On Measuring the Complexity of Musical Rhythm

Godfried T. Toussaint, Konstantinos Trochidis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This paper describes preliminary results of a research project on the development of mathematical measures of the complexity of musical rhythms represented as strings of symbols denoting sounded and silent pulses. Two mathematical measures founded on symbolic sequences are compared with measures based on acoustic features, and both are compared with human judgments obtained from listening experiments with a dataset of Middle-Eastern rhythms. The results to date suggest that, in spite of limited success, finding a mathematical measure that accurately predicts human judgments of rhythm complexity based on either purely symbolic or acoustic features, remains a challenging open problem.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2018 9th IEEE Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, UEMCON 2018
EditorsSatyajit Chakrabarti, Himadri Nath Saha
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages753-757
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781538676936
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2018
Event9th IEEE Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, UEMCON 2018 - New York City, United States
Duration: Nov 8 2018Nov 10 2018

Publication series

Name2018 9th IEEE Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, UEMCON 2018

Conference

Conference9th IEEE Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, UEMCON 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew York City
Period11/8/1811/10/18

Keywords

  • Keith meter complexity
  • Middle-Eastern rhythms
  • acoustic features
  • algorithms
  • artificial intelligence
  • beat spectrum
  • listening tests
  • music information retrieval
  • pulse clarity
  • signal processing
  • sub-symmetries
  • symbol sequences

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Instrumentation
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'On Measuring the Complexity of Musical Rhythm'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this