See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/249979718

Ambiguity in Tempo Perception: What Draws Listeners to Different Metrical

Levels?

Article  in  Music Perception · December 2006

DOI: 10.1525/mp.2006.24.2.155

CITATIONS READS

74 610

2 authors:

Martin Franciscus McKinney Dirk Moelants

Starkey Hearing Technologies Ghent University
59 PUBLICATIONS   1,199 CITATIONS    82 PUBLICATIONS   1,672 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Martin Franciscus McKinney on 13 April 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Ambiguity in Tempo Perception: What Draws Listeners to Different Metrical Levels?
Author(s): Martin F. McKinney and Dirk Moelants
Source: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2 (December 2006), pp.
155-166
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mp.2006.24.2.155 .
Accessed: 10/11/2015 20:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music
Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

A MBIGUITY IN T EMPO P ERCEPTION : W HAT D RAWS
L ISTENERS TO D IFFERENT M ETRICAL L EVELS ?
M ARTIN F. M C K INNEY
Digital Signal Processing, Philips Research
Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
D IRK M OELANTS
IPEM-Dept. of Musicology, Ghent University, Belgium
THE DISTRIBUTION OF LISTENERS ’ perceived tempi
across large collections of music has been modeled previ-
ously by a resonance function with a peak near the “pre-
ferred tempo” of 120 beats per minute (BPM) [Van
Noorden and Moelants, J. New Music Res., 28, 43–66].
Here, through a series of experiments in which listeners
were asked to tap to the most salient pulse of musical
excerpts, we examined distributions of tapped tempi from
single musical excerpts to see if the global resonance of
preferred tempo is dependent on musical content. Results
show that for some musical excerpts, the distribution of
perceived tempi conforms to the global resonant form in
that metrical levels with tempi near 120 BPM were per-
ceived as most salient, while for other excerpts the most
saliently perceived tempo sat well above or below 120
BPM. We then used a model, which quantifies relative
strengths of periodicities in the audio signal, to demon-
strate that deviations from the “preferred tempo” can be
partially explained by dynamic rhythmic accents drawing
listeners to tempi away from the resonance.
Received March 17, 2006, accepted August 31, 2006
Key words: perceptual tempo, beat induction, metric
ambiguity, dynamic accents
I
T IS WELL KNOWN THAT LISTENERS TEND to perceive
the tempo of music to fall in the range between 100
and 140 beats per minute (BPM) (Fraisse, 1982;
Moelants, 2002). We can extend this “preferred tempo”
range slightly, from 80 to 160 BPM (Moelants, 2002), to
define a preferred “tempo-octave,” in which the tempo of
every piece of music should be interpretable. It is clear,
Music Perception VOLUME 24, ISSUE 2, PP. 155–166, ISSN 0730-7829, ELECTRONIC
RIGHTS RESERVED. PLEASE DIRECT ALL REQUESTS FOR PERMISSION TO PHOTOCOPY OR REPRODUCE ARTICLE CONTENT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS ’ S
RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS WEBSITE , HTTP :// WWW. UCPRESSJOURNALS . COM / REPRINT I NFO. ASP.
This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Ambiguity in Tempo Perception 155
however, that for some pieces of music, the most salient
perceived tempo falls outside of this range. In these cases,
the most salient perceived tempo is typically a multiple or
divisor of a tempo in the preferred range, corresponding
to a metrical level outside of the preferred tempo zone.
Experiments with artificial stimuli (e.g., Handel &
Oshinsky, 1981; Parncutt, 1994) show that when sub-
jects are asked to tap the beat of a rhythmic sequence,
the tempi of the tapped responses vary across subjects.
In some cases, two metrical levels appear equally salient,
while in other cases one level is clearly more salient.
The amount of perceptual ambiguity in the tempo of
the beat depends on the general presentation speed
of the sequences as well as on their structure (e.g., the
ratio between two components in a polyrhythm).
Although extensive research on this subject using real
musical excerpts is scarce, we can assume that similar
principles apply in the perception of tempo in music:
The tempo of some pieces is perceived relatively unam-
biguously, while for other pieces, different metrical levels
could serve equally well as the most salient tempo.
The ambiguity inherent in the perception of musical
tempo is an important aspect in the distinction between
notated tempo and perceptual (or perceived) tempo. By
perceptual tempo we mean the tempo of the most
saliently perceived pulse in the music, which is typically
measured by letting listeners move (tap) along to what
they consider the most salient pulse. There is only one
notated tempo for a given piece of music, while there may
be multiple (and equally plausible) perceptual tempi, each
corresponding to different metrical levels. The term tactus
is often used to describe the moderately paced pulse heard
in the music, typically between 40 and 160 BPM (Lerdahl &
Jackendoff, 1983), but this also differs from our definition
of perceptual tempo in that it has a fixed range.
Van Noorden and Moelants (1999) modeled tempo
preferences using a resonance curve with a natural fre-
quency around 2 Hz (120 BPM). Based on the responses
from an extended (
1,500 excerpts) listening test in
