Musical meter, rhythm and the moving body: Designing methods for the analysis of unconstrained body movements

Abstract

The process of retrieving meaningful information from rhythm responses to music imposes several methodological challenges. For one side, the indivisible connection between body actions and the musical action confines the musical phenomenon in a closed action-perception cycle. For another side, the attempts to examine internalized rhythm descriptions require a sort of action and body movements are the natural medium for musical actions. In this study, we propose strategies for the analysis of movement responses that are capable of retrieving emergent rhythmic and metrical structures encoded in free movements, which are less constrained by experimental designs and less dependent on methodological assumptions. The first technique processes zero-crossing events across velocity patterns in order to retrieve the changes of directions across metric levels. The second technique uses local accumulation of instantaneous velocity in order to describe the profiles of metric engagement abstracted from the morphology of the movement trajectories. The techniques help to trace comparisons and build new representations of embodied metrical structures. The paper discusses the possibilities and new perspectives using case studies of free spontaneous movement responses to Argentinian chacarera and Afro-Brazilian samba music.