Timbral Relationships and Microrhythmic Tension Shaping the Groove Experience Through Sound

• Published in: Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction pp. 85 - 102
• Main Author: Bjerke, Kristoffer Yddal
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 2010
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Snare Drum; groove experience; Bass Drum; Auditory Stream; Ecological Perceptual Theory; artist D'Angelo; Timbral Shaping; Straight Quavers; Vice Versa; Lower Frequency Area; Auditory Stream Segregation; Intensity Graph; Rhythmic Tension; IOI; Fourth Quaver; microrhythmic tension; sonograms; Spectral Content; Bass Guitar; African-American hip-hop music; Bass Synth; Bass Drum Sound; Pop Stars; Electric Circus; Played Back; album Voodoo; Amplitude Graph; UK Garage; Sixth Quaver; The Hustle
• ISBN: 1409403408; 9781409403401; 1138246840; 9781138246843
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315596983-7

The author discusses the ways in which timbral relationships affect the experience of microtemporal distance between musical events. His music-analytic point of departure will be African-American hip-hop music, a groove-based genre that relies to a significant extent upon microrhythmic tension and originates in a cultural tradition characterized by its play with expectations. In his Auditory Scene Analysis, Bregman defines perception as 'the process of using the information provided by our senses to form mental representations of the world around us'. Bregman proposes that timbre affects grouping so that sounds with a similar timbre will be grouped as one auditory stream. The author explore the role of timbre in this process through a comparative analysis of 'The Hustle' from the album Electric Circus by the hip-hop artist Common and 'Untitled (How Does It Feel)' from the album Voodoo by the neo-soul/contemporary r&b artist D'Angelo. Sonograms are seldom used in analyses of microrhythm. This chapter discusses some of Tricky's music across the period from 1994 to 1998, within the framework of ecological perceptual theory and critical theory, and is concerned with aspects of corporeality and autonomy in music. The concept of affordance encapsulates much of the sense of 'function' and 'meaning', but uses both in a manner that is firmly based in action in what an organism can do with an object or event. Music engages the body in a variety of ways, and a variety of psychological frameworks have been suggested to account for listeners' bodily responses to music. 3D's vocal style is much more rhythmically precise than Tricky's, organized tightly around the divisions of the 80 bpm pulse. In a literal sense, autonomy means self-government or self-determination, and as applied to music the term denotes a system that operates according to self-sufficient internal principles a kind of idealized and hermetic musical formalism at its limits.