which subjects were asked to tap to the perceived pulse
of musical excerpts, they fit a resonance curve to a his-
togram of tapped tempi. This curve, which fit the data
ISSN 1533-8312 © 2006 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . ALL
DOI: MP.2006.24.2.155
156 M. F. McKinney and D. Moelants
very well (r
0.97), can be used as a model to predict
the distribution of perceived tempi for large collections
of music. While similar curves have been used in beat
detection models as a filter that amplifies the tempi in
the preferred tempo zone (Parncutt, 1994; Todd, 1999),
it is not clear whether a global fixed resonance curve
accurately describes the relative perceptual salience of
different metrical levels for individual musical excerpts,
regardless of their musical content. In other words, if an
excerpt has a metrical level whose tempo falls in the
middle of the resonance (
120 BPM), is that always the
most saliently perceived tempo? Or, if two metrical lev-
els have tempi that straddle the resonant frequency
evenly (e.g., 80 and 160 BPM), are those tempi always
perceived with similar salience?
We address these questions among others in the current
study through a large-scale tapping experiment that builds
on two previous pilot experiments, expanding the range of
musical styles, rhythms, and tempi (McKinney &
Moelants, 2004; Moelants & McKinney, 2004). We showed
previously that a resonance model of preferred tempo
seems to predict the population perception of tempo for
some individual musical excerpts but not for all. Data
from some excerpts deviate from a global fixed resonance
in that the most salient perceived tempi fall well above or
below the resonant tempo of 120 BPM. A likely explana-
tion for the deviations in the data is that different types of
rhythmic accents draw listeners to metrical levels outside
of the preferred tempo range. Previous studies on pulse
perception have shown that listeners can be drawn to dif-
ferent metric levels by perceptual accents on particular
beats, including dynamic, durational, and melodic accents
(Parncutt, 1994; Povel & Okkerman, 1981; Toiviainen &
Snyder, 2003). While these findings are likely to also be
applicable to musical audio, it has never been shown.
We also examine, in the current study, correlations
between musical genre and perceived tempo and between
subjects’ music training and perceived tempo. Van
Noorden and Moelants (1999) have previously shown
that the mean tapped tempo varies slightly as a function
of musical style. Further confirmation of this finding
would be useful as a step toward linking specific stylistic
aspects to perceived tempo. Other studies have shown
that musicians tend to tap slower than nonmusicians
when asked to tap the beat to music (Drake, Penel, &
Bigand, 2000); however, we have seen the opposite trend
in our pilot experiments. Further clarification of this
effect could contribute to a better understanding of the
cognitive processes involved in keeping time to music.
Finally, we attempt to model the effect of rhythmic
accents in the musical audio signal in order to predict, for
some excerpts, the second-order “deviation” from the
This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
distribution predicted by a global resonance model.
While it is relatively straightforward to systematically
manipulate artificial stimuli (e.g., pulse trains) to attain a
desired effect of perceptual accents, it is not clear whether
or not the relevant information on perceptual accents
can be readily extracted from a complex acoustic wave-
form. A method to extract relevant accent information in
order to better predict the relative salience of perceptual
tempi for all individual musical excerpts would be a boon
for systems that automatically extract tempo from musi-
cal audio signals. Previous attempts at automatic tempo
extraction (typically measured against notated tempo or
that annotated by a single person) have met with some
success but the most common error is a tempo octave
error (Alonso, David, & Richard, 2004; Goto & Muraoka,
1998; Klapuri, Eronen, & Astola, 2006; Scheirer, 1998). A
model that could predict the relative strength of tempi at
different metrical levels would be able to guide such sys-
tems to more accurately predict the perceived tempo.
Method
Experiment
The perceived tempo of 170 30-second musical excerpts1
was collected from 40 subjects.
PROCEDURE
Subjects were asked to tap to the most salient beat of the
music, that is, the regular pulse that they perceived as
most salient. The experiment was run on a personal com-
puter and subjects listened to the music over headphones
while tapping beats of their perceived tempo on the key-
board space bar (McKinney & Moelants, 2004; Moelants &
McKinney, 2004). The data was recorded in two separate
sessions using partially overlapping subject groups.
STIMULI
Session 1 Fifty musical excerpts were chosen to repre-
sent extreme tempo conditions. The 50 excerpts were
selected from a larger set of 100 fragments, collected by
6 musicology students on the criterion of having an
extremely slow or extremely fast tempo and keeping the
range of styles broad, with a preference for lesser-
known music. In a first stage the students tested each
other’s examples in a small-scale tapping experiment
and the selection of 50 pieces was made on the basis of
the results of this test. Included were pieces that yielded
1
Complete list available from the authors on request.

