In music, the rhythms of different instruments are often syncopated against each other to create tension. Existing perceptual theories of syncopation cannot adequately model such kinds of syncopation since they assume monophony. This study investigates the effects of polyphonic context, instrumentation and metrical location on the salience of syncopations. Musicians and nonmusicians were asked to tap along to rhythmic patterns of a drum kit and rate their stability; in these patterns, syncopations occurred among different numbers of streams, with different instrumentation and at different metrical locations. The results revealed that the stability of syncopations depends on all these factors and music training, in variously interacting ways. It is proposed that listeners’ experiences of syncopations are shaped by polyphonic and instrumental configuration, metrical structure, and individual music training, and a number of possible mechanisms are considered, including the rhythms’ acoustic properties, ecological associations, statistical learning, and timbral differentiation.
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December 2014
Research Article|
December 01 2014
Effects of Polyphonic Context, Instrumentation, and Metrical Location on Syncopation in Music
Maria A. G. Witek
;
1University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Maria Witek, Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), Aarhus University Hospital, 44 Noerrebrogade, Building 10G, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. E-mail: maria.witek@cfin.au.dk
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Eric F. Clarke
;
Eric F. Clarke
1University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
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Peter Vuust
Peter Vuust
2Aarhus University Hospital & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark
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Maria Witek, Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), Aarhus University Hospital, 44 Noerrebrogade, Building 10G, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. E-mail: maria.witek@cfin.au.dk
Music Perception (2014) 32 (2): 201–217.
Article history
Received:
August 07 2013
Accepted:
April 05 2014
Citation
Maria A. G. Witek, Eric F. Clarke, Morten L. Kringelbach, Peter Vuust; Effects of Polyphonic Context, Instrumentation, and Metrical Location on Syncopation in Music. Music Perception 1 December 2014; 32 (2): 201–217. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2014.32.2.201
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