Metrical Positions Research Articles

Effects of Metrical Context on the P1 Component.

The temporal structure of sound, characterized by regular patterns, plays a crucial role in optimizing the processing of auditory information. The meter, representing a well-organized sequence of evenly spaced beats in music, exhibits a hierarchical arrangement, with stronger beats occupying higher metrical positions. Moreover, the meter has been shown to influence behavioral and neural processing, particularly the N1, P2, and mismatch negativity components. However, the role of the P1 component in the context of metrical hierarchy remains unexplored. This study aimed to investigate the effects of metrical hierarchy on the P1 component and compare the responses between musicians and non-musicians. Thirty participants (15 musicians and 15 non-musicians) were enrolled in the study. Auditory stimuli consisted of a synthesized speech syllable presented together with a repeating series of four tones, establishing a quadruple meter. Electrophysiological recordings were performed to measure the P1 component. The results revealed that metrical position had a significant effect on P1 amplitude, with the strongest beat showing the lowest amplitude. This contrasts with previous findings, in which enhanced P1 responses were typically observed at on-the-beat positions. The reduced P1 response on the strong beat can be interpreted within the framework of predictive coding and temporal prediction, where a higher predictability of pitch changes at the strong beat leads to a reduction in the P1 response. Furthermore, higher P1 amplitudes were observed in musicians compared to non-musicians, suggesting that musicians have enhanced sensory processing. This study demonstrates the effects of metrical hierarchy on the P1 component, thereby enriching our understanding of auditory processing. The results suggest that predictive coding and temporal prediction play important roles in shaping sensory processing. Further, they suggest that musical training may enhance P1 responses.

Probing Beat Perception with Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in Human Adults, Newborns, and Nonhuman Primates.

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of how the perception of rhythmic temporal regularity such as a regular beat in music can be studied in human adults, human newborns, and nonhuman primates using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). First, we discuss different aspects of temporal structure in general, and musical rhythm in particular, and we discuss the possible mechanisms underlying the perception of regularity (e.g., a beat) in rhythm. Additionally, we highlight the importance of dissociating beat perception from the perception of other types of structure in rhythm, such as predictable sequences of temporal intervals, ordinal structure, and rhythmic grouping. In the second section of the chapter, we start with a discussion of auditory ERPs elicited by infrequent and frequent sounds: ERP responses to regularity violations, such as mismatch negativity (MMN), N2b, and P3, as well as early sensory responses to sounds, such as P1 and N1, have been shown to be instrumental in probing beat perception. Subsequently, we discuss how beat perception can be probed by comparing ERP responses to sounds in regular and irregular sequences, and by comparing ERP responses to sounds in different metrical positions in a rhythm, such as on and off the beat or on strong and weak beats. Finally, we will discuss previous research that has used the aforementioned ERPs and paradigms to study beat perception in human adults, human newborns, and nonhuman primates. In doing so, we consider the possible pitfalls and prospects of the technique, as well as future perspectives.

Beat processing in newborn infants cannot be explained by statistical learning based on transition probabilities

Newborn infants have been shown to extract temporal regularities from sound sequences, both in the form of learning regular sequential properties, and extracting periodicity in the input, commonly referred to as a regular pulse or the ‘beat’. However, these two types of regularities are often indistinguishable in isochronous sequences, as both statistical learning and beat perception can be elicited by the regular alternation of accented and unaccented sounds. Here, we manipulated the isochrony of sound sequences in order to disentangle statistical learning from beat perception in sleeping newborn infants in an EEG experiment, as previously done in adults and macaque monkeys. We used a binary accented sequence that induces a beat when presented with isochronous timing, but not when presented with randomly jittered timing. We compared mismatch responses to infrequent deviants falling on either accented or unaccented (i.e., odd and even) positions. Results showed a clear difference between metrical positions in the isochronous sequence, but not in the equivalent jittered sequence. This suggests that beat processing is present in newborns. Despite previous evidence for statistical learning in newborns the effects of this ability were not detected in the jittered condition. These results show that statistical learning by itself does not fully explain beat processing in newborn infants.

