Time in Jazz

Doffman, Mark

doi:10.4324/9781315315805-16

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Rather, it led scholars to the opposite conclusion, namely that music should be played with as little microtiming as possible in order to have high groove—this opinion has been most prominently voiced by Merker ( 2014 ). This conclusion, however, is at odds with the firm belief of many musicians that microtemporal aspects are crucial for groove (Berliner, 1994 ; Monson, 1996 ; Doffman, 2008 ) and with the findings of Hove et al ( 2007 ) that the presence of certain kinds of microtiming improves rhythmic precision in musicians.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…The hypothesis that microtiming is essential for triggering groove originated in Charles Keil's Theory of Participatory Discrepancies or PD Theory (Keil, 1987 , 1995 , 2010 ). It has considerable support among musicians (Berliner, 1994 ; Monson, 1996 ; Doffman, 2008 ). The empirical evidence concerning the relevance of microtiming for groove, however, has been inconclusive so far: some studies found no evidence that microtiming influences groove (Butterfield, 2010 ; Madison et al, 2011 ; Madison and Sioros, 2014 ), others found that microtiming is detrimental to groove (Davies et al, 2013 ; Frühauf et al, 2013 ; Matsushita and Nomura, 2016 ); yet others found that microtiming patterns arising in competent performance do not affect groove negatively, but if the patterns are exaggerated in magnitude, the groove experience decreases (Kilchenmann and Senn, 2015 ; Senn et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Rhythmic Density Affects Listeners' Emotional Response to Microtiming

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Microtiming has been assumed to be vital for the experience of groove, but past research presented conflicting results: some studies found that microtiming is irrelevant for groove, others reported that microtiming has a detrimental effect on the groove experience, yet others described circumstances under which microtiming has no negative impact on groove. The three studies in this paper aim at explaining some of these discrepancies by clarifying to what extent listeners' emotional responses to microtiming depend on the distribution of microtiming deviations across instrumental parts (voicing) or other moderating factors like tempo or rhythmic density. The studies use data from two listening experiments involving expert bass and drums duo recordings in swing and funk style. – Study A investigates the effect of fixed time displacements within and between the parts played by different musicians. Listeners (n = 160) reacted negatively to irregularities within the drum track, but the mutual displacement of bass vs. drums did not have an effect.– Study B develops three metrics to calculate the average microtiming magnitude in a musical excerpt. The experiment showed that listeners' (n = 160) emotional responses to expert performance microtiming aligned with each other across styles, when microtiming magnitude was adjusted for rhythmic density. This indicates that rhythmic density is a unifying moderator for listeners' emotional response to microtiming in swing and funk.– Study C used the data from both experiments in order to compare the effect of fixed microtiming displacements (from Study A) with scaled versions of the originally performed microtiming patterns (from Study B). It showed that fixed snare drum displacements irritated expert listeners more than the more flexible deviations occurring in the original performances. This provides some evidence that listeners' emotional response to microtiming deviations not only depends on the magnitude of the deviations, but also on the kind and origin of the microtiming patterns (fixed lab displacements vs. flexible performance microtiming).

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhythmic Density Affects Listeners' Emotional Response to Microtiming

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The theory is substantially based on the expertise of professional musicians, and it appears to have a considerable number of followers within this population. This is confirmed in the scholarly literature (Berliner, 1994 ; Monson, 1996 ; Greenwald, 2002 ; Doffman, 2008 ) and in magazines on jazz or popular music (Hoinkis, 2013 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

The Effect of Expert Performance Microtiming on Listeners' Experience of Groove in Swing or Funk Music

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study tested the influence of expert performance microtiming on listeners' experience of groove. Two professional rhythm section performances (bass/drums) in swing and funk style were recorded, and the performances' original microtemporal deviations from a regular metronomic grid were scaled to several levels of magnitude. Music expert (n = 79) and non-expert (n = 81) listeners rated the groove qualities of stimuli using a newly developed questionnaire that measures three dimensions of the groove experience (Entrainment, Enjoyment, and the absence of Irritation). Findings show that music expert listeners were more sensitive to microtiming manipulations than non-experts. Across both expertise groups and for both styles, groove ratings were high for microtiming magnitudes equal or smaller than those originally performed and decreased for exaggerated microtiming magnitudes. In particular, both the fully quantized music and the music with the originally performed microtiming pattern were rated equally high on groove. This means that neither the claims of PD theory (that microtiming deviations are necessary for groove) nor the opposing exactitude hypothesis (that microtiming deviations are detrimental to groove) were supported by the data.

show abstract

“…It may refer to a repeated pattern that represents the basis of a piece (“a groove,” Zbikowski, 2004). It may also denote the temporal interaction and effortless synchronized performance within a band (“to groove,” Berliner, 1994, p. 388; Keil, 1995; Doffman, 2008, p. 11; Hosken, 2018), or the power of music to provoke body movement in listeners (Roholt, 2014, p. 85).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%