Non-isochronous Metre in Music from Mali

2021 ◽  
pp. 252-274
Author(s):  
Rainer Polak
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Small Integer ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Periodic Patterns ◽  
Rhythmic Structure ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Metric Structures

The basic building blocks for rhythmic structure in music are widely believed to be universally confined to small-integer ratios. In particular, basic metric processes such as pulse perception are assumed to depend on the recognition and anticipation of even, categorically equivalent durations or inter-onset intervals, which are related by the ratio of 1:1 (isochrony). Correspondingly, uneven (non-isochronous) beat subdivisions are theorized as instances of expressive microtiming variation, i.e. as performance deviations from some underlying, categorically isochronous temporal structure. By contrast, ethnographic experience suggests that the periodic patterns of uneven beat subdivision timing in various styles of music from Mali themselves constitute rhythmic and metric structures. The present chapter elaborates this hypothesis and surveys a series of empirical research projects that have found evidence for it. These findings have implications for metric theory as well as for our broader understanding of how human perception relates to cultural environments. They suggest that the bias towards isochrony, which according to many accounts of rhythm and metre underlies pulse perception, is culturally specific rather than universal. Claims regarding cultural diversity in the study of music typically concern styles and meanings of performance practices. In this chapter, I will claim that basic structures of perception can vary across cultural groups too.

scholarly journals Structural organization of sacred landscapes

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Mishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Structural Organization ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Sacred Landscape ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Anthropogenic Landscape ◽  
Special Respect

The article presents the results of scientific developments concerning the structural organization of sacred landscapes. The methodological basis of the study is the concept of constructive-geographic analysis, which is based on the approaches of the natural and the humanitarian sciences. The system approach to the study of sacred landscapes as a holistic organized territorial structure and a set of methods is used in this work, in particular: structural and logical generalization and system analysis, comparative and geographical, historical and geographical. The author considers the significance of the notion of sacral landscape as being broader than religion per se, and considers it a natural, natural-anthropogenic and anthropogenic system associated with certain symbols of life, myths, significant events, and , indeed ,religious feelings that are of great importance to a person or group of people and requires special respect and protection. The structural organization of all sacred landscapes is characterized  by their properties and spatial structure and is closely connected with their social and functional purpose. As a result, such territorial systems can be divided into: confessional, taphal, active, abnormal. The sacred landscape is characterized by polystructurality, that is, the presence of spatial, temporal and morphological structure. In the spatial structure of the sacral landscape, the following components can be distinguished: the sacred object, anthropogenic and technogenic component, the landscape structure and a person with his/   her spiritual experience. In addition, such a structure has a hierarchical construction, where individual, local, regional, national and global levels can be distinguished. This article presents the peculiarities of the temporal structure of sacral landscapes and outlines the external, internal, and the functioning time. Particular attention is paid to the characteristic of internal time, where one can distinguish the following phases of development: the formation of a natural, natural-anthropogenic or anthropogenic landscape; the creation of a spiritual component; loss of sacred human perception of a natural, natural-anthropogenic or anthropogenic landscape; the disappearance of the natural or natural- anthropogenic landscape. Taking into account the morphological structure of the sacred landscape, it is substantiated that religious objects serving as markers of sacred landscapes cannot correspond to one or another morphological unit of the landscape, that is, completely repeat its outlines and boundaries. However, there is a correlation between the type of landscape and the features of the sacred objects that were formed there.

scholarly journals What music makes us feel: At least 13 dimensions organize subjective experiences associated with music across different cultures

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 1924-1934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan S. Cowen ◽  
Xia Fang ◽  
Disa Sauter ◽  
Dacher Keltner
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Discrete Emotion ◽  
Chinese Music ◽  
Interactive Map ◽  
Valence And Arousal

