Resonance in the perception of musical pulse

A number of phenomena related to the perception of isochronous tone sequenc es peak at a certain rate (or tempo) and taper off at both slower and faste r rates. In the present paper we start from the hypothesis that the peaking finds its origin in the presence of a damped resonating oscillator in the perceptual-motor system. We assume that for pulse perception only the 'effe ctive' resonance curve matters, i.e., the enhancement of the amplitude of t he oscillator beyond the critical damping. On the basis of the effective resonance curve, analyses have been made of d ata of Vos (1973) on subjective rhythmization and of data on tapping along isochronous tone sequences (Parncutt, 1994) and polyrhythmic sequences (Han del & Oshinsky, 1981). The results show that these data can be very well ap proximated with the proposed model. The best results are obtained with a re sonance period of 500-550 ms and a width at half height of about 400-800 ms . A comparison is made with a number of other tempo related phenomena. In the second part a preliminary effort is made to determine the distributi on of perceived tempi of musical pieces heard on the radio and in recording s of several styles, by having a number of listeners tapping along these pi eces. The resonance curve appears to be a good tool to characterize these d istributions.