95

On measuring and interpreting microtiming

MARC-ANTOINE CAMP, LORENZ KILCHENMANN, THOMAS VOLKEN,

OLIVIER SENN

Emotions, physical movements, and interactions of participants in a musical situa-

tion interrelate with microtemporal structures of sounds. When performing musical
phrases and patterns, we arrange sounds along metrical frames, but usually with
considerable microtemporal variability. A jazz drummer may place his ride strokes
before the walking bass; the pianist models the phrases of a 19!h century European
composition by agogic conventions; crooners let their voices flow over the contrast-
ing rhythmic accompaniment. Such microtiming has received considerable attention
by music researchers and has been acoustically described by. the aid of visual sound
representations -1 However, there is a lack of comprehension regarding the perceptual
dimension of musical timing. Despite attempts to formulate psychoacoustic models
for the temporal perception of acoustic stimuli; we still do not know how to deal
with microtemporal variability in combinations of musical sounds with different
acoustical properties, e.g. with short and long onset rise times.
The physical onset of a sound, the moment in which its amplitude envelope starts
rising above the noise floor, does not equal the moment we perceive the sound. If
we align the physical onset of a percussion sound (whose maximum amplitude level
is reached within one millisecond) with the physical onset of a bowed string sound
(having an onset rise time of.several centiseconds), the sounds will not necessarily
be judged perceptually as synchronous. On the contrary, aligning dissimilar sounds
by their physical onsets can lead to the perception of asynchrony. To be able to
quantify the temporal relation of sounds precisely as they are perceived, a range
of questions must be answered, among them the issue of the acoustical conditions
of auditory synchronicity. Answers have been given from several disciplines. Psy-
choacousticians, linguists, neuroscientists, ethnomusicologists, music researchers,
sound engineers, and computer scientists have directly and indirectly contributed to
the complex question of microtemporal perception. This paper provides an overview
of the current research and a report on an experiment with twelve synchronization
tasks, preceded by three conceptual remarks.
96
Concepts
Musical synchronicity
Music studies dealing with synchronicity of sounds are outweighed by experiments
concerning asynchronies. Researchers have measured differences between tones on
the same metrical time (mainly of pianists) ranging from 30 ms to 90 ms.2 It has been
suggested that, in musical performances, acoustical asynchronies between voices
function as a means of expression and transparency. Musicians highlight voices
or structurally important notes by playing them with higher intensity and slightly
displaced from notes of other voices. As music listeners we assign such acoustically
displaced tones to the same time point in the metrical structure.
For the purpose of this study, two musical sounds are defined as being synchro-
nous in perception when listeners are not capable of saying whether one starts earlier
than the other. We hypothesize that musical synchronicity can be described as,the
coincidence of two sounds' perceptual moments of occurrence.
Perceptual moments of occurrence
The perceptual moment of occurrence (PMO) of a sound has been defined as its
center and as the relevant point in time of its synchronization with other sounds. The
concept was developed first in linguistics. The "perceptual center" ("p-center") of
a syllable (Morton et al. 1976) is not located at the syllable's beginning. Rather, it
is shifted from the physical onset of the prevocalic consonant toward the following
vowel by up to several centiseconds.3 Concerning sung language, it has been shown
that pianists synchronize .their playing to coincide with the beginning' of singers'
vowels, and not with the prevocalic consonants (Sundberg and Bauer-Huppmann
2007). Several factors have been found to determine the time location of the p-
center, both in speech and in synthetic non-speech sounds.4
Whereas in speech phonetic structure and its acoustical realization influence the
p-center location (Cooper et al. 1986), musical sounds have to be dealt with in their
own way. John W. Gordon conducted the only experiments so far on the PMO of
musical sounds (Gordon 1987). Gordon (1987:88) used a concept analogous to the
p-center, called the "perceptual attack time," which he defined as "the time a tone's
moment of attack or rhythmic emphasis is perceived."
Gordon's results will be discussed below. Here it is important to note that refer-
ences to Gordon's study and an inter-subjectively founded definition of sounds'
PMOs are mostly absent in studies measuring and analyzing microtemporal struc-
tures in music.5 Instead, researchers have chosen diverging methods to define and
measure the onsets of sounds. In a study on timing in Louis Armstrong's solos, "all
onset times were selected to be positive-going zero crossings at the points where
the waveforms began to be discernibly differentiable from the background noise"
97
(Collier and Collier 2002:467). In another study, analyzing rubato in jazz music,
the "attack point" of each tone was detected by the author by ear and eyes at "the
amplitude zero-crossing most immediately preceding the beginning of the (quasi-)
periodic portion of the tone," taking the average of three measurements some weeks
apart (Ashley 2002:315). A further jazz study defines the perceptual "tone onset"
as "the moment in time when the amplitude of a tone reached a level approximately
15% below its maximum amplitude" (Rose 1989:6).
These approaches to quantifying microtemporal variability in music are forcedly
pragmatic, since there is no satisfactory model to predict the PMO of a musical
tone (Kopiez 2005:470f.). We only know from previous studies on the p-center of
syllables and the perceptual attack time of musical.sounds that a sound's PMO is
located at a time point somewhere between its physical onset and the maximum of
its amplitude envelope.
Validity of experimental design
In dealing with the questions on sounds' PMO, the choice of an appropriate experi-
mental design is decisive in gaining relevant data. In psychoacoustical experiments,
researchers usually split the complex realities of sounds into components to reveal
how auditory stimuli are processed. Using sinusoid sounds or noise bursts with linear
amplitude envelopes for listening experiments, single factors influencing the loca-
tion of PMO are controllable. But as these synthetic sounds, isolated from musical
phrases and patterns, are not part of our common auditory and musical experience,
one may question whether the results of such analytical fractionation can be trans-
ferred and applied to complex musical contexts (Bregman 1993; Langner and Goebl
2003:69; Waadeland 2001:24).
For the experiment reported here, real instrumental stimuliwith their non-linear
amplitude envelopes and rich spectral shapeswere used. Participants, all of whom
had professional musical training, had to synchronize these stimuli with clicks, as-
suming that metronome click trains are used in daily exercise and studio recording
and can therefore be considered part of the participants' habitual auditory experi-
ence. Contrary to our claim for closeness to musical reality, we presented tones
outside of a musical context as isolated stimuli, inducing subjects to a constrained
analytical focus on single sounds. We thereby followed an experimental design
adopted by Gordon (1987), but we used a smaller amount of stimuli and invited a
larger number of participants. The focus of the current experiment was on the onset
rise time of sounds' amplitude envelopes, with the assumption that the synchronizing
of a click with an instrumental tone would indicate the PMO of that tone.
98 99