What is the nature of the feelings evoked by music? We investigated how people represent the subjective experiences associated with Western and Chinese music and the form in which these representational processes are preserved across different cultural groups. US (n = 1,591) and Chinese (n = 1,258) participants listened to 2,168 music samples and reported on the specific feelings (e.g., “angry,” “dreamy”) or broad affective features (e.g., valence, arousal) that they made individuals feel. Using large-scale statistical tools, we uncovered 13 distinct types of subjective experience associated with music in both cultures. Specific feelings such as “triumphant” were better preserved across the 2 cultures than levels of valence and arousal, contrasting with theoretical claims that valence and arousal are building blocks of subjective experience. This held true even for music selected on the basis of its valence and arousal levels and for traditional Chinese music. Furthermore, the feelings associated with music were found to occupy continuous gradients, contradicting discrete emotion theories. Our findings, visualized within an interactive map (https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/∼acowen/music.html) reveal a complex, high-dimensional space of subjective experience associated with music in multiple cultures. These findings can inform inquiries ranging from the etiology of affective disorders to the neurological basis of emotion.

scholarly journals Generating Robust Audio Adversarial Examples with Temporal Dependency

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongting Zhang ◽  
Pan Zhou ◽  
Qiben Yan ◽  
Xiao-Yang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Automatic Speech Recognition ◽  
Defense Mechanisms ◽  
User Study ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Adversarial Examples

Audio adversarial examples, imperceptible to humans, have been constructed to attack automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. However, the adversarial examples generated by existing approaches usually incorporate noticeable noises, especially during the periods of silences and pauses. Moreover, the added noises often break temporal dependency property of the original audio, which can be easily detected by state-of-the-art defense mechanisms. In this paper, we propose a new Iterative Proportional Clipping (IPC) algorithm that preserves temporal dependency in audios for generating more robust adversarial examples. We are motivated by an observation that the temporal dependency in audios imposes a significant effect on human perception. Following our observation, we leverage a proportional clipping strategy to reduce noise during the low-intensity periods. Experimental results and user study both suggest that the generated adversarial examples can significantly reduce human-perceptible noises and resist the defenses based on the temporal structure.

IN QUEST OF A SYSTEMATIC FRAMEWORK FOR UNIFYING AND DEFINING NANOSCIENCE

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (03) ◽  
pp. 1430002 ◽  
Author(s):  
DONALD A. TOMALIA ◽  
SHIV N. KHANNA
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Periodic Patterns ◽  
Periodic Property ◽  
Property Patterns ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
American Physical ◽  
Central Paradigm ◽  
Systematic Framework

This is an invited overview of a lecture presented at the American Physical Society (APS) Meeting, Boston, USA (March 1, 2012). The primary focus of this APS lecture was to trace the historical emergence of Hard and Soft nanoscale superatoms (i.e. nano-element categories) as well as a recent merging of these concepts/entities by chemists/physicists into a unified system and framework for defining nanoscience. The convergence of these quantized, organic/inorganic superatom entities involved the application of traditional "first principles" and their nanoscale "atom mimicry" features as a criteria for evolving a roadmap of quantized nano-elemental categories, nano-compound/assemblies and nano-periodic patterns, etc., much as was observed in traditional chemistry. This simple perspective was used to define a nanoscale taxonomy of hard/soft superatom/nano-element categories, as well as to explain the dependency of a broad range of nano-periodic properties/features on one or more of six Critical Nanoscale Design Parameters (CNDPs) associated with these nano-building blocks, namely: (1) size, (2) shape, (3) surface chemistry, (4) rigidity/flexibility, (5) architecture and (6) elemental composition. Validation and support of this systematic nano-periodic perspective has appeared in many recent publications describing CNDP dependent nano-periodic property patterns/trends, rules and Mendeleev-like nano-periodic tables which may unify and provide first steps toward a "central paradigm" for nanoscience.

scholarly journals How to Address Politics of the Body in Participatory Performance? On the Possibilities of Sensory Fields and Collective Body Techniques as Analytical Tools

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joonas Lahtinen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
The Body ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Body Techniques ◽  
Politics Of The Body ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Participatory Performance

This article discusses the importance of and challenges in analyzing and contex- tualizing the ways of bodily participation in participatory performance practices. The writer suggests that the crucial ideological assumptions, as well as the processes of exclusion and inclusion of any participatory project, are not to be seen solely in their “goals” or “themes”, but, even more distinctly, in the modes of bodily participation that they employ. The writer presents a novel performance analytical framework that takes the bodily dimension – what is actually done to and expected from the bodies of the participants during the performance event – as the starting point for critical analysis. Drawing especially from Jacques Rancière’s and Marcel Mauss’s views of human perception and experience, the main concepts of this framework are ‘sensory fields’ and ‘collective body tech- niques’. The writer also shows how these concepts have informed his research on Lois Weaver’s performance What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex (2008).

