Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 13: Nonlinear Stochastic Processes
DY 13.1: Talk
Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 14:15–14:30, MA 004
The Nature and Perception of Fluctuations in Human Musical Rhythms — Holger Hennig1,2,3, Ragnar Fleischmann1, Anneke Fredebohm4, York Hagmayer5, Jan Nagler1,2, Annette Witt1,6, Fabian J. Theis1,6,7, and •Theo Geisel1,2,6 — 1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen — 2Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics, University of Göttingen — 3Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA — 4Institute of Psychology, University of Göttingen — 5Kings College, London, UK — 6BCCN, Göttingen — 7Helmholtz Zentrum München
Although human musical performances represent one of the most valuable achievements of mankind, the best musicians perform imperfectly. Musical rhythms are not entirely accurate and thus inevitably deviate from the ideal beat pattern. Nevertheless, computer generated perfect beat patterns are frequently devalued by listeners due to a perceived lack of human touch. Professional audio editing software therefore offers a humanizing feature which artificially generates rhythmic fluctuations. However, the built-in humanizing units are essentially random number generators producing only simple uncorrelated fluctuations.
Here, for the first time, we establish long-range fluctuations as an inevitable natural companion of both simple and complex human rhythmic performances [1]. Moreover, we demonstrate that listeners strongly prefer long-range correlated fluctuations in musical rhythms. Thus, the favorable fluctuation type for humanizing interbeat intervals coincides with the one generically inherent in human musical performances.
[1] Hennig et al., PLoS ONE, 6, e26457 (2011)