Method
Musicians
41 students from the Lucerne School of Music participated in the study as volun-
teers. They were recruited by an email call and paid for their participation (30 Swiss
Francs). One musician showed problems with the experimental procedure; data of
his experiment were not included in the analysis. Out of the 18 male and 22 female
students, there were six singers, four guitarists, four drummers, seven string players
(violin, viola, violoncello), eight brass players, eight pianists and three other instru-
mentalists. 27 students were in a Bachelor program, 13 in a Master program. Most
participants were in a performance program for. European Art Music (23) or for Jazz
(11); others were enrolled in the music pedagogy (3) and music theory programs (1).
The age range was 20 to 35. Participants had an average of 12.6 years' experience
on their principal instrument (standard deviation: 4.0 years) and 5.6 years' experi-
ence on a second instrument (standard deviation: 4.5 years).Two musicians reported
partial hearing loss; as their experimental results were within the standard deviation,
their data were included in the set for analysis.
Stimuli
Stimuli for the synchronization takes were a synthetic click and seven samples of in-
strumental tones (Table 1). The samples were taken from Vienna Symphonic Library
Solo Strings (violin sul tasto, viola arco, violoncello arco, contrabass pizzicato), Na-
tive Instruments Akoustik Piano (piano), Toontrack DFH Superior (Hi hat cymbals,
Ride cymbals). In order to level perceived loudness between all stimuli, the samples
were normalized using the Waves PAZ Analyzer in an A-weighted RMS setting.
Tab. 1: Stimuli used for the synchronization tasks
Equipment
A MacBook Pro Core 2 and the DAW Motu Digital Performer 6 were used. D/A
converter was a Metric Halo 2882. Participants heard the stimuli with Sony MDR
7506 headphones.
Design and procedure
A participant sat in a comfortable chair at a quiet office in the Lucerne School of
Music. The purpose of the study was explained and participants were assured of the
anonymity of their individual results. The participant was asked to fill out a short
questionnaire providing some basic biographical information as a musician, includ-
ing musical preferences both in their own playing, and as music consumers. In each
task, participants were instructed to synchronize two sounds, so that these were
heard as musically synchronous. There was no time restriction for task solving, but
in the initial explanation participants were alerted to the possible effects of fatigue
over time for this special listening activity. To control for sequence effects, subjects
were randomly assigned to two different groups, which varied in the sequence of the
synchronization tasks performed. There was one test task, in which participants had
to synchronize a clarinet to a trumpet sound, followed by twelve synchronization
tasks used for analysis.
One member of the research team conducted the experiment, starting every task
and keeping a record of the results. Before every task, the participant was told which
instrumental sounds she or he had to synchronize. The two sounds were presented in
a loop of 4000 ms, appearing in their initial position with a randomized difference
of their physical onsets. The participant could shift one of the sounds ("movable
sound") back and forth in intervals of 20 and 1 ms by pressing the arrow keys on the
computer keyboard. When the participant heard the movable sound as synchronous
with the second one ("fixed sound"), she or he notified the researcher. Musicians had
no visual aids; some of them closed their eyes for concentration.

