Subject: Re: maximum tatum (one tatum, two tata) From: beauchamp james w <j-beauch(at)UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 13:53:53 -0500Bruno, > If there are other, better definitions of the tatum, I'd be > interested to learn about them. I ran into the Tatum concept in Jarno Seppanen's recent paper "Tatum Grid Analysis of Musical Signals" (2001 IEEE WASPAA, pp. 131-134). Seppanen says that "The term tatum grid refers to the train of pulses on the lowest meterical level, and the term tatum refers to the period of the lowest-level pulse, i.e., the shortest notes present." In this regard, he references a paper by Jeff A. Bilmes ("Techniques to foster drum machine expressivity", Proc. 1993 Int. Comp. Music. Conf., ICMA, San Francisco, pp. 276- 283). He doesn't reference Vijay Iyer. I happen to have a copy of that proceedings, so I looked up Bilmes's paper. Interesting that he references your 1990 JASA paper, among others. He also references his 1992 ICMC paper ("A Model for Musical Rhythm", pp. 207-210), but it is clear that he coined the term "tatum" in the 1993 paper. In it he says "When we listen to or perform music, we often perceive a high frequency pulse, frequently a binary, trinary, or quaternary subdivision of the musical tactus [i.e., beat]. What does it mean to perceive this pulse, or, as I will call it, *tatum*." Then, in a footnote, upon the suggestion of Barry Vercoe to call it "temporal atom" or "tatom", Bilmes says "in honor of Art Tatum [the jazz drummer], whose tatum was faster than all others, I chose the word *tatum*." Jim Beauchamp PS The [] are my inserts.