Aesthetics of musical timing: Culture and expertise affect preferences for isochrony but not synchrony

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105205
• Publication Date: 2022-06-16T23:33:19Z
• Authors: Kelly Jakubowski; Rainer Polak; Martín Rocamora; Luis Jure; Nori Jacoby
• Keywords: Affect; Music psychology

Expressive communication in the arts often involves deviations from stylistic norms, which can increase aesthetic evaluation of an artwork or performance. The detection and appreciation such expressive may be amplified by cultural familiarity expertise observer. One form music is playing "out time," including asynchrony (deviations synchrony between different instruments) non-isochrony equal spacing subsequent note onsets metric units). As previous research has provided somewhat conflicting perspectives on degree to isochrony are aesthetically relevant, we aimed shed new light this topic accounting for effects listeners' expertise. We manipulated (a)synchrony (non-)isochrony separately excerpts three groove-based musical styles (jazz, candombe, jembe), using timings real performances. recruited musician non-musician participants (N = 176) countries (UK, Uruguay, Mali), selected vary their prior experience hearing performing these styles. Participants completed both preference rating task a perceptual discrimination stimuli. Our results indicate overall toward styles, but culturally contingent, expertise-dependent preferences isochrony. This suggests that temporal processing relies mechanisms dependence low-level high-level perception, emphasizes role shaping preferences.