Pitch or frequency Peak of amplitude Total stimulus duration

range Hz envelope ms (rounded)
Time after noise floor Results
ms (onset rise time)
lj
Click not determinable 0.07 2 Results are shown in table 2. The average differences between the physical onsets of
Hi hat cymbals 0-22000 5.76 260 the synchronized sounds by all forty musicians range from -6.225 to 46.5 ms with
Ride cymbals 260-22000 1.77 4700 standard deviations ranging from 7.577 to 39.744 ms. The median values within the
Piano 234=b 27.71 2850
Contrabass pizzicato 77 = EHat 37.69 3950 distribution of results range from -7 to 46.5 ms.
Viola arco 441= a' 534.56 2700 The data were evaluated by several factorial repeated-measure analyses of vari-
Violoncello arco 330 = e 810.93 3170
Violin sul tasto 465=b' 1666.21 2630 ance. The sequence of the task had no influence on the results (F=2.84, p=0.09),
so that learning or fatigue effects could be excluded. Half of the participants solved
a single task in less than two minutes. The time spent for solving a task had no
 Tab. 2: Results of the twelve synchronizing tasks, showing median and mean difference time between the physical onsets of the sounds
for the forty participants, as well as the standard deviation.
Task Movable sound Fixed sound Difference of the sounds' Standard
physical onset in synchro- deviation ms
nized position ms
Median Mean
I Click Ride 1 0.625 8.995
2 Piano Violin sul tasto 46.5 46.5 39.744
3 Click Viola arco 26.5 25.45 20.283
4 Contrabass pizzicato Piano 4 6 13.199
5 Click Contrabass pizzicato -2.5 -1.3 12.298
6 Click Piano -4.5 -4.275 8.776
7 Ride Contrabass pizzicato -3 -3.9 11.575
8 Click Violoncello arco 29.5 30.975 24.870
9 Hi hat Ride -5 -6.225 7.577
10 Click Violin sul tasto 33 34.575 26.415
11 Violoncello arco Viola arco -7 -3.2 22.813
12 Click Hi hat 2 1.65 8.932
1.6,9,12 Synchronization of sounds with short onset time -1 -2.056 9.125
2,3,8,10 Synchronization of sounds with short and long onset times 31.5 34.375 29.515
1-12 Total values of synchronization tasks 3 10.573 26.191

Tab. 3: Overview on the synchronization values from different groups of musicians for all the twelve tasks and for task 11
(Violoncello arco - Viola arco).