A Doubly Green Revolution: ecology and food production

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Conway
Keyword(s):  
Green Revolution ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Ecological Concepts ◽  
Physico Chemical ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Concise Definition

Ecology has informed and underpinned agricultural production since the first faltering steps in domestication and cultivation. When someone (probably a woman) living in the Fertile Crescent carried seeds of wild wheats and barleys from the great natural cereal stands of the region and sowed them near her house she initiated the process of domestication. She also began the process of crop cultivation, creating what were to become ecologically complex, home gardens. Similarly swidden agriculture was based on imitations of ecological processes that would create a sustainable form of agriculture. The first articulation of this concept was not for many thousands of years later. The great Roman writer and agriculturalist of the first century bc, Marcus Terentius Varro, wrote as follows (Hooper and Ash, 1935) : . . . Agri cultura est ‘Non modo est ars, sed etiam necessaria ac magna; eaque est scientia, quae sint in quoque agro serenda ac facienda, quo terra maximos perpetuo reddat fructus’ . . . Agriculture is ‘not only an art but an important and noble art. It is, as well, a science, which teaches us what crops are to be planted in each kind of soil, and what operations are to be carried on, in order that the land may regularly produce the largest crops.’ (Varro, Rerum Rusticarum I, III) Not only does Varro place crops in their environment but the phrase quo terra maximos perpetuo reddat fructus (which can be translated as ‘that the land yields the highest in perpetuity’) struck me, when I first came upon it in one of the little red Loeb Classical Library translations, as an extraordinarily clear, elegant, and concise definition of sustainability. In this chapter I want to illustrate how ecological concepts illuminate the building blocks of agriculture—gardens, swiddens, pastures, orchards, and fields—and provide a basis for the continuing challenge of feeding everyone in an increasing population. The transformation of an ecosystem into an agroecosystem involves a number of significant changes. The system itself becomes more clearly defined, at least in terms of its biological and physico-chemical boundaries. These become sharper and less permeable, the linkages with other systems being limited and channeled.

Modeling and Theories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Golan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Model Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Validation Of Models

In this chapter I concentrate on model and theory building, including model-based hypotheses, based on limited information. I show that the info-metrics framework provides a coherent perspective that helps to identify the elements that are needed for building a logically sound model. The examples given in this chapter show how the info-metrics framework can guide the construction of both theories and models. I start the chapter by introducing conceptual building blocks and providing very simple toy examples. Then a more detailed example, taken from the social sciences, is introduced. A detailed discussion of the falsification and validation of models is also provided.

scholarly journals P. CHEYNE, A. HAMILTON, M. PADDISON (EDS.) PHILOSOPHY OF RHYTHM: AESTHETICS, MUSIC, POETICS. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019 ISBN 978-0-19-934778-0

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 312-319
Author(s):  
INETA KIVLE ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Structure Change ◽  
Rhythmic Structure ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Stable Pattern ◽  
Metric Structures ◽  
Entire World ◽  
Oxford University Press

The review provides an outline of the collective monograph The Philosophy of Rhythm: Aesthetics, Music, Poetics, edited by Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton and Max Paddison, published by Oxford University Press, 2019. Concept of rhythm is analysed from different perspectives—philosophical, musicological and psychological. It considers a multidisciplinary approach and also includes both analytic and continental philosophical traditions. Rhythm is viewed as a pulse that is going through various metric structures including particular pieces of music, paintings, examples of poetry and philosophy. Twenty eight authors from the entire world discuss rhythm and specify definitions of rhythm. They try to give answers on crucial questions uniting experienced rhythm in philosophy and arts, thus giving an important contribution to rhythm studies. The book is organised thematically and based on different aspects of rhythm manifestations. The main questions of the research are as follows: How is rhythm experienced? Does rhythm necessarily involve movement? Why rhythm is so deeply rooted in human? How can static configurations be rhythmic? How does a rhythmic structure change from a stable pattern to a flexible texture? All these questions concern two interwoven issues common for the volume in general: immanence of rhythm to arts and human experience of it.

