Rhythm Categories Research Articles

Ритмические структуры в сериальной музыке: к вопросу о типологии и систематике

The advancement of the categories of time and rhythm to the forefront brought in profound transformations into the sphere of 20th century musical composition. One of the domains that came to embody the conception of the new times was serial music. The article examines the principles of organization of rhythmic structures in serial music and proposes a system of classiication for them. Among the main types of rhythmic structures, especially prominent are sets of durations and sets of rhythmic cells (igures). By basing the systematization on various criteria (types of rhythmic units or the levels of differentiation), the author classiies the types of durations into regular, irregular, halfregular ones, as well as mono-formant and poly-formant ones. All the types of rhythmic structures are illustrated by examples from compositions by Messiaen, Boulez, Babbitt and Nono. As a result of his research, the author comes to the conclusion that the search of the serialist composers were directed at the issues of the inner construction of time and were conducive towards the realization of the multilayer and multi-dimensional aspects of the musical temporal processes. Keywords: serial technique, rhythmic structures, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono

Beyond the Iambic-Trochaic Law: the joint influence of duration and intensity on the perception of rhythmic speech

The Iambic-Trochaic Law (ITL) asserts that listeners associate greater acoustic intensity with group beginnings and greater duration with group endings. Some researchers have assumed a natural connection between these perceptual tendencies and universal principles underlying linguistic categories of rhythm. The experimental literature on ITL effects is limited in three ways. Few studies of listeners' perceptions of alternating sound sequences have used speech-like stimuli, cross-linguistic testing has been inadequate and existing studies have manipulated intensity and duration singly, whereas these features vary together in natural speech. This paper reports the results of three experiments conducted with native Zapotec speakers and one with native English speakers. We tested listeners' grouping biases using streams of alternating syllables in which intensity and duration were varied separately, and sequences in which they were covaried. The findings suggest that care should be taken in assuming a natural connection between the ITL and universal principles of prosodic organisation.

An experimental study of Korean rhythm structure on the basis of rhythm metrics

This paper investigates the rhythm structure of Korean. Metrics used in this study included %V, ΔC, Varco V, nPVI-V, and rPVI-C, which have been shown to reflect differences in rhythm structure (stress-, syllable-, and mora-timing) across languages. Ten female native Koreans each produced 20 short declarative Korean sentences. The rhythm metric results of Korean were compared to those of English, Spanish, and Japanese using raw data from previous studies [Ramus et al. 1999, Cognition 73, 265-292; White and Mattys, 2007, Journal of Phonetics 35, 501-522; Grenon and White, 2008, BUCLD 32, 155-166]. Results indicate that Korean combines aspects of both syllable timing and mora timing. Korean has a similar ΔC, Varco V, and nPVI-V to syllable-timed languages. Korean has a similar %V and nPVI-V to mora-timed languages. These data show that instead of belonging to one of three distinct rhythm categories, languages may be placed along a rhythm structure continuum. On such a continuum, Korean is placed between syllable-timed and mora-timed languages, and distinct from stress-timed languages.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes stratified by rhythm analysis

BackgroundSurvival data for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) victims initially in PEA or asystole who convert to a shockable rhythm during attempted resuscitation, relative to an initial shockable rhythm, have never been previously reported. This study was done to assess OHCA outcomes among a large cohort of adults in the CARES dataset stratified by three rhythm categories: initial shockable (IS), converted shockable (CS), and never shockable (NS). MethodsThe study was IRB approved. All adult index events at participating sites (2005–2010) were study eligible. All patient data elements were provided. Odds ratios of CS and NS status for survival to hospital discharge were calculated via multivariate logistic regression that adjusted for demographics, site, resuscitation initiators, AED use, and other covariates. ResultsThere were 40,274 OHCA records submitted to the CARES registry during the study period. After exclusions, our final sample size was 30,939 (7404 IS [23.9%], 3225 CS [10.4%], 20,310 NS [65.7%]). Raw survival rates of CS and NS patients were similar (4.7% vs. 4.1%, respectively; p=0.08) but significantly lower than IS patients (26.9%; p<0.001). The adjusted OR of survival to hospital discharge for CS was 0.17 (95%CI: 0.14, 0.20) and for NS it was 0.17 (95%CI: 0.15, 0.18) with IS as the referent. ConclusionAfter OHCA, the survival rate for CS victims is significantly lower than for IS patients. These findings suggest that CS and IS are different entities and that alternatives to existing resuscitation algorithm tailored to patients with CS should be investigated.

