Binary Musical Bias in Irreguilar Meters

TL;DRAbstract

The rhythmic structures of Western art music tend to be highly regular. With regards to metrical organization (i.e. grouping of strong and weak beats), previous research by Huron (2006) indicates that binary (strong-weak) meters tend to be more prevalent than ternary (strong-weak-weak) meters. However, relatively little is known about other types of metrical organization, such as meters based on 5- or 7-beat patterns. Results are reported from a corpus study of 5- and 7-beat musical melodies. Five-beat metrical patterns were found to occur more frequently than meters with 7-beat patterns, χ2 (1, N = 144) = 30.25, p < 0.001, φ= 0.46. This finding was consistent with the hypothesis that simpler metrical structures are preferred to more complex ones, and therefore, also more prevalent in the literature. The results warrant future research on listeners’ preferences for simpler metrical structures in the context of irregular meters.

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