There’s More to Groove than Bass in Electronic Dance Music: Why Some People Won’t Dance to Techno

Wesolowski, Brian C.; Hofmann, Alex

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163938

Cited by 20 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“… 47 ). Accordingly, syncopation is perceived as more prominent when produced by a bass drum than a hi-hat cymbal ( 48 ), and rhythmically complex bass lines are rated as increasingly likely to make people dance ( 49 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds

Lenc

Keller

Varlet

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

106

131

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SignificanceBass sounds play a special role in conveying the rhythm and stimulating motor entrainment to the beat of music. However, the biological roots of this culturally widespread musical practice remain mysterious, despite its fundamental relevance in the sciences and arts, and also for music-assisted clinical rehabilitation of motor disorders. Here, we show that this musical convention may exploit a neurophysiological mechanism whereby low-frequency sounds shape neural representations of rhythmic input at the cortical level by boosting selective neural locking to the beat, thus explaining the privileged role of bass sounds in driving people to move along with the musical beat.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds

Lenc

Keller

Varlet

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

106

131

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The results on beat salience were largely confirmed by Stupacher et al in 2016 [ 77 ] who additionally found that high sound intensity in the lowest bass range was positively associated with groove. Also in 2016, Wesolowski & Hofmann [ 78 ] studied 198 excerpts from electronic dance music and found that stimuli with a non-isochronous bass and high rhythmic variability in the upper frequency domain were positively evaluated by listeners, compared to stimuli that did not show these characteristics. Finally, in a recent study, Etani et al [ 79 ] found that the groove experience was influenced by the tempo of the music.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The role of taste has rarely been considered in the context of groove studies, and the few results were inconsistent: Butterfield [ 62 ] observed in 2010 that, in his experiment, listeners’ taste in music did not influence their perception of microtiming. Yet, Wesolowski & Hofmann [ 78 ] showed in 2016 that musical preference affected groove ratings significantly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Groove in drum patterns as a function of both rhythmic properties and listeners’ attitudes

et al. 2018

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Music psychology defines groove as humans’ pleasureable urge to move their body in synchrony with music. Past research has found that rhythmic syncopation, event density, beat salience, and rhythmic variability are positively associated with groove. This exploratory study investigates the groove effect of 248 reconstructed drum patterns from different popular music styles (pop, rock, funk, heavy metal, rock’n’roll, hip hop, soul, R&B). It aims at identifying factors that might be relevant for groove and worth investigating in a controlled setting in the future. Drum patterns of eight bars duration, chosen from 248 popular music tracks, have been transcribed and audio reconstructions have been created on the basis of sound samples. During an online listening experiment, 665 participants rated the reconstructions a total of 8,329 times using a groove questionnaire. Results show that, among 15 tested variables, syncopation (R2 = 0.010) and event density (R2 = 0.011) were positively associated with the groove ratings. These effects were stronger in participants who were music professionals, compared to amateur musicians or mere listeners. A categorisation of the stimuli according to structural aspects was also associated with groove (R2 = 0.018). Beat salience, residual microtiming and rhythmic variability showed no effect on the groove ratings. Participants’ familiarity with a drum pattern had a positive influence on the groove ratings (η2 = 0.051). The largest isolated effect was measured for participants’ style bias (R2 = 0.123): groove ratings tended to be high if participants had the impression that the drum pattern belonged to a style they liked. Combined, the effects of style bias and familiarity (R2 = 0.152) exceeded the other effects as predictors for groove by a wide margin. We conclude that listeners’ taste, musical biographies and expertise have a strong effect on their groove experience. This motivates groove research not to focus on the music alone, but to take the listeners into account as well.

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“…Electronic dance music (EDM), which is commonly played during dance events, is quantised. In EDM, other musical properties like syncopation or timbre variations were found to have a positive effect on the motivation of listeners to move or dance to the music (Wesolowski & Hofmann, 2016 ; Witek, Clarke, Wallentin, Kringelbach, & Vuust, 2014 ). Timbre variations and syncopation can also be found in jazz performances, and today listeners are used to dancing to quantised music.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Tight-interlocked Rhythm Section: Production and Perception of Synchronisation in Jazz Trio Performance

Hofmann

Wesolowski

Goebl

2017

Journal of New Music Research

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This study investigates the production and perception of timing, synchronisation and dynamics in jazz trio performances. In a production experiment, six trio combinations of one saxophonist, two bassists, and three drummers were recorded while they performed three popular jazz songs. Onset timing and dynamics of each performer were extracted and analysed. Results showed that the tempo was significantly influenced by the timing of the drummers and all performers showed higher temporal precision on the backbeats. The drummers demonstrated individual swing-ratios, accentuations of beats and intrapersonal asynchronies between simultaneous hi-hat and ride cymbal onsets, which resulted in a hi-hat played 2–26 ms ahead of the pulse of the music. In a subsequent perception test, participants () rated 12 excerpts of the jazz recordings. They selected their preferred version from a pool of stimuli containing the original version, but also manipulations with artificially increased or reduced asynchronies. Stimuli with reduced asynchronies smaller than 19 ms were preferred by the listeners over the original or the fully quantised timing. This suggests that listeners endorse a ‘tight-interlocked’ jazz rhythm section, with asynchronies smaller than the perceptual threshold (temporal masking), but with natural timing variabilities that makes it distinguishable from a computer-generated playback.

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There’s More to Groove than Bass in Electronic Dance Music: Why Some People Won’t Dance to Techno

Cited by 20 publications

References 41 publications

Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds

Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds

Groove in drum patterns as a function of both rhythmic properties and listeners’ attitudes

The Tight-interlocked Rhythm Section: Production and Perception of Synchronisation in Jazz Trio Performance

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