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Does the music genre you play change how you hear the beat?

Danielsen A, Nymoen K, Langerød MT, et al. · Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

Musicians trained in different genres placed the beat of the same sounds at different moments, and folk fiddlers tolerated the widest spread of 'on-time' positions.

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Study at a glance

Design
Cross-sectional — Three-group comparison of expert musicians (folk, jazz, producers) on within-subject click-alignment and tapping tasks with 2x2 Attack x Duration stimuli in three sound categories
N
N=59 · 60 musicians recruited; one producer excluded for erratic tapping, leaving 59 analysed (19 folk, 20 jazz, 20 producers)
Population
Professional musicians and music producers in Norway specialising in jazz, Scandinavian fiddle music, or computer-based dance/hip-hop production
Outcome
Perceived beat location (P-center, ms after onset) and its variability (beat-bin width) in click-alignment and tapping tasks

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Key findings

Slow attacks and long durations pushed the perceived beat later and made it less consistent for everyone. Producers located the beat earliest on average (about 26 ms after onset versus 37 ms for jazz and 40 ms for folk), and folk musicians were the most variable (22 ms versus 15 ms for producers). The biggest group differences came from a single long, slow fiddle sound, where folk and jazz musicians placed the beat late and very inconsistently; even for neutral noise sounds, folk musicians were more variable than producers.

Methodology

The researchers recruited expert jazz musicians, Scandinavian folk fiddlers and electronic-music producers. Each person aligned a click track to a looped sound (a perception task) and tapped clave sticks along with it (a production task). Sounds came from the folk/jazz world (acoustic kick, electric bass, fiddle), the electronic world (808 kick, synth basses), or were neutral noise bursts, each varied in how fast the sound rose (attack) and how long it lasted (duration).

Limitations

Participants were not randomly assigned to genres, so the groups also differ in age, instrument (folk players were mostly bowers and singers) and possibly other habits; the authors could not separate instrument training from genre training. The strongest effects rest on one stimulus, the long fiddle sound, so the pattern may not generalise to other genre-typical sounds. Groups were tested on different computers and in different settings for the click task, and sound loudness was balanced by ear. The study also cannot say whether listening exposure alone, without performing, would produce the same effects.

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