Incongruent Enjambments: The Case of Classical French Verse

In versified texts, congruence is one facet of the concordance between the edges of metrical constituents and those of grammatical constituents. Congruence may be characterized roughly as the requirement that no element within a syntactic constituent be in a stronger metrical position than the final element in that constituent. If break strength is defined in terms applicable to any constituent structure tree, syntactic as well as metrical, incongruences are discrepancies between the relative strengths of two breaks in metrical structure and the relative strengths of their counterparts in syntactic structure. Although our primary source of data is classical French verse, the characterization of congruence we present is a rather abstract one that does not make reference to features that are specific to French poetic forms or to the grammatical structure of the French language. This should make this characterization applicable in other poetic traditions.

Nizarorustu: A Textual Analysis of the Battle of Niså

Nizarorustu: A Textual Analysis of the Battle of Niså

The Elusive Progress of Prosodical Study: Essays in Honor of Thomas Cable

The Elusive Progress of Prosodical Study: Essays in Honor of Thomas Cable

The Elusive Transformation of Alliterative Meter

ABSTRACT That Old English meter evolved directly into Middle English alliterative meter is a newly won consensus position among metrical specialists. Exactly how it did so remains elusive. The changes, at the level of metrical patterning, are few yet far-reaching, transforming a meter in mirrored half-lines of four metrical positions apiece into a long-line meter with asymmetry between its halves. This essay fills in further details, taking up the challenge to infer from surviving texts how one state of a metrical system slowly became another. Specifically, it is argued that four difficult elements in Old English meter guided metrical evolution. Metrical resolution, the conflicted treatment of verbal prefixes, rare verses of five metrical positions, and a special extended metrical style known as hypermeter pulled against the four-position framework of Old English meter and accelerated and directed metrical change.

Syncopation and Groove in Polyphonic Music

Music often evokes a regular beat and a pleasurable sensation of wanting to move to that beat called groove. Recent studies show that a rhythmic pattern’s ability to evoke groove increases at moderate levels of syncopation, essentially, when some notes occur earlier than expected. We present two studies that investigate that effect of syncopation in more realistic polyphonic music examples. First, listeners rated their urge to move to music excerpts transcribed from funk and rock songs, and to algorithmically transformed versions of these excerpts: 1) with the original syncopation removed, and 2) with various levels of pseudorandom syncopation introduced. While the original excerpts were rated higher than the de-syncopated, the algorithmic syncopation was not as successful in evoking groove. Consequently, a moderate level of syncopation increases groove, but only for certain syncopation patterns. The second study provides detailed comparisons of the original and transformed rhythmic structures that revealed key differences between them in: 1) the distribution of syncopation across instruments and metrical positions, 2) the counter-meter figures formed by the syncopating notes, and 3) the number of pickup notes. On this basis, we form four concrete hypotheses about the function of syncopation in groove, to be tested in future experiments.

Interval patterns are dependent on metrical position in jazz solos

During jazz improvisation, performers employ short recurrent musical motifs called licks. Past research has focused on the pitch, intervallic, and rhythmic characteristics of licks, but less attention has been paid to whether they tend to start in the same place within the measure ( metrical dependence). Licks might be metrically dependent, and where a given lick starts in a measure ( metrical position) may thus be part of the performer’s mental representation of that lick. Here we report the use of a corpus study to investigate whether licks are metrically dependent. We analyzed a subset of solos, all those in 4/4 time ( n = 435), from the Weimar Jazz Database (WJD; Pfleiderer et al., 2017). Using a sliding window technique, we identified melodic sequences ( interval n-grams) between 3 and 10 intervals in length. We counted the number of times each interval n-gram occurred, and noted the metrical position of the initial note of each occurrence, using different levels of quantization (8th and 16th note). We compared the entropy of the distribution of metrical positions for each n-gram—with lower values indicating a stronger metrical dependence—against simulated counterparts that assumed no relationship between an n-gram and its metrical position (no metrical dependence). Overall, we found that shorter n-grams were metrically dependent, with varying results for longer n-grams. We suggest two possible explanations: either mental representations of licks may encode their metrical features or the metrical position may make certain licks more accessible to the performer. On the basis of our findings we discuss future studies that could employ our methods.

Suppression, Maintenance, and Surprise: Neuronal Correlates of Predictive Processing Specialization for Musical Rhythm.

