Rhythm histograms and musical meter: A corpus study of Malian percussion music
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13423_2016_Article_1093.pdf
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Author(s)
London, Justin
Polak, Rainer
Jacoby, Kinor
Date Issued
July 2016
Journal
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Publisher
Springer US
Citation
London, Justin, Rainer Polak, and Nori Jacoby. “Rhythm Histograms and Musical Meter: A Corpus Study of Malian Percussion Music.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (July 6, 2016).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Studies of musical corpora have given empirical grounding to the various features that characterize particular musical styles and genres. Palmer & Krumhansl (1990) found that in Western classical music the likeliest places for a note to occur are the most strongly accented beats in a measure, and this was also found in subsequent studies using both Western classical and folk music corpora (Huron & Ommen, 2006; Temperley, 2010). We present a rhythmic analysis of a corpus of 15 performances of percussion music from Bamako, Mali. In our corpus, the relative frequency of note onsets in a given metrical position does not correspond to patterns of metrical accent, though there is a stable relationship between onset frequency and metrical position. The implications of this non-congruence between simple statistical likelihood and metrical structure for the ways in which meter and metrical accent may be learned and understood are discussed, along with importance of cross-cultural studies for psychological research.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1093-7
