Neural, perceptual, and cognitive oscillations synchronize with rhythmic events in both speech (Luo & Poeppel, 2007) and music (Snyder & Large, 2005). This synchronization decreases perceptual thresholds to temporally predictable events (Lawrance et al., 2014), improves task performance (Ellis & Jones, 2010), and enables speech intelligibility (Peelle & Davis, 2012). Despite implications of music-language transfer effects for improving language outcomes (Gordon et al., 2015), proposals that shared neural and cognitive resources underlie music and speech rhythm perception (e.g., Tierney & Kraus, 2014) are not yet substantiated. The present research aimed to explore this potential overlap by testing whether music-induced oscillations affect metric speech tempo perception, and vice versa. We presented in each of 432 trials a prime sequence (seven repetitions of either a metric speech utterance or analogous musical phrase) followed by a standard-comparison pair (either two identical speech utterances or two identical musical phrases). Twenty-two participants judged whether the comparison was slower than, faster than, or the same tempo as the standard. We manipulated whether the prime was slower than, faster than, or the same tempo as the standard. Tempo discrimination accuracy was higher when the standard tempo was the same as, compared to slower or faster than, the prime tempo. These findings support the shared-resources view more than the independent-resources view, and they have implications for music-language transfer effects showing improvements in verbal memory (Chan et al., 1998), speech-in-noise perception (Strait et al., 2012), and reading ability in children and adults (Tierney & Kraus, 2013)

Human speech and music share a number of similarities and differences. One of the closest similarities is their temporal nature as both (i) develop over time, (ii) form sequences of temporal intervals, possibly differing in duration and acoustical marking by different spectral properties, which are perceived as a rhythm, and (iii) generate metrical expectations. Human brains are particularly efficient in perceiving, producing, and processing fine rhythmic information in music and speech. However a number of critical questions remain to be answered: Where does this human sensitivity for rhythm arise? How did rhythm cognition develop in human evolution? How did environmental rhythms affect the evolution of brain rhythms? Which rhythm-specific neural circuits are shared between speech and music, or even with other domains? Evolutionary processes’ long time scales often prevent direct observation: understanding the psychology of rhythm and its evolution requires a close-fitting integration of different perspectives. First, empirical observations of music and speech in the field are contrasted and generate testable hypotheses. Experiments exploring linguistic and musical rhythm are performed across sensory modalities, ages, and animal species to address questions about domain-specificity, development, and an evolutionary path of rhythm. Finally, experimental insights are integrated via synthetic modeling, generating testable predictions about brain oscillations underlying rhythm cognition and its evolution. Our understanding of the cognitive, neurobiological, and evolutionary bases of rhythm is rapidly increasing. However, researchers in different fields often work on parallel, potentially converging strands with little mutual awareness. This research topic builds a bridge across several disciplines, focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of rhythm as an evolutionary process. It includes contributions encompassing, although not limited to: (1) developmental and comparative studies of rhythm (e.g. critical acquisition periods, innateness); (2) evidence of rhythmic behavior in other species, both spontaneous and in controlled experiments; (3) comparisons of rhythm processing in music and speech (e.g. behavioral experiments, systems neuroscience perspectives on music-speech networks); (4) evidence on rhythm processing across modalities and domains; (5) studies on rhythm in interaction and context (social, affective, etc.); (6) mathematical and computational (e.g. connectionist, symbolic) models of “rhythmicity” as an evolved behavior.

Children are inherently musical. They respond to music and learn through music. Music expresses children's identity and heritage, teaches them to belong to a culture, and develops their cognitive well-being and inner self worth. As professional instructors, childcare workers, or students looking forward to a career working with children, we should continuously search for ways to tap into children's natural reservoir of enthusiasm for singing, moving and experimenting with instruments. But how, you might ask? What music is appropriate for the children I'm working with? How can music help inspire a well-rounded child? How do I reach and teach children musically? Most importantly perhaps, how can I incorporate music into a curriculum that marginalizes the arts?This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children's lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.

