Re: Rhythm perception

["Michael C. Brady" <mbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Right,

Musicians on the whole tapped faster along with the patterns I tested at
the tempos I tested (150 events per minute). This is likely because
musicians were better at making their 'preferred tapping rate' fit the
more complex rhythms by tapping in patterns that took two or more cycles
of the rhythm to complete. Non-musicians were less assertive in this way
and more typically tried to repeat themselves at every cycle. Thus they
were more constantly adjusting their rates when the rhythm didn't have a
nice pulse they could tap along with per single cycle. So it may be more
accurate to say that musicians don't necessarily prefer to tap faster, but
that they are more in control or are more confident in how they tap. For
the rhythms in this experiment at the tempos they were presented, it may
have worked out to mean overall faster tapping by musicians. The
experiment needs to be run with the rhythms at various tempos to see if
the rate preference washes out.

Also, if I remember correctly, about a third of the 20 musicians were also
drummers. You know how drummers like to speed things up.  :)

I don't remember Drake's findings well enough to comment. I'll have to dig
out that paper.

Good point. Thanks.





On Nov 16, 2005, at 5:34 AM, Christophe Pallier wrote:

Hum,

Is 2) not in contradiction with Carolyn Drake's findings ? (if I am
remember correctly, she found that musicians synchronize to higher levels,
and tap slower than non musicians). She also find effect of musical
culture. See, e.g,
http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/abstract/999/1/429


--
Christophe Pallier
www.pallier.org