Rhythm Performance from a Spectral Point of View

Basic to both performance and experience of rhythm in music is a connection between musical rhythm and patterns of body movements. A main focus in this study is to investigate possible relations between movement categories and rhythmic expression. An analytical approach to this task is to regard a musician ́s various ways of moving when playing an instrument as an expression of timbral aspects of rhythm, and to apply FFT to empirical data of the musician ́s movements in order to detect spectral components that are characteristic of the performance. In the present paper we exemplify this approach by reporting some findings from empirical investigations of jazz drummers ́ movements in performances of swing groove. In particular we show that performances of the groove in three different tempi (60, 120, 300 bpm) yield quite different spectral characteristics of the movements. This spectral approach to rhythm performance might suggest alternative ways of constructing syntheses and models of rhythm production, and could also be of interest for the construction of interfaces based on detecting spectral properties of body movements.