Rhythmic Paradoxes and Illusions: a Musical Illustration
Jean‐Claude Risset · University of Michigan Library Repository · 1997
A musical composition by the author, Contre Nature (Against Nature), for percussion and computersynthesized or computer-processed sounds, purports to musically illustrate paradoxical rhythmic phenomena. In the first movement, due to stream segregation, rhythmical figures emerge from regular beats. In the second movement, the beat is also steady, however feelings of speeding up and slowing down are provoked by mixing in varying proportions a basic beat with its rhythmic octavesi.e. with beats two times, four times, eight times as fast. In the third movement, after an initial part suggesting an acceleration, one can hear beats that seem to accelerate endlessly actually a cyclic pattern then speeding up beats that end up slower than the initial beat rate. Examples are given of such illusory rhythmic patterns and of their musical use.