EXPLORING THE EMERGENCE OF BEAT INDUCTION USING A 'SWARM OF ONSETS' GENERATIVE MODEL

Paper in proceeding, 2024

This study investigates the emergence of the beat percept in auditory textures that are built up from homogeneous sources. Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) models of beat perception have examined how humans synchronize to musically relevant signals, however there have been few systematic inquiries into SMS in more soundscape-oriented phenomena where a listener is confronted by multiples of concurrent, interactive sources. In this experiment, participants were asked to synchronize (via tapping) to stimuli created from a generative model where forty metronome sounds are clustered around periodic, temporal centers using a Gaussian probability distribution function parameterized with eight levels of variance to produce 'swarms' of temporally aligned onsets. Participants encountered stimuli both in mono (dichotic) and binaural spatial presentations as we hypothesized that the spatial presentation might produce significant differences in SMS performance. As evidenced by inter-beat interval analysis and phase coherence analysis, participants were able to largely synchronize to six of the eight onset variance conditions despite tap frequency increasing with onset spread. Similarly, while we found a slight interaction between spatial format and stimuli onset variance, no significant differences were found between the overall tap responses to the binaural versus mono stimuli. This study is a first look into how the beat percept arises to sound textures whose constituent elements contain different levels of embedded synchrony.