Musicians Data task 1-12 Data task 11

Main instru^ Mean difference physical Mean difference physical
ment Number of participants
ts onset in synchronized Standard deviation onset in synchronized Standard deviation
position ms position ms
Singers 6 112.72 27.57 -14.833 30.142
Guitarists 4 -0.25 16.40 -12.75 20.775
Drummers 4 11.58 20.71 2.5 36.051
Strings 7 14.15 34.05 -1.143 12.575
Brass 8 11.03 25.69 1.875 23.314
Pianists 8 9.03 24.99 -3.375 21.902
others 3 13.89 21.26 7.333 16.921
Total 40 10.57 26.19 -3.2 22.813
102
statistically significant impact on the results; participants taking more time did not
systematically differ from those taking less time (F=1.77, p=0.18). No influence
could be detected concerning the time of day when the experiment took place; there
were no significant differences between the average responses of all tasks from mu-
sicians participating in the morning and those in the afternoon (F=0.95, p=0.33).
Also, there were no significant differences between Bachelor and Master program
students (F=0.09, p=0.77). Likewise, the number of years a participant had played
his main instrument had no significant influence on the results (F=0.16, p = 0.69).
While female and male participants performed significantly different on the aver-
age of all tasks (F=6.21,p<0.05), the gender difference accounted for only 0.7%
of the explained variance and therefore can be considered to have had only a very
weak effect. In sharp contrast, the varying test results between the different stimuli
combinations of the twelve tasks accounted for at least 45% of the explained vari-
ance in all models. Hence, the specific synchronization task at hand is the single most
important factor explaining the observed differences between the physical onsets of
the synchronized sounds.
Variations in results between groups of musicians playing the same instrument
(respectively the same class of instruments) were explored (table 3). Although the
small and unequal number of participants in each group precludes the drawing of
any firm conclusions, results point to possible significant differences of expertise
between the instrumentalists (F = 3.48, p < 0.01). The group of guitarists, whose re-
sults differed significantly from those attained by other groups (t=-3.33, p<0.01),
shows the smallest standard deviation averaged over all tasks (16.4 ms), whereas the
string group shows the highest standard deviation (34.05 ms). Interestingly, this high
standard deviation of the strings does not apply to task 11, in which bowed string
tones had to be synchronized. The seven string players synchronized the physical
onsets of these two similar sounds with the lowest standard deviation and with a
difference value of physical onsets of 2.1 ms, which was the second closestafter
the pianiststo the mean difference of onsets for all participants.
'Discussion
The current experiment was designed around a set of three assumptions. First, that
the onset rise time of the amplitude envelope is a main determining factor for a
sound's PMO. Second, the PMO of a sound occurs before the amplitude envelope
reaches its maximum level. Third, by synchronizing a click to an instrumental
sound, the time difference of physical onsets would determine the PMO of that
instrumental sound.
103
Short onset rise times
The first and second assumptions are confirmed by the results of task 1, in which the
click (with an onset rise time of 0.07 ms) had to be synchronized with a ride stimulus
(with an onset rise time of 1.77 ms). The synchronizing of these two sounds with
very short onset times and different durations lead to a mean of 0.625 ms between
physical onsets. Likewise, the mean difference of physical onsets of-2.1 ms from all
tasks with sounds of short rise time supports our hypotheses. A fine-timed auditory
perception system enables humansunder special circumstancesto perceive asyn-
chronies of at least 2 ms between the physical onsets of musical tones. The present
results are in accordance with previous findings (see Reuter 1995:36).
Masking
Discussion is required for the negative mean values of physical onset differences
in task 5 to 7 (table 2). In these tasks, participants placed a sound with short onset
rise time before a sound with a long onset rise time. The synchronizing of a ride to
a contrabass pizzicato sound, for example, resulted in a mean difference of physical
onset of 3.9 ms, the ride sound's PMO placed slightly before the physical onset of the
contrabass. According to our third hypothesis, the contrabass' PMO lies before it is
even acoustically present. These odd results are best explained by the possibility that
some results of the synchronization tasks were influenced by perceptual limitations
in the judgment of temporal order (Pastore and Farrington 1996), as participants oc-
casionally commented on difficulties in deciding which of two synchronized sounds
they heard first. The main influence for the negative values, however, is likely to
arise from temporal masking effects. Masking has also been reported by Gordon
(1987:93f.) in his experiment, where masking caused participants not to synchronize
sounds, but rather to "fuse" them. In the concerned tasks 5 and 7 of our experiment
this fusing may be explained as the strategy of participants to avoid masking by the
contrabass sound with its high intensity (see Hove et al. 2007:706). By positioning
click and ride sounds slightly before the contrabass sound, no masking effects af-
fected their audibility.
Cross checking results
Related to our third hypothesis, a comparison between values obtained in synchro-
nization tasks with two instrumental sounds and values from tasks with clicks al-
lows a cross checking of the results. If all results were generally valid, the sounds'
PMO should coincide in different combinations. For instance, the result from task
11 (Violoncello arco as movable sound, Viola arco as fixed sound) should ideally
equal the positive difference of values from task 8 (Click as movable sound, Vio-
loncello arco as fixed sound) and task 3 (Click as movable sound, Viola arco as
fixed sound). By subtracting the higher from the lower value of tasks 8 and 3, and by
104 105