Auditory repetition suppression and omission activation are opposite neural phenomena and manifestations of principles of predictive processing. Repetition suppression describes the temporal decrease in neural activity when a stimulus is constant or repeated in an expected temporal fashion; omission activity is the transient increase in neural activity when a stimulus is temporarily and unexpectedly absent. The temporal, repetitive nature of musical rhythms is ideal for investigating these phenomena. During an fMRI session, 10 healthy participants underwent scanning while listening to musical rhythms with two levels of metric complexity, and with beat omissions with different positional complexity. Participants first listened to 16-s-long presentations of continuous rhythms, before listening to a longer continuous presentation with beat omissions quasi-randomly introduced. We found deactivation in bilateral superior temporal gyri during the repeated presentation of the normal, unaltered rhythmic stimulus, with more suppression of activity in the left hemisphere. Omission activation of bilateral middle temporal gyri was right lateralized. Persistent activity was found in areas including the supplementary motor area, caudate nucleus, anterior insula, frontal areas, and middle and posterior cingulate cortex, not overlapping with either listening, suppression, or omission activation. This suggests that the areas are perhaps specialized for working memory maintenance. We found no effect of metric complexity for either the normal presentation or omissions, but we found evidence for a small effect of omission position—at an uncorrected threshold—where omissions in the more metrical salient position, i.e., the first position in the bar, showed higher activation in anterior cingulate/medial superior frontal gyrus, compared to omissions in the less salient position, in line with the role of the anterior cingulate cortex for saliency detection. The results are consistent with findings in our previous studies on Parkinson’s disease, but are put into a bigger theoretical frameset.

Violation of rhythmic expectancies can elicit late frontal gamma activity nested in theta oscillations.

Rhythm processing involves building expectations according to the hierarchical temporal structure of auditory events. Although rhythm processing has been addressed in the context of predictive coding, the properties of the oscillatory response in different cortical areas are still not clear. We explored the oscillatory properties of the neural response to rhythmic incongruence and the cross‐frequency coupling between multiple frequencies to further investigate the mechanisms underlying rhythm perception. We designed an experiment to investigate the neural response to rhythmic deviations in which the tone either arrived earlier than expected or the tone in the same metrical position was omitted. These two manipulations modulate the rhythmic structure differently, with the former creating a larger violation of the general structure of the musical stimulus than the latter. Both deviations resulted in an MMN response, whereas only the rhythmic deviant resulted in a subsequent P3a. Rhythmic deviants due to the early occurrence of a tone, but not omission deviants, seemed to elicit a late high gamma response (60–80 Hz) at the end of the P3a over the left frontal region, which, interestingly, correlated with the P3a amplitude over the same region and was also nested in theta oscillations. The timing of the elicited high‐frequency gamma oscillations related to rhythmic deviation suggests that it might be related to the update of the predictive neural model, corresponding to the temporal structure of the events in higher‐level cortical areas.

The intricacies of counting to four in Old English poetry

The metrical theory devised by Eduard Sievers and refined by A. J. Bliss forms the basis for most current scholarship on Old English meter. A weakness of the Sievers–Bliss theory is that it occupies a middle ground between two levels of analytic description, distinguished by Roman Jakobson in an influential article as ‘verse instance’ and ‘verse design’. Metrists in the Sievers–Bliss tradition employ a concept of metrical position (a key component of verse design), yet the focus of attention usually remains on the contours of stress of individual verses. Important exceptions are the studies of Thomas Cable and Nicolay Yakovlev. The theoretical innovations of Cable and Yakovlev, among others, enable a more concise presentation of verse design than anyone writing on the subject has yet offered. The present essay attempts to show what such a presentation might look like, while also giving due acknowledgment to the complexities of position-count in this meter. We presume no prior knowledge of the Sieversian system. Illustrations are drawn principally from Cædmon’s Hymn and the Seafarer.

Dig That Lick (DTL): Analyzing Large-Scale Data for Melodic Patterns in Jazz Performances

Dig That Lick (DTL): Analyzing Large-Scale Data for Melodic Patterns in Jazz Performances

A linguistic investigation of disyllabic or feminine rhymes in Serbian poetry

This paper focuses on the prosodic properties of disyllabic, that is to say, feminine rhymes in Serbian poetry. On the basis of a quantitatively analyzed poetic database, which includes eight poets, four from the Romantic and four from the Post-Romantic period, we have identified word stress as a highly relevant prosodic property. The investigation of its role in creating rhyming pairs resulted in a classification of feminine rhymes into three types: resonant, semi-resonant, and non-resonant. This classification is based on the presence or absence of stress in the domain of rhyme, which begins with the rightmost strong metrical position in a line, followed by a weak final syllable. In resonant rhymes both lines that form a rhyming pair contain stress in their domains, in semi-resonant rhymes only one of the lines contains stress, while in non-resonant rhymes, stress is absent from both. The role of stress is demarcative: it signals the beginning of the domain of rhyme, thereby considerably promoting its effectiveness. The most effective are resonant rhymes, with demarcated domains in both lines, next in effectiveness are semi-resonant rhymes, with demarcation in only one of the lines, while non-resonant rhymes, which lack demarcation, are the least effective. Based on this classification, clear differences can be established not only among individual poets, but also among poetic eras. Moreover, the classification of feminine rhymes into resonant, semi-resonant and non-resonant allows for a detailed insight into their lexical composition, that is, into the prosodic profiles of words that constitute them.

