Studies of metric patterns
Mark Yoffe Liberman, Joseph P. Olive, Paul Zukofsky · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1977
Traditional metrical notation specifies at least two kinds of information — (1) nominal point of occurrence for each note and (2) a grouping of notes with implication for their relative stress, often in several levels of subdivisions. These two kinds of information are not the same; for example, the same set of six numerically equidistant time points can be grouped as 2 threes or 3 twos. For performance, the nominal duration of a note is presumably obvious (e.g., a 16th note at d=60 MM is, in principle, 250 msec). The objective interpretation of the metric grouping of notes is not at all obvious (e.g., how do we distinguish 2 threes from 3 twos?). We have studied this question both by analysis of live production and by computer synthesis, concentrating on patterns in which the same sequence of nominal durations is subject to different metrical groupings. Listening to synthetic patterns reveals that even small differences in onset-to-onset duration, articulative space, on time, timbre, or attack can strongly affect the way we group notes perceptually. We will discuss the use of such differences in live performance, giving examples.