Abstract
Perceptual attack time (PAT) is defined as the moment when the most salient rhythmical feature of a sound is perceived. This paper focuses on the PAT of saxophone sounds, investigating how the location of this point in time changes when a note is played with different characteristics. Nine saxophone sounds that differ in articulation and dynamics were examined. Ground truth for PAT was determined in a synchronization judgment experiment with 40 participants. Articulation (p < 0.001, η2 = 0.316), dynamics (p < 0.001, η2 = 0.098), and their interaction (p < 0.001, η2 = 0.094) affected the placement of the PAT. The onset rise time, which has been used as a predictor for PAT in earlier studies, was only weakly correlated with PAT (r = 0.143, p = 0.006).
Highlights
The perception of musical sounds in time is the basis for crucial concepts of music cognition like rhythm, meter and groove
The exact measurement of physical onset times (PhOT) plays a central role in music interpretation analysis: the study of microtiming, expressive timing, or tempo rubato discusses the relationships between inter-onset-intervals, which are defined as time intervals between PhOTs (Repp, 1992, 1995; Friberg and Sundström, 2002; Belfiglio, 2008; Senn et al, 2009, 2012, 2016; Kilchenmann and Senn, 2011)
This study shows that playing techniques like articulation and dynamics are relevant for the perceptual attack time (PAT) of saxophone sounds and affect their “rhythmic placement” (Wright, 2008)
Summary
The perception of musical sounds in time is the basis for crucial concepts of music cognition like rhythm, meter and groove. Vos and Rasch (1981) introduced the perceptual onset time (POT), which is the moment when a sound is first perceived They found that the delay time between the PhOT and the POT depends on a sound’s acoustical properties. This implies that inter-onset intervals based on the measurement of the PhOT might prove to be spuriously precise, and to represent rhythm poorly. Gordon (1987) expanded on this idea by introducing the perceptual attack time (PAT) He defined the PAT as the point in time, when the most salient rhythmical feature of a sound is perceived. For example in sounds that fade in gradually for several seconds, there might be no PAT at all, because there is no salient rhythmic feature
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