between a metronome and musical beat (Beat Alignement Test), and the perception of a rhythmic irregularity in an isochronous sequence (Anisochrony detection) are typically enhanced by musical training [66][67][68] . Similarly, performance in paced tapping to rhythmic stimuli (music and metronomes) is improved by musical training 28,29,69 (for a review, see 70 ).…”

Inner sense of rhythm: percussionist brain activity during rhythmic encoding and synchronization

“…The heightened bilateral putamen activity observed in PG during the SynC could be tied to a robust internal sense of rhythm, as suggested by previous studies ( Grahn, 2009 ; Kasdan et al, 2022 ). Proficiency in aligning with beats, essential for defining musical tempo and rhythm, is associated with formal musical training ( Kindersley, 2012 ; Spiech et al, 2023 ). In multitasking scenarios, PG demonstrates the crucial ability to uphold a stable internal beat, particularly important for rhythmic drumming.…”

Auditory Processing in Musicians, a Cross-Sectional Study, as a Basis for Auditory Training Optimization

“…Moreover, there is a difference observed in beat alignment and the time spent on musical practice [118]. Studies in musicians have shown that the more years a person is intensively engaged in music, the more areas of the brain are involved in perceiving, analyzing, and recording it, and the more neural networks develop to convey the language of music to wider areas of the brain and make it "musically driven".…”