Tone-based macro-rhythm from the perspective of prosodic typology

In the autosegmental-metrical model of intonational phonology [Pierrehumbert, 1980, Ladd, 1996/2008], prosody is defined in terms of the prosodic structure of an utterance and the prominence relations within the structure. Jun (2005) proposed a model of prosodic typology based on the types of prominence-marking and rhythmic/prosodic units. Languages were categorized as Head-prominence when the head of a prosodic unit such as stress is marked prominent (e.g., English, Spanish, Greek), or Edge-prominence when the edge of a prosodic unit such as an accentual phrase (AP) is marked prominent (e.g., Korean), or Head/Edge-prominence when both the head and the edge are marked prominent (e.g., French, Bengali). The rhythmic/prosodic units covered both micro-rhythm (regularity due to the traditional rhythm category, e.g., stress-timed) and macro-rhythm (regularity due to a tonally defined prosodic unit, e.g., AP). Macro-rhythm was proposed to describe the rhythmic nature of a language where stress is not easily perceptible. In this talk, I will show that macro-rhythm is also crucial in describing sub-groups of Head-prominence languages as well as capturing the relationship between the complexity of tonal category and the types of prominence-marking across languages. Combining the prominence types and the f0-based macro-rhythm provides a better way to establish prosodic typology.

Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator Electrogram Adjudication for Device Registries: Methodology and Observations from ALTITUDE

The increasing use of remote monitoring with the associated large retrievable databases provides a unique opportunity to analyze observations on implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapies. Adjudication of a large number of stored ICD electrograms (EGMs) presents a unique challenge. The ALTITUDE study group was designed to use the LATITUDE remote monitoring system to evaluate ICD patient outcomes across the United States. Of 81,081 patients on remote monitoring, a random sample of 2,000 patients having 5,279 shock episodes was selected. The ALTITUDE EGM review committee was comprised of seven electrophysiologists from four institutions. An online EGM adjudication system was designed. Episodes were classified as appropriate (70% of shock episodes) or inappropriate ICD therapies (30%). Light's Kappa was used to assess agreement. Interobserver and intraobserver Kappa scores for dual-chamber ICDs were 0.84 (0.71-0.91) and 0.89 (0.82-0.95), consistent with substantial agreement. Interobserver and intraobserver Kappa scores for single-chamber ICDs were 0.61 (0.54-0.67) and 0.69 (0.59-0.79). The rhythm categories of "nonsustained arrhythmia" and "polymorphic and monomorphic ventricular tachycardia" resulted in the greatest degree of discordant adjudication between reviewers. This method of adjudication of a large volume of stored EGM data prior to device therapies will allow new observations in regards to device performance and has the potential to improve device programming and design. There was substantial interreviewer agreement for rhythm classification. Agreement was greater for dual-chamber compared to single-chamber devices, indicating the atrial lead adds diagnostic value in rhythm interpretation.

El ritmo del spot de televisión actual. Narrativa audiovisual y categorías temporales en el palmarés del Festival "Cannes Lions" 2007

This paper explores the logics of construction of the television commercial from its relation with the narrative categories of time and rhythm. Acording to this objective we will approach the television advertisement text from a narratological point of view, principally on the formal aspects of the text, to attend those factors proceeding from the film narrative that create an impression of psychological time. We'll take as object of study the winners of 2007 International Advertising Festival Cannes Lions in order to detect current tendencies in the making of psychological time.

Shock advisory tool: Detection of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias and shock success prediction by means of a common parameter set

The aim of the present work was to study the possibility of a parameter set to assure both reliable detection of shockable rhythms and adequate shock success prediction. A set of 10 parameters, reflecting the frequency characteristics, the variations, the complexity, the periodicity and the symmetry of the ECG signals was subjected to discriminant analysis. The reliability of the derived parameters to provide an adequate shock advisory decision, which accounts the arrhythmia type (shockable or non-shockable) and the possibility for shock success, was studied. Moreover, the influence of different types of artifacts on the accuracy for shockable and non-shockable rhythms classification was evaluated. The shockable rhythm detection ability was estimated towards the AHA recommendations for reliable automatic external defibrillator algorithm performance, while the accuracy for prediction of the shock outcome was compared with the possibility of other proposed methods to differentiate between ventricular fibrillation episodes amenable and non-amenable to defibrillation. The direct comparison of the shockable rhythm detection results with the AHA recommendations for defined rhythm categories proved the adequacy of the processed ECG features to provide accuracy, which meets the AHA performance goal. Besides this, the proposed parameter set proved its adequacy for shock success prediction and the attained prediction accuracy (above 80%) could be considered as acceptable for possible practical application in automatic external defibrillators. The combination of reliable detection and prediction, as well as the fact that the decision for defibrillation will account not only the rhythm type but also the possibility for successful defibrillation, makes the proposed parameter set a reliable tool for automatic external defibrillator shock-advisory algorithms.