Meter enhances the subcortical processing of speech sounds at a strong beat

The temporal structure of sound such as in music and speech increases the efficiency of auditory processing by providing listeners with a predictable context. Musical meter is a good example of a sound structure that is temporally organized in a hierarchical manner, with recent studies showing that meter optimizes neural processing, particularly for sounds located at a higher metrical position or strong beat. Whereas enhanced cortical auditory processing at times of high metric strength has been studied, there is to date no direct evidence showing metrical modulation of subcortical processing. In this work, we examined the effect of meter on the subcortical encoding of sounds by measuring human auditory frequency-following responses to speech presented at four different metrical positions. Results show that neural encoding of the fundamental frequency of the vowel was enhanced at the strong beat, and also that the neural consistency of the vowel was the highest at the strong beat. When comparing musicians to non-musicians, musicians were found, at the strong beat, to selectively enhance the behaviorally relevant component of the speech sound, namely the formant frequency of the transient part. Our findings indicate that the meter of sound influences subcortical processing, and this metrical modulation differs depending on musical expertise.

Performing Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry

This is an instrumental exploration of theoretical issues related to the vocal performance of Mediaeval Hebrew pegs-and-cords meter, of which we have neither authentic recordings, nor verbal descriptions of actual performances of the time. Consequently, I am exploring only possibilities implied by poetic structures as embodied in later performances, not in actual authentic performances. But, in my earlier writings, I have extensively explored similar issues in English, Hungarian and modern Hebrew poetry, as recorded by experienced readers. The pegs-and-cords meter is a unique quantitative system based on systematic (not necessarily regular) alternation of schwa mobile and full vowels. The time ratio between the two is supposed to be 1:2, 1:3 or 1:4. Some scholars believe that in Jewish Yemenite liturgy the authentic performance has been preserved. This article is focused on one brief liturgical masterpiece by Shlomo Ibn Gabirol, submitting to computer analysis a modern recital of it, and a sung performance of a Yemenite master. Regarding the correspondence of language and versification, eleventh-century Hebrew poets explicitly distinguished between two possibilities: word endings may or may not coincide with the ending of a metric foot. I have investigated on the computer whether it is possible to convey continuation and discontinuation at the same time by a single voice, where word endings and metricfoot endings do not coincide. Neither performer observed the conflicting endings consistently, but both provided evidence that it is possible to identify the problems and solve them by vocal manipulation. In the Yemenite masters’ performances, computer measurements could not establish that the schwas are consistently shorter than the vowels. Furthermore, poetic rhythm requires the simultaneous perception of two versification levels at least: a wider unit (the verse line or a hemistich), and the metric feet that divide it. Psychologically, simultaneous presence implies being contained within the same span of short-term memory. In the Yemenite masters’ performances, the wider units exceed by far the span of short-term memory, owing to repetition of phrases and drawn-out embellishments, so that the poems’ rhythms could not be preserved. In the 16th–17th century there were Jewish musicians in Western Europe who composed liturgic music in the baroque tradition, some of it to pegs-and-cord texts. In a brief pilot I point out the differences in aesthetic conception between this baroque music and the Yemenite master. Finally, Mediaeval poets treated a schwa+vowel as a unit called “peg”. Here the question of psychological reality arises. The issue at stake is whether two immediately-observable constituents can be experienced at a more abstract level as one unit. The precedent of what generative metrists call “disyllabic occupancy of metrical position” in English poetry suggests a positive answer. “Power” at the end of an iambic line may be perceived as occupying one or two metrical positions. Computer analysis shows systematic acoustic diff erences between instances in which two syllables occupy one or two positions. We cannot know, however, what was actually the case with the peg, since we do not know how it was performed; in this respect, we have demonstrated only a possibility.

