Tracking musical patterns using joint accent structure.

Abstract

Joint Accent Structure (jAS) is a construct that uses temporal relationships between different accents in a melodic pattern as indices of its complexity. Concordant patterns are ones in which the periodic recurrence of melodic accents form simple ratios with the period of temporal accents (e.g., 1:1, 1:2), whereas Discordant patterns have periods of melodic and temporal accents with a more complex accent period ratio (e.g., 3:2). Participants were told to selectively attend to and synchronize finger taps with accents in two experiments that examined attentional tracking to musical patterns having a "concordant" or "discordant" JAS. Results indicated that tapping was more variable with discordant than with concordant JAS patterns, both with respect to produced inter-accent time periods and with respect to the phase of taps relative to accent onsets. These findings are interpreted in terms of real time attending and its control by event time structure.In listening to music one often experiences a sense of temporal anticipation that is crucial to the impact of a piece. We contend that part of this experience derives from the establishment of regular accent relationships in that piece. An accent may be defined as any element in an auditory sequence (e.g., a tone) that stands out from others, usually because it disrupts the context established by surrounding elements (e.g., it is longer in time or higher in frequency). Accents arise from changes along different specifiable dimensions (such as time or frequency); we refer to an accent defined by a change along one dimension as a distinct accent "type." Instances of various accent types may mark out distinct time periods within a musical event, lending to it a coherent temporal structure. For example, a coherent melodic line may designate regularly occurring melodic-type accents by virtue of changes in contour, pitch distance or implied harmony, as this information arises from distinct movements of pitch in time. Similarly, a melody's rhythm may designate a series of temporal-type accents through lengthened tones and/or rests.Much research has been directed toward understanding the effects of single accent types (e.g., melodic only) on the perception of musical events. In contrast, we know little about the temporal coherence of more intricate patterns that result from combinations of different accent types. Indeed, the relationships between different accents in time may contribute to the temporal coherence of a pattern. When different accent types combine in a musical event, they outline a time structure that has been termed that event's "Joint Accent Structure" (Jones, 1987(Jones, , 1993. Different Joint Accent Structures (jAS' s) result when the positioning of accents form different higher order time relationships. The present research examines the role of different JAS's in real time attending to simple musical events.We suggest that listeners who are sensitive to accented relationships respond directly to time intervals between various accents within a JAS...

Tapping to Carter: Mensural Determinacy in Complex Rhythmic Sequences

“…The lower degree of mensural determinacy suggested by the ambiguous phase profile of the right-hand layer, which is characterized by frequent changes in the rate of surface (first-order) events, is consistent with previous findings that pulse finding appears to depend mostly on first-order relationships (e.g., Demany & Semal, 2002). The higher level of mensural determinacy of the left-hand layer and the observed differential effect of accents also provides further evidence of the influence of accent on the perception of second-order periodicity (Jones & Pfordresher, 1997); this is consistent with the finding that an unmetered series of acoustic events can be perceived as more regular if streaming (via loudness or pitch distance) gives rise to second-order periodicity (Carson, 2007).…”

Coordination of perception and action in music performance

“…Take for instance the fact that serial shifts result in contrasts between the melodic contour of the feedback sequence and the planned pattern of movements (Pfordresher, 2006). Such alterations can be considered a kind of disruptive rhythm based on the fact that melodic contour creates accents that attract attention and influence the perception of rhythm (e.g., Boltz & Jones, 1986;Jones, 1987;Jones & Pfordresher, 1997;Pfordresher, 2003b;Thomassen, 1982). Thus, Traditional feedback control hypotheses have trouble accounting for recent results.…”

The Neural Locus of Temporal Structure and Expectancies in Music: Evidence From Functional Neuroimaging At 3 Tesla

“…Expectancies involve both anticipations about when something will occur in the future and what is expected (Barnes & Jones, 2000). The quality that exists when a sequence of tones appears to be connected, or coherent musically, has been termed temporal coherence in music (Deutsch, 1999;Jones & Pfordresher, 1997) and reflects the spectral-temporal continuity present in an organized sequence of tones.…”

“…Thus, in the present experiment we randomized ("scrambled") musical excerpts within pieces of music in order to disrupt holistic musical structure (or syntax) and to examine those neural structures that are involved in the processing of musical stimuli. To reference equivalent terminology, we disrupted temporal contingencies among elements, violating all those features that Schulkind et al (2003) termed holistic: tonal functions, contour patterns, metrical accents/joint accent structure (Jones & Boltz, 1989;Jones & Pfordresher, 1997), rhythmic phrases, and phrase boundaries. If the SSIRH is correct, we would expect to find greater activation (as indexed by the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent Signal, or BOLD) during music listening compared with nonsense music listening in frontal brain regions previously associated with the processing of syntax in language in mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (Petrides, 2000;Tallal, et al, 1996;Temple, et al, 2000), specifically in Brodmann Area 47 (Dapretto & Bookheimer, 1999;Petitto, et al, 2000;Poldrack et al, 1999).…”