External speakers: Anne Danielsen. Microrhythmic Flexibility: Musical, cultural, and psychoacoustic perspectives

What: Microrhythm and Groove: Temporal Structures and Perceptual Mechanisms

Where: BCBL Auditorium and Auditorium zoom room (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Anne Danielsen. PhD, Professor; Deputy director, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion; Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Norway

When:  Thursday,  Mar 5th at 12:00 PM noon.

Humans can achieve millisecond-level temporal precision but also adapt their timing to variable or noisy signals. Music is a useful field for studying this flexibility because it both strives for optimal timing and illustrates wide stylistic differences in what constitutes such “correct” timing. In this talk, I present research on how a sound’s acoustic microstructure, its sonic and musical context, and listeners’ enculturation and training influence perception and synchronization. Key questions are: How does a sound’s shape affect perceived event timing and synchronization variability? How do the surrounding musical sounds and rhythmic context influence these effects? And, ultimately, how does long-term exposure and training in a particular musical style modulate sensitivity and flexibility at this millisecond scale?