Assessment of ECG frequency and morphology parameters for automatic classification of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias

The reliable recognition and adequate electrical shock therapy of life-threatening cardiac states depend on the electrocardiogram (ECG) descriptors which are used by the defibrillator-embedded automatic arrhythmia analysis algorithms. We propose a method for real-time ECG processing and parameter set extraction using band-pass digital filtration and ECG peak detection. Twelve parameters were derived: (i) seven parameters from the band-pass filter output—six threshold parameters and one peak counter; (ii) five parameters from the ECG peak detection branch, which assess the heart rate, the periodicity and the amplitude/slope symmetry of the ECG peaks. The statistical assessment for more than 36 h of cardiac arrhythmia episodes collected from the public AHA and MIT databases showed that some of the parameters achieved high specificity and sensitivity, but there was no parameter providing 100% separation between non-shockable and shockable rhythms. In order to estimate the influence of the wide variety of cardiac arrhythmias and the different artifacts in real recording conditions, we performed a more detailed study for eight non-shockable and four shockable rhythm categories. The combination of the six top-ranked parameters provided specificity: (i) more than 99% for rhythms with narrow supraventricular complexes, premature ventricular contractions, paced beats and bradycardias; (ii) almost 95% for supraventricular tachycardias; (iii) 91.5% for bundle branch blocks; (iv) 92.2% for slow ventricular tachycardias. The attained sensitivity was above 98% for coarse and fine ventricular fibrillations and 94% for the rapid ventricular tachycardias. The accuracy for the noise contaminated non-shockable and shockable signals exceeded 93%. The proposed parameter set guarantees an accuracy that meets the AHA performance goal for each rhythm category and could be a reliable facility for AED shock-advisory algorithms.

A Cross- Linguistic Study in Learning Prosodic Rhythms: Rules, Constraints, and Similarity

Differences in the learnability of linguistic patterns may be crucial in deciding among alternative learning models. This paper compares the ability of English speakers (Experiment1) and Portuguese speakers (Experiment 2) to learn two complex rhythm patterns observed in languages with primary word stress. Subjects were familiarized with one of two rhythms during a discrimination task, followed by a recognition task which tested whether knowledge of the rhythm generalized to novel stimuli. The main findings were: (1) speakers trained on the cross-linguisticallyless common rhythm distinguished between novel stimuli which did or didnot conform to their training rhythm, while speakers trained on the more common rhythm did not;(2) English speakers were biased more strongly than Portuguese speakers against final stress; and (3) melodies that are on a boundary between rhythm categories were treated as less prototypical than other members of the same rhythm category. The results demonstrate that knowledge of complex linguistic rhythms can be generalized after very little training, and that the less common rhythm is easier to learn even though it seems more complex. The results are compared with general-purpose exemplar-based learning models as well as abstract linguistic theories of word stress acquisition.

Effect of timing variations on the categorical perception of musical rhythm patterns

Musical rhythm patterns are mainly characterized by durational relationships between their different time levels. As written rhythmic values imply, these relationships are graphically represented by simple integer ratios and that fact reflects a basic criterion for their perceptual encoding into discrete perceptual categories. Temporal analysis of any musical performance reveals that deviations from accurate metronomic timing is a very common practice among musicians and these deviations are perceived either as musical expressivity, or just as inaccurate performance of rhythm. The degree of deviation also affects the categorization of a certain rhythmic pattern. In the present study, a mapping of the perceptual space between adjacent rhythm categories was attempted, through a systematic timing variation of simple rhythm patterns, as well as the investigation of the perceptual magnet effect [P. Iverson and P. Kuhl, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 553–562 (1995)] at various musical tempi. Sixteen musicians participated in identification, goodness rating, and discrimination tasks. The relative strength of the prototype within each category was determined, as well as the change in the position of category boundaries in different tempi. Discrimination graphs were finally plotted and comparisons were performed between the positions of discriminability peaks and the related category boundaries.

The perceptual center and rhythm categories.

The perceptual center (P-center) is a phenomenon which has been used to account for the failure of acoustic-waveform measurements to verify impressionistic claims about language rhythms. To date, the existence of the P-center has only been tested for English. An experiment is described in which the P-center phenomenon is tested in a stress-timed language (English), a syllable-timed language (Spanish) and a mora-timed language (Japanese). The effect is found in all three languages, suggesting that the P-center is a language universal.

Durational Correlates of Linguistic Rhythm Categories

Abstract Experimental investigations into the reality of impressionistic rhythm categories of language (stress-timing, syllable-timing and mora-timing) have usually tested extreme models of rhythm types. A comparative study of durational characteristics in Spanish (syllable-timed) and Japanese (mora-timed) confirm the absence of a strict isochronic rhythm but yield evidence fitting a less strict hypothesis of rhythm categories.

ECG/VCG rhythm diagnosis using statistical signal analysis--I. Identification of transient rhythms.

The problem of detection and identification of cardiac transient rhythms, using the associated R-R interval sequence, is studied. A generalized likelihood ratio technique is proposed, in which the transient rhythm category is identified by means of a maximum-likelihood hypothesis test. Simultaneously, the magnitude of the change in the R-R interval pattern is estimated. The method is easily mechanized on-line using a moving window of data and prestored gains. Experimental results using actual data are presented to indicate the utility of the method.