Rhythm

Ecology and the art of the possible

by Marco Cuevas-Hewitt

Forthcoming. Due for publication in mid-2012. Draft available for viewing.

First paragraph: "Evocative images, wispy like memory, light up the walls of a sunless room in an old colonial... more First paragraph: "Evocative images, wispy like memory, light up the walls of a sunless room in an old colonial era mental asylum turned art gallery. In their glow, an odd array of objects: Time-worn furniture, an antique French stereoscope, a bouquet of native flowers, jars of assorted bush tucker. Binding them are the invisible threads of stories, gathered up and re-woven by artists Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe of the Sydney-based collective, Makeshift, during their two sojourns in Esperance in the autumn and spring of 2011. The black and white projection at the focal point of the installation conveys an eighteenth century dining scene, seemingly plucked out of Europe and parachuted into the dry salt lake where it was filmed, save for the bloodroot, wattleseed, and other edible native plants comprising the spread. Adding to its curiousness is the artists’ unusual choice to film it as a tableau vivant or ‘living picture’. This now-quaint convention, once popular as a form of entertainment at the soirees of aristocratic elites, involves the presentation of a scene by a silent and motionless cast of characters as if imitating a painting or photograph. The effect achieved by Makeshift is a film reel resembling a slideshow of images from the colonial frontier, eerily still but for the tablecloth flapping in the breeze..."

I Hear Singing: Rhythmic and affective characteristics in three choral settings of E. E. Cummings’ “i thank You God for most this amazing” compared with a recording of the poet reading his own work.

by Philip Rice

Written for "Seminar in Analysis of American Vocal Music", graduate course at Westminster Choir College, Spring, 2012. Instructor: Dr. Christian Carey.

Comparison of three choral settings of E. E. Cummings' "i thank You God for most this amazing" using a 1953... more Comparison of three choral settings of E. E. Cummings' "i thank You God for most this amazing" using a 1953 recording of the poet reading the poem as a control group for analysis of rhythmic features and affects within each work. Settings explored are by Jacob Avshalomov (1971), Gwyneth Walker (1998), and Eric Whitacre (2000).

Good and Bad Beats: Changes in the musical notation of rhythm in the Baroque as an expression of baroque values

by Philip Rice

Written for Baroque Performance Practice course at Westminster Choir College, Fall 2011. Instructed by Dr. Andrew Megill

An investigation of the changes to rhythmic notation and rate of tactus from the Renaissance into the Baroque period,... more An investigation of the changes to rhythmic notation and rate of tactus from the Renaissance into the Baroque period, particularly how these changes reflect larger philosophical changes in the Baroque and Enlightenment.

Il parametro ritmo in alcuni scritti di Boulez

by Fabio De Sanctis De Benedictis

Tetraktys, Anno II, n. 2, marzo 1998

"Where I have lost I softer tread" - Emily Dickinson und die Prosodie der Trauer

by Kathrin Bethke

In: Emotionale Grenzgänge. Konzeptualisierungen von Liebe, Trauer und Angst in Sprache und Literatur. Hg. v. Lisanne Ebert, Carola Gruber, Benjamin Meisnitzer und Sabine Rettinger. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2011. 133-51.

Out of place, out of synch: Errant movement and rhythm in Luis Buñuel's Mexican Comedies. In: Stone, R. & J. D. Gutiérrez-Albilla ed(s). The Companion to Luis Buñuel. Chichester, Blackwell

by Tom Whittaker

Conversational functions of rhythmical patterning: a behavioural perspective

by Stephen J. Cowley

This appeared as:
Cowley, S.J. (1994). Conversational functions of rhythmical patterning: a behavioural perspective. Language and Communication, 14, 353-376.

Like other terrestrial life forms, humans rely heavily on rhythm for ordinary communication. However, we must also... more Like other terrestrial life forms, humans rely heavily on rhythm for ordinary communication. However, we must also accept the orthodox view that communication by means of speech depends very much on word-based forms. Theorists face the problem of explaining how, in a given community, speakers communicated not only by rhythmical and other prosodic means but that they also exploited entities called ‘words’. For this reason, following tradition, word-based forms are recognized as constituting a semi-independent province of language.