W IT, Ifl VI V) M-a vi (^ N (^ cO

o m01^QOift
comparing this difference with the value from task 11, we get an error divergence c n
Nc oN\ cO;
O i> r^j 0(
N ^; -^
3 oc oo so c-i o <N -ci
of less than 9 ms. 01 S
Table 4 gives the values for all combination tasks with instrumental sounds in P4 (N
cp-l -J'j
comparison with calculated values from click tasks. These calculated values (II) are v
oc vt viesinesincs
i r~- 3
a* E
within the range of standard deviation of the synchronization task with the two in- E
3 S 5= O i
strumental sounds (I). Divergences between the two values (III) are relatively small, 5U .y
5 o
ranging from 3.0 to 8.7 ms. ca u
5s IO Vl O Vl VI
"w >1
rr
r i r-
" _: <N -*
Distribution of results s i a.
.,,o
The musicians' responses follow a unimodal distribution in all the tasks, contrary to E 5u o
the data obtained by Gordon who reports bimodal distributions (Gordon 1987:92- O^O VI - ^ a
100). However, the present data demonstrates marked differences in skewhess, a u
e V
kurtosis, and dispersion (figure 1).
It is notable that in tasks with clicks as movable sounds, the greater the fixed 1 a ',t- N >0 t- V2
sound's onset rise time, the higher, the distribution of the results, measured as stand- 1 3 " T O O s F t^ io o\ sD W
ard deviation (table 5 and figure 2). This may not apply for the group of sounds o r~. r^ h a vi a N
USE a o -' in t-^ r-^ TT 6 vd
with short onsets, but holds for sounds with onset rise times above the piano sound iO ^ - N M VI OO ^o
S ^3
o0n

8
r- i vivi5r-m
OOOOO
VI ^OMTiN
eS = Tf D ono m
a\ M
r~ m
Mvo

a

.5 -P 1.1B -* o> HI r- r*>

g s 3 r-; ; VI vi oq
3> G
d> c*"i r
N^ ts
c -Nvovinooo
1 ^ X
<Uow
=1
"go fc-
S3 a
b ><;
o a.
_ ! O tc
s
~5 e rt ^
9 s -o H
> U>
Ci, ^ c
e

