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Seeing how music is organized can help us understand how it is heard. Musical rhythm usually operates within a recursive temporal framework such as a (periodic) beat or a (metered) measure. Therefore it makes sense to visualize tactus-based rhythm as a cyclical concept. This can be done using a graph that uses polar coordinates to plot temporal information. The beat is represented by a circle, with all possible time-points within the beat placed along the circle’s circumference. Radius length denotes interonset interval, with longer notes lying farther from the center of the circle. The circular plot is well suited for visualizing and analyzing expressive timing data. It can also be used to re-interpret complex rhythms, partition tempo curves, and summarize rhythmic profiles.

We examine the temporal properties of cyclical drumming patterns in an expert performance of Afro-Cuban rumba recorded in Santiago de Cuba. Quantitative analysis of over 9,000 percussion onsets collected from custom sensors placed on various instruments reveals different types and degrees of rhythmic variation across repetitions of each of five characteristic guaguancó patterns (clave, cascara, quinto, segundo, and tumba). We assess each instrument’s variability using principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling, complementing our quantitative exploration with insights from music theory. Through these methods, we uncover details of timing that are insufficiently conveyed with standard music notation in order to shed light on the role of improvised variation in solo and accompaniment ensemble roles.

The post-1964 literature on transcription in ethnomusicology and popular music studies is immense but, more than 20 years after its publication, Ter Ellingson's comprehensive book chapter 'Transcription' (in Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), 110-52) remains the single most useful English-language overview of the history and theory of ethnomusicological transcription. Though less historically oriented than Ellingson's piece, Peter Winkler's incisive 'Writing Ghost Notes: The Poetics and Politics of Transcription' (in Keeping Score: Music, Disciplinarity, Culture, ed.