a uniform response (with at least 5 out of 6 students
tapping at the same metrical level) and those for which
the tapped tempo was found relatively far from pre-
ferred tempo (slower than 65 BPM or faster than 175
BPM).
Session 2 One hundred twenty music excerpts were cho-
sen to provide a representative view of the diversity of
music in the world. In addition to Western popular
music, we also included classical music from different
periods and a wide range of “world music,” extending
from Bollywood to Pygmee music and from Cuban Son
to Beijing opera.
The sum of the two experimental sessions gives us a
total of 170 excerpts, which can be grouped in 10 stylis-
tic categories (cf. Leman, Vermeulen, De Voogdt,
Moelants, & Lesaffre, 2005), each with a different
number of examples according to their diversity and
popularity (see Table 1). Additionally, we assured that
different meters were present in the stimulus set. About
80% of the stimuli were binary, most others were ternary,
and two examples of complex meters were included. For
both sessions, excerpts were chosen in which the tempo
was relatively stable and the meter and texture were rela-
tively homogenous. Both are necessary to avoid compli-
cations. If the tempo changes within the excerpt, it is
impossible to characterize the music with one single
tempo value and if there are strong changes of texture
within the fragment, listeners’ perception of tempo could
change somewhere in the middle of the excerpt.
SUBJECTS
Session 1 The 40 subjects in Session 1 were Ghent
University Musicology Department students and staff
members; 21 were male and 19 female, with a mean age
of 22 years. Music experience varied from none to
TABLE 1. Distribution of musical excerpts according to genre
Category Number of
number Description excerpts
1 Pop music 17
2 Rock music 17
3 Heavy metal & punk 17
4 African American pop music 11
(R&B, soul, reggae, rap, hip-hop)
5 Dance (techno, house, drum & bass) 11
6 Classical music 32
7 Jazz 11
8 Folk, chanson & cabaret 11
9 Ethnic & world music 32
10 Soundtracks, light classical music 11
This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Ambiguity in Tempo Perception 157
conservatory graduates performing at a professional
level. Subjects were divided into two groups based on
their musical education and performance level: 19
musicians and 21 nonmusicians. The musicians all
received at least 5 years of music training and all prac-
ticed their instrument for at least 3 hours a week, with
an average of 8 hours.
Session 2 The 40 subjects were staff members and stu-
dents from Ghent University and Philips Research; 22
were male and 18 female, with a mean age of 29 years.
As in Session 1, subjects were divided into two groups
based on their musical background: 26 musicians and
14 nonmusicians.
Analyses
For each excerpt and subject, the perceived tempo in
beats per minute (BPM) was calculated from the tap
times using linear regression. Each tapped beat was
assigned a number based on how many times the
median tapped interval fell between its time point and
the first tapped beat. Using this beat number and the
beat time as dimensions, a line was fit through the data
using linear regression. The slope of the line was taken
as the tapped tempo. This method has the advantage
that it treats every tapped beat equally in the calculation
of the tempo rather than just using the first and last
tapped beat-times, as does, for example, the calculation
of the mean beat-interval.
We then assessed the reliability of the tapping data by
examining its regularity. Subjects whose tap intervals
yielded 95% confidence intervals greater than 10 BPM
in the linear regression procedure were deemed “irregular
tappers.” Two subjects were excluded due to irregular
tapping.
For each excerpt, a histogram of perceived tempo
values from all subjects was generated and used to esti-
mate the most salient perceived tempi; see H(T1) and
H(T2) in Figure 1. Histograms were generated with a
binwidth of 0.5 BPM and then smoothed over ten bins.
Peaks in the histogram were detected and then taken to
represent the salient perceived tempi of the excerpt as
long as they included 10% of the subjects and were sep-
arated by at least 25% of their tempo from the next
highest peak. This last criterion was used in order to
avoid an occasional problem with double peaks in the
histogram.
We then checked the data from each excerpt for beat
salience. For a given excerpt, if the total fraction of
subjects contributing to the detected peaks in the
tempo histogram was greater than 2/3, we considered
158 M. F. McKinney and D. Moelants

1
TappedTempi Histogram
0.9 Peak Tempi
Resonance Model

0.8
Percentage of Subjects

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Tempo (BPM)
FIG. 1. Example of a perceived-tempo histogram with peaks at two tempi. Dashed curve is the resonance curve from Van Noorden and Moelants (1999).

