Section 1: Pre-Reading
Contents
Section 1: Pre-Reading¶
Complete the pre-reading.¶
Please begin by reading the following text, which is accessible online here. You may need to sign into JSTOR using your Cambridge ID.
Benadon, F. (2006). Slicing the Beat: Jazz Eighth-Notes as Expressive Microrhythm. Ethnomusicology, 50/1 (pp. 73-98).
This text will introduce you to the concept of the beat-upbeat ratio (BUR), a unit that is often used by researchers as a way of representing swung rhythms. The BUR is a floating point (decimal) number that describes the durational relationship between two successive quavers. If the average BUR established by a musician is greater than one, then this means that the first note in a typical sequence of quavers is longer than the second. You can find translations of the BUR value to ‘standard’ notation below, which might help make this point clearer.
Benadon’s process involves using computer software to analyse recordings and calculate the duration of each individual note performed by a musician. We will do this in Sonic Visualiser.