For courses in Music Theory, Musical Skills, or Sight Singing. A thorough, practical introduction to rhythm Studying Rhythm introduces students to the basic processes and complexities of musical rhythm and helps them develop the ability to perform all kinds of rhythmic patterns accurately at sight. Authors Anne Hall and Timothy Urban provide students over 300 one- and two-part rhythmic studies, each with short preliminary exercises, that are intended to be sung, spoken, and tapped or clapped. The Fourth Edition offers fresh examples from the standard repertory as well as new material on structured improvisation.

Most classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today’s music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear and complete guide that will enable future solfege teachers and students to use these techniques and their methodology to greatly improve their rhythmical skills. An accompanying website of audio examples helps to explain each technique. For examples of composed and improvised pieces by students who have studied this book, as well as concerts by highly acclaimed karnatic musicians, please copy this link to your browser: http://www.contemporary-music-through-non-western-techniques.com/pages/1587-video-recordings

This book is a comprehensive examination of the conception, perception, performance, and composition of time in music across time and culture. It surveys the literature of time in mathematics, philosophy, psychology, music theory, and somatic studies (medicine and disability studies) and looks ahead through original research in performance, composition, psychology, and education. It is the first monograph solely devoted to the theory of construction of musical time since Kramer in 1988, with new insights, mathematical precision, and an expansive global and historical context. The mathematical methods applied for the construction of musical time are totally new. They relate to category theory (projective limits) and the mathematical theory of gestures. These methods and results extend the music theory of time but also apply to the applied performative understanding of making music. In addition, it is the very first approach to a constructive theory of time, deduced from the recent theory of musical gestures and their categories. Making Musical Time is intended for a wide audience of scholars with interest in music. These include mathematicians, music theorists, (ethno)musicologists, music psychologists / educators / therapists, music performers, philosophers of music, audiologists, and acousticians.

Voted second on Modern Drummer's list of 25 Greatest Drum Books in 1993, Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer is one of the most versatile and practical works ever written for drums. Created exclusively to address syncopation, it has earned its place as a standard tool for teaching beginning drummers syncopation and strengthening reading skills. This book includes many accented eighths, dotted eighths and sixteenths, eighth-note triplets and sixteenth notes for extended solos. In addition, teachers can develop many of their own examples from it.

This book addresses the complex time relations that occur in some types of jazz and classical music, as well as in the novel, plays and poetry. It discusses these multiple levels of rhythm from a social science as well as an arts and humanities perspective. Building on his ground-breaking work in Re-framing Literacy, A Prosody of Free Verse and Multimodality, Poetry and Poetics, the author explores the world of multiple- or poly-rhythms in music, literature and the social sciences. He reveals that multi-layered rhythms are uncommon and little researched. Nevertheless, they are important to the experience of art and social situations, not least because they link physicality to feeling and to decision-making (timing), as well as to aesthetic experience. Whereas most poly-rhythmic relations are felt unconsciously, this book reveals the complex patterning that underpins the structures of feeling and of experience. "As the title suggests, this book offers a compelling account of how rhythm works, in both regular and irregular contexts. Building on A Prosody of Free Verse (2018), which for many readers "cracked the code" in its explanation of non-metrical verse, this book expands and redefines the field, in both an interdisciplinary and intercultural sense. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in rhythm." - Terry Locke, Emeritus Professor of Arts and Language Education, University of Waikato .

From Grammy-winning musical icon and legendary bassist Victor L. Wooten comes an inspiring parable of music, life, and the difference between playing all the right notes…and feeling them. The Music Lesson is the story of a struggling young musician who wanted music to be his life, and who wanted his life to be great. Then, from nowhere it seemed, a teacher arrived. Part musical genius, part philosopher, part eccentric wise man, the teacher would guide the young musician on a spiritual journey, and teach him that the gifts we get from music mirror those from life, and every movement, phrase, and chord has its own meaning...All you have to do is find the song inside. “The best book on music (and its connection to the mystic laws of life) that I've ever read. I learned so much on every level.”—Multiple Grammy Award–winning saxophonist Michael Brecker

This book has become a classic in all musicians' libraries for rhythmic analysis and study. Designed to teach syncopation within 4/4 time, the exercises also develop speed and accuracy in sight-reading with uncommon rhythmic figures. A must for all musicians, especially percussionists interested in syncopation.