scholarly journals Expectancy-based rhythmic entrainment as continuous Bayesian inference

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. e1009025
Author(s):  
Jonathan Cannon
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Inference Models ◽  
Inference Problems ◽  
Event Timing ◽  
Variational Solutions ◽  
Multiple Characteristics ◽  
Event Times ◽  
Behavioral Predictions

When presented with complex rhythmic auditory stimuli, humans are able to track underlying temporal structure (e.g., a “beat”), both covertly and with their movements. This capacity goes far beyond that of a simple entrained oscillator, drawing on contextual and enculturated timing expectations and adjusting rapidly to perturbations in event timing, phase, and tempo. Previous modeling work has described how entrainment to rhythms may be shaped by event timing expectations, but sheds little light on any underlying computational principles that could unify the phenomenon of expectation-based entrainment with other brain processes. Inspired by the predictive processing framework, we propose that the problem of rhythm tracking is naturally characterized as a problem of continuously estimating an underlying phase and tempo based on precise event times and their correspondence to timing expectations. We present two inference problems formalizing this insight: PIPPET (Phase Inference from Point Process Event Timing) and PATIPPET (Phase and Tempo Inference). Variational solutions to these inference problems resemble previous “Dynamic Attending” models of perceptual entrainment, but introduce new terms representing the dynamics of uncertainty and the influence of expectations in the absence of sensory events. These terms allow us to model multiple characteristics of covert and motor human rhythm tracking not addressed by other models, including sensitivity of error corrections to inter-event interval and perceived tempo changes induced by event omissions. We show that positing these novel influences in human entrainment yields a range of testable behavioral predictions. Guided by recent neurophysiological observations, we attempt to align the phase inference framework with a specific brain implementation. We also explore the potential of this normative framework to guide the interpretation of experimental data and serve as building blocks for even richer predictive processing and active inference models of timing.

scholarly journals Neurophysiological signatures of duration and rhythm prediction across sensory modalities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Acer Y.-C. Chang ◽  
Anil K. Seth ◽  
Warrick Roseboom
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Presentation Modality ◽  
Rhythmic Structure ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Prediction Mechanism ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Duration Prediction

AbstractEffective behaviour and cognition requires the ability to make predictions about the temporal properties of events, such as duration. It is well known that violations of temporal structure within sequences of stimuli lead to neurophysiological effects known as the (temporal) mismatch negativity (TMMN). However, previous studies investigating this phenomenon have typically presented successive stimulus intervals (i.e., durations) within a rhythmic structure, conflating the contributions of rhythmic temporal processing with those specific to duration. In a novel behavioural paradigm which extends the classic temporal oddball design, we examined the neurophysiological correlates of prediction violation under both rhythmically (isochronous) and arrhythmically (anisochronous) presented durations, in visual and auditory modalities. Using event-related potential (ERP), multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), and temporal generalisation analysis (TGA) analyses, we found evidence for common, and distinct neurophysiological responses related to duration predictions and their violation, across isochronous and anisochronous conditions. Further, using TGA we could directly compare processes underlying duration prediction violation across different modalities, despite differences in processing latency of audition and vision. We discovered a common set of neurophysiological responses that are elicited whenever a duration prediction is violated, regardless of presentation modality, indicating the existence of a supramodal duration prediction mechanism. Altogether, our data show that the human brain encodes predictions specifically about duration, in addition to those from rhythmic structure, and that the neural underpinnings of these predictions generalize across modalities. These findings support the idea that time perception is based on similar principles of inference as characterize ‘predictive processing’ theories of perception.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document