Accordingly, the main goal of the paper is to clarify how rhythmic aspects of speech contribute to communicative between people who know each other well. The approach is novel insofar as it faces up to the issue of how individuals use rhythmical means in bringing about communicative effects. The perspective is justified by fine-grained analysis of a single passage of naturally occurring conversation. At the same time it is spelled out why the techniques adopted are more illuminating
than those sanctioned in traditions that build on the heritage of Saussure.

METER MATTERS: EMBODIED RHYTHMS AT STAGE AS A CHALLENGE TO THE ACOUSTICS OF ANCIENT THEATRE

by Marcus Mota

Sensing the Rhythms of Everyday Life

by Terra Edwards

Linguistic rhythm guides parsing decisions in written sentence comprehension

by Gerrit Kentner

Linguistic rhythm guides parsing decisions in written sentence comprehension

by Gerrit Kentner

The effect of task and pitch structure on pitch-time interactions in music

by Mark Schmuckler

A memetic approach to the evolution of rhythms in a society of software agents

by Prof Eduardo R. Miranda

Towards an intelligent rhythmic generator based on given examples: a memetic approach

by Prof Eduardo R. Miranda

Emergence of synchronous EEG spindles from asynchronous MEG spindles

by Nima Dehghani

The performance of global expectations

by Mark Schmuckler

Effects of Timing Regularity and Metrical Expectancy on Spoken-Word Perception

by Hugo Quené

Co-authored with R.F. Port.
Published in Phonetica 62 (1), 1-13 (2005).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000087222

Certain types of speech, e.g. lists of words or numbers, are usually spoken with highly regular inter-stress timing.... more Certain types of speech, e.g. lists of words or numbers, are usually spoken with highly regular inter-stress timing. The main hypothesis of this study (derived from the Dynamic Attending Theory) is that listeners attend in particular to speech events at these regular time points. Better timing regularity should improve spoken-word perception. Previous studies have suggested only a weak effect of speech rhythm on spoken-word perception, but the timing of inter-stress intervals was not controlled in these studies. A phoneme monitoring experiment is reported, in which listeners heard lists of disyllabic words in which the timing of the stressed vowels was either regular (with equidistant inter-stress intervals) or irregular. In addition, metrical expectancy was controlled by varying the stress pattern of the target word, as either the same or the opposite of the stress pattern in its preceding words. Resulting reac-tion times show a main effect of timing regularity, but not of metrical expectancy. These results suggest that listeners employ attentional rhythms in spoken-word perception, and that regular speech timing improves speech communication.

Rhythm, Turbulence and Stasis in Nature: The Spirit-Matter Problem Revisited

by Harlan Gilbert

Harmonic and rhythmic influences on musical expectancy

by Mark Schmuckler

The Future of Teamwork: Orchestra or Jazz

by Karthikeyan Iyer

Published in the Innovator Column of Asian Educator, September 2011 Issue

They say that teamwork is all about synchronization – multiple people working hand-in-hand and marching step-in-step... more They say that teamwork is all about synchronization – multiple people working hand-in-hand and marching step-in-step to achieve a common goal. What rhythms do teams use to synchronize? This article looks at two different examples of teamwork rhythms – an orchestra and a jazz performance.

By getting a large number of musicians to play together in an orchestra, live performances could be brought to larger audiences. Of course, this kind of teamwork needed an orchestrator or conductor, who could centrally control the entire performance and provide cues to the musicians to stay in sync.

A jazz performance however, embodies a completely different kind of teamwork. Here, multiple musicians come together to play in concert, however, they do not depend on any external cues to synchronize with each other - they react to each other and improvise accordingly, while retaining their originality and spontaneity. Every jazz performance therefore is unique.


As Thomas Friedman so potently discusses in The Lexus And the Olive Tree, the defining characteristic of the new world is speed, not weight. Continued success needs innovation, collaboration, adaptation, improvisation and evolution. Will new world teams choose orchestra or jazz?