that excerpt to have a salient beat and used the data
from that excerpt in subsequent analyses. If the fraction
of subjects contributing to the peaks was less than 2/3,
we assumed the perceived beat (and associated tempo)
was too diffuse and we excluded the excerpt from fur-
ther analyses. This value of 2/3 was chosen somewhat
arbitrarily, but, empirically, it provided a clear boundary
between those histograms that showed distinct peaks
and those that did not.
We used the parameterized resonance model for pulse
perception from Van Noorden and Moelants (1999) as a
reference against which to compare peak tempi. Their
resonance model is described by the following:
1 1
Ae 
( f0  f )  β ⋅ f 2 2
where Ae is the effective resonance amplitude, fo (132
BPM) is the resonant tempo (frequency),
(0.5), is the
damping constant, and f is tempo (frequency).
Results
We collected 40 tapped responses for each of the 170
musical excerpts. Initial analyses of the tapping data
showed that two subjects tapped irregularly (see
Method) and were eliminated from further analyses.
Histograms of subjects’ tapped tempi showed clear peaks
for 157 of the 170 excerpts, while the histograms for the
remaining 13 excerpts showed more diffuse distributions
of tapped tempi, indicating that subjects had no clear
consensus of perceived tempo for those excerpts. Figure 2
illustrates the variety of responses by showing examples
of histograms of the tapped tempi for four different
excerpts. The histograms are plotted along with the reso-
nance model from Van Noorden and Moelants (1999).
If the peaks of the tapped tempi histogram fall along
the resonance curve, the level of ambiguity in perceptual
tempo can be predicted by the position of the metrical
levels (peaks) relative to the resonance. Peaks of equal
height (indicating high ambiguity in perceptual tempo)
 ,
(1) occur if the tempi of metrical levels straddle the reso-
f 04 f 4
nant frequency (Figure 2A), and peaks of unequal height
(indicating low ambiguity in perceptual tempo) occur if
the tempo of a metrical level falls near the resonant fre-
quency (Figure 2D). The tapped tempi histograms in
Figure 2B and C show cases where the peaks of tapped
tempi histograms do not fall along the resonance curve
and where the perceptual tempo is unambiguous.
Different subjects tapped to at least two different
metrical levels when listening to each of the 170 excerpts,
although the amount of ambiguity between metrical
levels (i.e., relative height of the peaks in the perceived-

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Ambiguity in Tempo Perception 159

A B
1 1
Tapped Tempi
Peak Tempi
0.8 Reson. Model 0.8

0.6 0.6
Percentage of Subjects

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

C D
1 1

0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Tempo (BPM)
FIG. 2. Results from four excerpts to illustrate the variety of responses: histograms of tapped tempi (solid line), peaks at salient tempi (), and the
resonance curve from Van Noorden and Moelants (1999) (dashed line). (A) Two tapped-tempo peaks of relatively equal height (distributed along the
resonance curve), indicating high ambiguity between metrical levels. (B) A single tapped-tempo peak at a tempo above the “preferred-tempo” range.
(C) A single tapped-tempo peak at a tempo below the “preferred-tempo” range. (D) Three tapped-tempo peaks (distributed along the resonance curve)
showing a moderate level of ambiguity between metrical levels.

tempo histograms) differed across excerpts. In two
cases, the ambiguity was extremely low and only one
subject tapped at a metrical level different from the
most common response. In contrast, nine excerpts
elicited responses in which the most common tempo
was tapped by a minority of the subjects, indicating a
high degree of ambiguity in metrical level across subjects.
On average, for a single excerpt, 71.3% of the subjects
tapped to the most salient tempo, while 22.5% tapped
to the secondary tempo. In 75% of the cases, a third
metrical level was reported at least once, and, overall,
5.3% of the responses were given to this third level. In
18.75% of the fragments, a fourth level is reported,
although this represents only a small percentage of the
total answers (0.8%).
We found considerable differences between responses
of individual subjects. The mean perceived tempo from
each subject in Session 2 varied from 51 to 141 BPM. A
significant difference between male and female subjects
or between musicians and nonmusicians was not found,
nor was there a relation between age and mean perceived
tempo. One interesting finding is that, in the data from
Session 2, the musicians tapped on average faster than
the nonmusicians. The difference is not significant,
F(1, 38)  1.99, p  .167, but it contradicts earlier
research that shows that musicians tap slower than non-
musicians (Drake et al., 2000). Because this effect has
already been found elsewhere (McKinney & Moelants,
2004), it would be interesting to investigate it further.
To examine the effect of genre on tapped tempo, we
grouped the excerpts into 10 different genres (see Table 1)
and computed tempo statistics per genre. We found a
highly significant effect of genre on the mean of the most
salient (primary) tempo, F(9, 160)  8.24, p  .001,
with averages varying from 76.2 BPM (classical) to
167.1 BPM (metal/punk) (see Figure 3A). This effect
was not present in the second most salient (secondary)
tempo, where there was much more variance. In most
genres, the primary and secondary tempi were found
more or less in the same range, however, t tests show a
significant difference in three genres: metal/punk
(means 167.1/108.6, t  2.98, df  32, p  .01), classi-
cal (means 76.2/106.5, t  2.65, df  62, p  .05),
and world/ethnic (means 119.4/93.9, t  2.12, df  62,
p  .05). Clearly in Western classical music a lower
metrical level seems to dominate, while in the other

