Name:Catherine Lin

School/Affiliation:McGill University

Co-Authors:Bavo Van Kerrebroeck, Pieter-Jan Maes, Marcelo M. Wanderley, & Caroline Palmer

Virtual or In-person:In-person

Short Bio:

Catherine is currently a second year Masters student at McGill University. Their current thesis work investigates tempo drift during solo and group drumming performances, with a secondary project investigating behavioural and physiological synchrony and leader-follower dynamics in trios, supported by the NSERC CGS-M award. She previously completed her BSc at Western University, with her honours thesis supervised by Dr. Blake Butler, and summer research supervised by Dr. Jessica Grahn. Outside of their academic work, they are an amateur indoor rock climber and sporadic book reader.

Abstract:

Musical ensembles must maintain a steady tempo to synchronize with others. Yet ensembles often exhibit tempo drift (increased tempo over time), with greater drift in larger ensembles. Previous investigations have primarily focused on dyadic tempo drift with binary rhythms (strong/weak alternation) and less on larger ensembles. We investigated how group size and differing rhythms, Binary or Ternary (strong/weak/weak alternation), affect tempo drift in quartets compared with solo performance. 32 musically trained adults produced simple Binary and Ternary rhythms with alternating hands (dominant hand on downbeat/strong beat, non-dominant on weak beats) in a Solo condition preceded by a metronome cued every 450 ms (ternary) or 675 ms (binary), yielding equivalent measure-level timing (1350 ms) across rhythms. The individuals repeated the same task in a 4-person Group condition (quartets). Tempo drift was measured by the regression slope of intertap intervals (ITIs) on serial trial position. Individuals showed steeper negative regression slopes in Group than in Solo conditions. Surprisingly, the Binary rhythm showed greater slope changes from Solo to Group conditions, with no slope differences in the Ternary rhythm. Coefficients of variation (SD / mean ITI) analyses suggested that individuals showed reduced variability at the metrical bar level (2 or 3 beats) compared to the beat level. Additional analyses at the bar level ruled out tap-handedness explanations of this finding. These findings extend tempo drift findings in larger ensembles and suggest that group size and group coordination in the absence of a leader may elicit different timing mechanisms for binary and ternary rhythms.