Twirling Triplets: The Qualia of Rotation and Musical Rhythm
Music & Science May 15, 2019 Niels Chr. Hansen, David Huron
Triplet rhythms and other fast, repeated patterns with stepwise pitch movement are associated with sensations of rotation in listeners. An analysis of crowd-sourced musical excerpts found that compound meters are more common in such music than in Western music generally. An Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds (ETRoS) proposes that loudness fluctuations in music mimic the acoustic patterns of rotating sound sources. Two experiments showed that perceived rotation increases with tempo and is weak for binary rhythms. Patterns with loudness stress matching rotating trajectories were rated as more rotating than typical Western patterns, but only when pitch also moved. The results offer moderate support for an acoustic-ecological explanation.