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
160 M. F. McKinney and D. Moelants

A 220 1 B
Primary Tempo Primary Tempo
Secondary Tempo Secondary Tempo
200 0.9 Third Tempo

0.8
180

Percentage of Subjects
0.7
160
Tempo (BPM)

0.6
140
0.5
120
0.4

100
0.3

80
0.2

60 0.1

40 0
an

an
nk

rld

nk

rld
z

k
k

k
p

k
e

e
ica

ica
jaz

ac

jaz

ac
roc

roc
fol

fol
po

po
nc

nc
/pu

/pu
ric

ric
wo

wo
ss

ss
dtr

dtr
da

da
me

me
tal

tal
cla

cla
un

un
me

me
na

na
so

so
ica

ica
afr

Genre afr

FIG. 3. Effect of genre on perceived tempo. Left (A) the tempo of the two most common responses for each genre (mean and 95% confidence interval
of the mean). Right (B) the percentage of responses in the three most common tempi of each excerpt for each genre.

two genres, the faster metrical level is usually dominant
(see Figure 3A). Additionally, we saw significant effects
of genre on the relative share of responses at the primary
tempo, F(9, 160)  3.27, p  .01, and at the secondary
tempo, F(9, 160)  3.31, p  .001 (see Figure 3B). There
was no significant effect of genre on the third tempo.
These results show that, for some genres, there is gener-
ally more ambiguity in metrical level than in others.
Here, ambiguity was lowest for the metal/punk excerpts
(82.6% responses at the primary tempo versus 13.4% at
the secondary tempo) and highest for the jazz excerpts
(66.2% responses at the primary tempo, 28.4% at the
secondary tempo) (see Figure 3B).
In addition to the ambiguity in tempo (metrical level)
perception, we also observed an ambiguity in the per-
ception of meter for a few excerpts. While most of the
excerpts contained binary or ternary meters, two pieces
had asymmetric meters, one in 5/4 and one in 7/8. As
expected for these excerpts with the asymmetric meters,
we found responses that were characterized by salient
perceived tempi with nonsimple ratios. In addition, we
saw for several of the “straight” excerpts (most with 6/8
or 12/8 meter) an ambiguity between duple and ternary
meter evidenced by salient perceived tempi with a 2:3
ratio. This “metric confusion” was found 4 times
between the first and second most salient tempi, 7 times
between the first and the third, and an additional
4 times between the second and third most salient
tempo. Thus 8.8% of the excerpts contain some metric
ambiguity.
The peaks of the 157 tapped-tempo histograms are
plotted in Figure 4 along with the resonance curve from
Van Noorden and Moelants (1999). As illustrated for
individual histograms in Figure 2 (panels B and C), the
data in Figure 4 show many high peaks at tempi above
the “preferred-tempo” region as well as below it. There
are also numerous low peaks at tempi in the middle of
the “preferred-tempo” region, indicating that other fac-
tors in those excerpts are drawing listeners away from
the “natural tempo” of 120 BPM. Previous work on
accents in pulse trains suggests that perceptual accents,
including dynamic accents, can draw listeners to a par-
ticular metrical level (Parncutt, 1994). It is unclear how
directly these findings apply to more complex musical
excerpts, so we started by examining the effect of
dynamic accents in our data.
Model
In order to test the idea that perceptual accents in the
musical excerpts can determine the relative importance
of different metrical levels, we tried to predict, from

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Ambiguity in Tempo Perception 161

1
Peak Tempi
0.9 Resonance Model

0.8
Percentage of Subjects

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Tempo (BPM)
FIG. 4. Salient perceived tempi (histogram peaks) from the current experiment and the resonance curve from Van Noorden and Moelants (1999)
(fo  132 BPM,
 0.5). Correlation coefficient: r  0.16 (p  .01).