Meter, prosody and performance: evidence from the Faroese ballads

AbstractIn this paper, I argue that the folk ballad tradition of the Faroe Islands, to date never examined in detail by metrists, offers substantial empirical support for the necessity of maintaining the classic metrical template, as well as the distinction between metrical and prosodic structure: meter is an abstraction which can neither be collapsed into phonology, nor fundamentally detached from it (Kiparsky 2006, Blumenfeld 2015,paceHayes & MacEachern 1998, Fabb & Halle 2008). The ballad performances also reveal a unidirectional correspondence from strong metrical positions to strong dance steps and strong musical beats, indicating that metrical prominence plays a significant role in determining rhythm. The Faroese tradition thus provides a window into the relation between metrical structure and performance. In support of my conclusions I draw upon both the ballad texts and audio-visual recordings of sections of sample ballads I made on the Faroe Islands.

Interpersonal entrainment in Indian instrumental music performance: Synchronization and movement coordination relate to tempo, dynamics, metrical and cadential structure

Two complementary aspects of interpersonal entrainment – synchronization and movement coordination – are explored in North Indian classical instrumental music, in the auditory and visual domains respectively. Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) is explored by analysing pairwise asynchronies between the event onsets of instrumental soloists and their tabla accompanists, and the variability of asynchrony by factors including tempo, dynamic level and metrical position is explored. Movement coordination is quantified using cross wavelet transform (CWT) analysis of upper body movement data, and differences in CWT Energy are investigated in relation to the metrical and cadential structures of the music. The analysis demonstrates that SMS within this corpus varies significantly with tempo, event density, peak levels and leadership. Effects of metrical position on pairwise asynchrony are small and offer little support for the hypothesis of lower variability in synchronization on strong metrical positions; a larger difference was found at cadential downbeats, which show increased melody lead. Movement coordination is greater at metrical boundaries than elsewhere, and most strikingly is greater at cadential than at other metrical downbeats. The implications of these findings for understanding performer coordination are discussed in relation to ethnographic research on the genre.

Optimality Theory, Language Typology, and Universalist Metrics

In Russom (2011), I defended a universalist hypothesis that the constituents of poetic form are abstracted from natural linguistic constituents: metrical positions from phonological constituents, usually syllables; metrical feet from morphological constituents, usually words; and metrical lines from syntactic constituents, usually sentences. An important corollary to this hypothesis is that norms for realization of a metrical constituent are based on norms for the corresponding linguistic constituent. Optimality Theory provides a universalist account of relevant linguistic norms and deals effectively with situations in which norms conflict, employing ranked violable rules. Language Typology provides a universalist account of relevant syntactic norms. In this paper I integrate these independently grounded methodologies and use them to explain the distribution of constituents within the line, identifying a variety of important facts that seem to have escaped previous notice. Universalist claims are tested against meters from each of the major language types: subject-verb-object (SVO), subject-object-verb (SOV) and verb-subject-object (VSO). My findings are incompatible with the claim that “lines are sequences of syllables, rather than of words or phrases” (Fabb, Halle 2008: 11).

Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Sense Isochrony in Rhythm, but Not the Beat: Additional Support for the Gradual Audiomotor Evolution Hypothesis.

Charles Darwin suggested the perception of rhythm to be common to all animals. While only recently experimental research is finding some support for this claim, there are also aspects of rhythm cognition that appear to be species-specific, such as the capability to perceive a regular pulse (or beat) in a varying rhythm. In the current study, using EEG, we adapted an auditory oddball paradigm that allows for disentangling the contributions of beat perception and isochrony to the temporal predictability of the stimulus. We presented two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) with a rhythmic sequence in two versions: an isochronous version, that was acoustically accented such that it could induce a duple meter (like a march), and a jittered version using the same acoustically accented sequence but that was presented in a randomly timed fashion, as such disabling beat induction. The results reveal that monkeys are sensitive to the isochrony of the stimulus, but not its metrical structure. The MMN was influenced by the isochrony of the stimulus, resulting in a larger MMN in the isochronous as opposed to the jittered condition. However, the MMN for both monkeys showed no interaction between metrical position and isochrony. So, while the monkey brain appears to be sensitive to the isochrony of the stimulus, we find no evidence in support of beat perception. We discuss these results in the context of the gradual audiomotor evolution (GAE) hypothesis (Merchant and Honing, 2014) that suggests beat-based timing to be omnipresent in humans but only weakly so or absent in non-human primates.