Mapping Timing Strategies in Drum Performance
George Sioros, Guilherme Schmidt Câmara, Anne Grethe Danielsen · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2019
How do drummers express different timing styles? We conducted an experiment in which we asked twenty-two professional drummers to perform a simple rhythmic pattern while listening to a metronome. Here, we investigate the strategies they employed to express three different instructed timing profiles for the same pattern: "on", "pushed" and "laidback". Our analysis of the recordings follows three stages. First, we compute sixteen binary features that capture the micro-timing relations of the kick, snare and hi-hat drum on-sets, between each other and with regards to the metrical grid. Second, we construct a micro-timing profile (mtP) for every performance by averaging the binary features across the recording. An mtP codifies the frequency with which the various features were found in a performance. Third, through a "similarity profiles" hierarchical clustering analysis, we identify groups of recordings with significant similarities in their mtPs. We found distinct strategies to express each intended timing profile that employ specific combinations of relations between the instruments and with regards to the meter. Finally, we created a map that summarizes the main characteristics of the strategies and their relations using a phylogenetic tree visualization.