acoustic analyses, which excerpts would elicit per-
ceived-tempi distributions that deviate from an equal
distribution around the peak in the resonance curve.
The most direct accent type to gauge via acoustic
analysis is the dynamic accent, which we estimated
from the relative energy in a time-limited portion of
the signal.
The first step in the analysis was to define a value to
represent the deviation of perceived tempo for a par-
ticular excerpt with respect to preferred tempo. We
used the peak in the resonance curve from Van
Noorden and Moelants (1999), Tpeak  129 BPM, as
the preferred tempo, and expressed the perceptual
tempo deviation, ∆p, of a tapped response as a function
of its peak tempi, Ts:
S the preferred tempo. In what follows, Ts is redefined to
∑H (Ts )⋅Ts Tpeak
∆p  s1
, (2)
S range of 20 to 350 BPM. This was done in order to more
∑H (Ts )
s1
where H(Ts) is the histogram value at tempo Ts , s is the
histogram peak number, and Tpeak is the tempo at the
peak of the resonance curve (Van Noorden & Moelants,
1999). The number of peak tempi (S) per histogram
ranged from 1 to 3. A value of less than 1.0 for ∆p indicates
that more subjects tapped at a slower tempo than the
resonance model would predict, and a value greater
than 1.0 indicates the opposite.
Next we calculated a statistic, ∆a (acoustic periodicity
difference), from the acoustic waveform of each musical
excerpt to represent the relative strengths of periodici-
ties at the peak tempi, Ts. A statistic such as ∆a should
embody the relative strength of dynamic accents occur-
ring at time intervals corresponding to all peak tempi Ts
and therefore allow us to relate acoustic dynamic
accents to ∆p, our measure of perceptual tempo devia-
tion. Our hypothesis was that ∆a should correlate posi-
tively with ∆p, reflecting the idea that dynamic accents
occurring at periodicities (i.e., tempi) below or above
the preferred tempo should draw listeners away from
include all peak tempi (Ts from the ∆p calculation), as
well as their integer multiples and quotients in the
fairly represent the entire range of perceivable tempi in
the calculation of ∆a.
The acoustic tempo deviation, ∆a, was calculated in
two stages, following a similar strategy used in many
systems for automatic tempo extraction (Alonso
et al., 2004; Goto & Muraoka, 1998; Klapuri et al.,
2006; Scheirer, 1998). The typical strategy is to first

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
162 M. F. McKinney and D. Moelants
calculate a driving signal from the audio excerpt and
then use it to drive a series of periodicity detectors in
the second stage. Periodicities detected in the driving
signal are then taken as tempo candidates for that
particular excerpt. Here, to calculate ∆a, we use the
relative strengths of predefined tempo candidates
(Ts) to calculate a weighted tempo ratio relative to
Tpeak. For each musical excerpt calculated the driving
signal for ∆a in a similar manner to that in Scheirer
(1998):

The audio signal, x[n], was first band-pass filtered
into 6 frequency bands (0–200, 200–400, 400–800,
800–1600, 1600–3200, and 3200–22050 Hz), yielding
six filtered versions of the original signal, xb[n], where
b is the frequency band (1–6), and n is the sample
number. Further processing was the same in each
band and occurred independently.

The instantaneous power of the signal in each band
was calculated, low-pass filtered, and down-sampled
to 900 Hz in order to arrive at the temporal envelope
for each frequency band, eb[k].
The temporal envelopes, eb[k], were taken together as
the driving signal for ∆a. In the second stage of process-
ing we calculated the strength of periodicities in eb[k] at
the tempi of interest, Ts:

Period histograms, Pb,s[m], were generated from the
temporal envelopes, eb[k], for all (s) periods corre-
sponding to the tempi Ts:
(K M )/M
Pb, s [m]  ∑ eb [m  pM ], for 0  m  M , (3)
p0
where K is the length of the excerpt (in samples), and
M is the length of the period (sample_rate/Ts).

The energy, Eb,s, in each period histogram was calcu-
lated by summing the histogram, Pb,s[m], and divid-
ing by the length of the excerpt (number of
samples):
1 M
Eb, s  ∑ Pb, s [m]
K m1
(4)

The synchronization index, SIb,s, was calculated from
each period histogram to estimate the strength of
periodicity (at tempo Ts) in the temporal envelope
from frequency band b:
This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
M j 2πm
∑ Pb, s [m]⋅e M
m1
SI b, s  , (5)
M
∑ Pb, s [m]
m1
where M is the length of the period histogram.

