There’s more to timing than time: P-centers, beat bins and groove in musical microrhythm

How does the dynamic shape of a sound affect its perceived microtiming? In the TIME project, we studied basic aspects of musical microrhythm, exploring both stimulus features and the participants’ enculturated expertise via perception experiments, observational studies of how musicians produce particular microrhythms, and ethnographic studies of musicians’ descriptions of microrhythm. Collectively, we show that altering the microstructure of a sound (“what” the sound is) changes its perceived temporal location (“when” it occurs). Specifically, there are systematic effects of core acoustic factors (duration, attack) on perceived timing. Microrhythmic features in longer and more complex sounds can also give rise to different perceptions of the same sound. Our results shed light on conflicting results regarding the effect of microtiming on the “grooviness” of a rhythm.