Detection of temporal perturbations in a mechanical music performance: Lengthening is more difficult to detect where it makes musical sense
Bruno H. Repp · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1991
Twenty musically literate listeners were repeatedly presented with the first eight bars of a Beethoven minuet, realized with physically regular timing on an electronic piano. On each trial, one of the 47 consecutive eighth-note intervals in the piece was lengthened by a small amount, and the listeners had to mark its location with reference to the score. The resulting detection accuracy profile across the whole musical excerpt showed dips in the places where lengthening would typically occur in an expressive performance. The correlation with the measured timing profile of a particular expert performance (Murray Perahia) was − 0.59 (p<0.001). Thus a psychophysical task (detection of temporal irregularity) can engage listeners' performance expectations and reveal the inherent temporal dynamics of substantial music. [Work supported by BRSG.]