Finally, the energy values and the synchronization
indices were combined across frequency bands to
form the acoustic tempo deviation:
S
6 ∑Eb, s ⋅SI b, s ⋅Ts Tpeak
∆a  ∑ s 1
, (6)
S
b1
∑Eb, s ⋅SI b, s
s1

where s is the index to the number of peak tempi (S),
b is the frequency band index, and Tpeak is the tempo
at the peak of the resonance curve (Van Noorden &
Moelants, 1999).
The value of ∆a is greater than 1.0 if there is more
energy (i.e., dynamic accents) in the musical excerpt at
the periodicities (Ts) greater than Tpeak than at periodic-
ities less than Tpeak. It is less than 1.0 if the reverse is true.
Figure 5 shows the perceptual tempo deviation, ∆p,
plotted against the acoustic tempo deviation, ∆a, for all
musical excerpts. While there is quite a bit of spread in the
data, there is a significant positive correlation between the
two parameters. This correlation is consistent with the
idea that periodic dynamic accents can draw listeners to
metric levels away from the preferred tempo region. The
deviation parameters are best correlated at values of ∆p
less than 1.0 (r  0.65, p  .0001), indicating that periodic
dynamic accents are more effective at drawing listeners to
slower tempi than to faster tempi.
General Discussion
Our main findings can be summarized as follows:
1. When asked to tap to the most salient beat of musical
excerpts, different listeners tapped at different tempi,
corresponding to the various metrical levels of the
excerpt. The ambiguity in which metrical level best
served as the basis for the perceived tempo can be seen
in histograms of tapped tempi from different listeners,
where several peaks are typically present (Figure 2).
For some pieces, up to four different metrical levels are
present in these histograms of tapped tempi.

∆p: Perceptual tempo deviation 1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.2
FIG. 5. Perceptual tempo deviation ratio versus Acoustic tempo deviation ratio for data from all experiments. Correlation coefficient: r  0.51, p  .0001.
2. Tapped tempi across subjects varied considerably;
however, no significant effect of age, sex, or musician-
ship was seen in the data. There was a slight trend for
musicians to tap faster than nonmusicians, but it was
not statistically significant.
3. There was a significant effect of music genre on the
mean primary (most salient) tempo and also on the
percentage of subjects tapping at the primary tempo.
This can be interpreted to mean that the perceived
tempo is significantly less ambiguous for some genres
(e.g., metal/punk) than for others (e.g., jazz).
4. In addition to tempo ambiguity, we also saw an
ambiguity in meter perception for a few excerpts that
yielded salient perceived tempi with nonsimple integer
ratios.
5. For many excerpts, the distribution of peak tempi
from perceived-tempo histograms is not predicted
by the preferred tempo resonance curve from Van
Noorden and Moelants (1999). However, a large por-
tion of this deviation from a global preferred reso-
nance can be accounted for if we estimate and
quantify only one type of perceptual (dynamic)
rhythm accent from the music audio.
Our experiments clearly show that we cannot speak
of one single tempo if we consider tempo as a perceptual
This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
Ambiguity in Tempo Perception 163
0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
∆ : Acoustic tempo deviation
a
phenomenon. In many scores and theoretical works, the
tempo is determined with a single metronome number.
However, we see that for almost all musical excerpts,
different subjects perceive different metric levels as
being the most salient. The relative importance of the
different metric levels can be considered an image of
the metric character of the music. The presence of very
fast responses, for example, can reflect a sense of speed
perceived even by people who tap at a lower metric
level.
The ambiguity of meter perception was also seen in
our results, and although this phenomenon was not
extremely widespread, it has important consequences
when thinking about metric structures. In music theory,
the meter of a piece is considered an unambiguous fac-
tor; although it can change from one bar to the next, it
is typically fixed within a given bar or section. Yet, it is
clear from our results that this is not true from a percep-
tual point of view; some pieces could just as easily be
interpreted with a ternary metric structure as with a
binary. It is likely that cues for both interpretations are
present in the music; however, their perception and
relation to tempo needs further exploration.
The resonant behavior of tapping rates seen here and
in previous studies is likely linked to constraints in the
motor system (Todd, 1999). This leads to a difficulty
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
164 M. F. McKinney and D. Moelants
with using a tapping method to study tempo perception,
as noted by Toiviainen and Snyder (2003): We cannot
separate the actual perception of the tempo from sub-
jects’ tapping (in)abilities. Subjects may, for example,
perceive a salient tempo that is simply too fast for them
to tap. Our results might look quite different if we had
asked subjects to tap with their feet, legs, or heads, which
would probably constrain fast tapping even more.
Nevertheless, if we hold subjects to all use the same
method for tapping (here, their finger on a spacebar) we
see certain cases where virtually all subjects tap (to the
same excerpt) at very high tempi (e.g., Figure 2B) and
others where they are completely divided over slower
tempi (Figure 2A). Thus tempo cues from the music and
subjects’ perception of tempo cannot be completely
masked or defined by motor-system constraints. It is
likely that a combination of factors from the music, the
motor system, individual training, and experience (both
motor and music) contributes to individuals’ preferred
tempo. This is reflected in our results that show clear dif-
ferences across individual subjects, where some were
slow tappers, in general, and others were fast.
We must also bear in mind that the distribution of
tapped tempi for a particular excerpt from the popula-
tion of subjects (e.g., the histograms in Figure 2) does
not necessarily depict the relative salience of tempi in
any individual subject. Our data and statistics here rep-
resent the perception of the population as a whole
rather than of individual subjects. We have not yet
References
A LONSO, M., DAVID, B., & R ICHARD, G. (2004). Tempo and
beat estimation of musical signals. In Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference on Music Information Retrieval
(ISMIR) (pp. 158–163). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabru.
D RAKE , C., P ENEL , A., & B IGAND, E. (2000). Why musicians
tap slower than nonmusicians. In P. Desain & L. Windsor
(Eds.), Rhythm perception and production (pp. 245–248).
Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.
F RAISSE , P. (1982). Rhythm and tempo. In D. Deutsch (Ed.),
The psychology of music (pp. 149–180). New York: Academic
Press.
G OTO, M., & M URAOKA , Y. (1998). Music understanding at the
beat level: Real-time beat tracking for audio signals. In D. F.
Rosenthal & H. G. Okuno (Eds.), Computational auditory
scene analysis (pp. 157–176). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
found any significant factor of subject background on
the tapping speed. This would be better explored fur-
ther in a larger study that looks at many different types
of subject groupings, including aspects such as musi-
cianship, age, and culture.
Our starting point was the assumption that relative
salience of different metrical levels in a piece of music
could be predicted by the distribution of a resonance
curve. In order to explain the distribution of tapped
tempi to different components of polyrhythms, Van
Noorden and Moelants (1999) attributed relative
weights to the different components in the polyrhythm.
This can be done when modeling a fixed set of stimuli,
but is not feasible when modeling music tempo in gen-
eral. In this study we extracted acoustic cues from the
music in order to assign weights to the different metrical
levels. Our modeling results suggest that if the resonance
is combined with models for perceptual accents, the
distributions of tapped tempi can be predicted more
accurately. We have started by modeling dynamic
accents, but it is clear that other types of accents should
also be included, such as melodic, durational, and other
rhythmic and metrical accents.
Author Note
Address correspondence to: Martin McKinney, Philips
Research, High Tech Campus 36, 5656 AE Eindhoven,
The Netherlands. E-MAIL martin.mckinney@philips.com
H ANDEL , S., & O SHINSKY, J. S. (1981). The meter of syncopated
auditory polyrhythms. Perception and Psychophysics, 30, 1–9.
K LAPURI , A., E RONEN , A., & A STOLA , J. (2006). Analysis of the
meter of acoustic musical signals. IEEE Transactions on Audio,
Speech, and Language Processing, 14, 342–355.
L EMAN , M., V ERMEULEN , V., D E VOOGDT, L., M OELANTS , D.,
& L ESAFFRE , M. (2005). Prediction of musical affect using a
combination of acoustic structural cues. Journal of New Music
Research, 34, 39–68.
L ERDAHL , F., & JACKENDOFF, R. (1983). A generative theory of
tonal music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
M C K INNEY, M., & M OELANTS , D. (2004). Deviations from the
resonance theory of tempo induction. In R. Parncutt, A.
Kessler, & F. Zimmer (Eds.), Abstracts of the Conference on
Interdisciplinary Musicology (pp. 124–125; Full text on
CD-ROM). Graz: Dept. of Musicology, University of Graz.
 Ambiguity in Tempo Perception 165

