Abstract:
Listeners are readily able to identify and track nearly periodic components in complex auditory rhythms such as music, despite the large temporal modulations that commonly exist in music performance. The modulations that performers introduce, however, often communicate musical information such as melody, phrase structure, and meter. A dynamical system model of beat tracking in music performance is first described, in which a performed (external) rhythm serves as driver, and an internal ``attentional rhythm'' is modeled as a nonlinearly driven oscillator. Next, a coupled two-oscillator network, designed to simulate the perception of multiple beat periods (meter), is introduced. The one- and two-oscillator models' ability to track beats and recover meter is tested in piano performances of Bach's Two-Part Inventions. The coupled oscillator network not only extends the model to the perception of meter, but also influences the ability of each component oscillator to track a component periodicity in the external rhythm. The ability of the network to recover other types of musical information, such as phrase structure, from performance timing is discussed. [Work supported by NSF SBR-8920230 and NIMH R29-MH45764.]