Fig. 1: Density distribution (histogram) and functions for each task related to the physical
onset differences in ms (abscissa) and a normalized probability density scale (ordinate).
to O o= 21,
Grey bars represent empirical datafromour test sample. The curve represents the kernel UaI> Q p aw a
vS - ra c _
Xi
density function which is a non-parametric way of estimating (extrapolating) the probabil-
ity density function for the entire population. cs Tt r- a\ oon
106
2000 ms
Fig. 2: Correlation between sounds' onset rise time (abscissa) and standard deviation of
physical onsets by synchronizing a click to sounds (ordinate).
Amotu
ild* (dBI
OO
. O-i
Fig.3: Visualization of the synchronization task 10 (Click- Violin sul tasto) by the Lucerne
Audio Recording Analyzer LARA (www.hslu.ch/lara). The circles on the amplitude enve-
lope (computed using the RMS of a non-overlapping window ofl ms) show the position-
ing of clicks by the forty participants in our experiment. Multiple values are indicated by
numbers, the mean value by thefilledcircle. The limits of the standard deviation are given
by vertical lines.
of 27 ms. The overall bivariate correlation between sounds' onset rise time and
standard deviation of physical onsets amounts to r = 0.92 and is highly significant
(p< 0.001).
Slowly rising sounds and especially the extreme appearance as "smooth rhythms"
with blurred onset and offsets (Gjerdingen 1993) need special attention when ad-
107
dressing the question of temporal perception. Participants of our experiment reported
difficulties in synchronizing a click and a Violin sul tasto sound with its continuously
increasing and meandering rise of the amplitude envelope, which is expressed in the
highest standard deviation of the participants' responses (figure 3). Differences in
onset characteristics also caused difficulties in the experiment conducted by Gordon,
where participants had to synchronize a percussion soundhaving an onset rise time
of less than 10 mswith instrumental sounds of 45 ms and more onset rise time
(Gordon 1987:94).
The difficulty in identifying a PMO in sounds with slowly rising amplitude en-
velopes may be related to past findings on the discrimination of rise time, being best
at the shortest rise times and decreasing with increasing rise time.6 Interpreting the
findings from a musical perspective, the standard deviation may be a value for the
acoustic ambiguousness in synchronizing musical sounds: the longer a sound's onset
rise time, the less precise the synchronization in acoustical terms. As the comments
given by participants indicate, the synchronization of the click with a violin sul tasto
sound with its long onset rise time was not so much solved as a perception task, but
rather, as an exercise of microtemporal aesthetic choice.
Conclusion
The data, obtained in an experimental condition of focused listening, provides evi-
dence that the onset rise time of a musical sound is an important factor for musicians
in determining its PMO, and hence in synchronizing musical sounds. This can be
related to results from neuroscientific experiments in which differentiated cortical
responses have been observed for stimuli with differing onset rise times (Thompson
et al. 2009). Moreover, the present findings show that the longer a sound's onset rise
time, the less agreement on its PMO. In interpreting measurements of microtemporal
music structures with sounds of long onset rise times, this range of PMO music be
taken into consideration.
Acknowledgements
Our research was supported by research funds from Lucerne University of Applied
Sciences and Arts (08-478). We would like to thank the music students at Lucerne
School of Music for their participation in this research project. A special thank you
goes to Claudia Emmenegger for her thoughtful suggestions on various stages of
our research.
108
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Notes
1 see Auhagen 2008; Gabrielsson 1999; Keil 1995; Pfleiderer 2006; Repp 1997 for overviews.
2 Bjurling 2007; Friberg and Sundstrom 2002; Gerischer 2003; Goebl 2001; Goebl and Palmer 2009;
Goebl and Parncutt 2002; Palmer 1989; Rasch 1978,1979; Repp 1996; Senn et al. 2009; Shaffer
19841.
3 Fowler 1979; Fox and Lehiste 1987; Harsin 1997; Howell 1988; Marcus 1981; Pompino-Marschall
1989; Rapp-Holmgren 1971; Scott 1998.
4 Hove et al. 2007; Plaisier 2007; Schiitte 1978; Terhardt and Schiitte 1976; Vos and Rasch 1981;
Vosetal. 1995:1026f.
5 for example Men 1995: 57; Benadon 2006:76,2009:5; Progler 1995:32-46.
6 Gordon 1987:88-92; Reuter 1995:33f.; Rosen and Howell 1981; van Heuven and van den Broecke
1979.