M OELANTS , D. (2002). Preferred tempo reconsidered. In C.
Stevens, D. Burnham, G. McPherson, E. Schubert, & J.
Renwick (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International
Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Sydney, 2002
(pp. 580–583). Adelaide: Causal Productions.
M OELANTS , D., & M C K INNEY, M. (2004). Tempo perception
and musical content: What makes a piece fast, slow or
temporally ambiguous? In S. D. Lipscomb, R. Ashley, R. O.
Gjerdingen, & P. Webster (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition,
Evanston, IL, 2004. Adelaide: Causal Productions.
PARNCUTT, R. (1994). A perceptual model of pulse salience
and metrical accent in musical rhythms. Music Perception, 11,
409–464.
P OVEL , D.-J., & O KKERMAN , H. (1981). Accents in equitone
sequences. Perception & Psychophysics, 30, 565–572.
S CHEIRER , E. D. (1998). Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic
musical signals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
104, 588–601.
TODD, N. P. M. (1999). A sensory-motor theory of rhythm,
time perception and beat induction. Journal of New Music
Research, 28(1), 5–28.
TOIVIAINEN , P., & S NYDER , J. S. (2003). Tapping to Bach:
Resonance-based modeling of pulse. Music Perception, 21,
43–80.
VAN N OORDEN , L., & M OELANTS , D. (1999). Resonance in the
perception of musical pulse. Journal of New Music Research,
28, 43–66.

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
View publication stats