Universals of Rhythm

The breakout session on Universals of rhythm aimed at discussing the following questions:

1. Is there is a characteristic of music that is common across a vast majority of styles (e.g Octaves, integer ratio relations in melody and rhythm, pulse, temporal hierarchies ?).

2. Is there something innate in music, as against something that is learnt.

3. With the music industry and services diversifying worldwide, there is a need for localization capabilities to the music analysis and distribution software. In this context, can there be "universal music software", as Google once put it ?

So, three main questions:

1. What are the actual universals in rhythm ?

2. Is there a hope for universal software and analysis approaches

3. Are there any ethical issues for such software - information ethics (e.g. copyrights), and discrimination (e.g. Inadvertent influences).

The possible universals in rhythm are beat and pulse, but they themselves are not universal. If we look a little deeper into the brain, we may find universal rhythms, but these brain universals do not constrain creative discourse or creation and hence cannot be construed as universality in music rhythm. There is a huge body of music that is not suitable for beat analysis, e.g. pastoral music for sheep, Alaaps, Taksims, Islamic religious music, chants, prayers. Many of these have a structure, phrases, gestures, but no pulse. There is rhythm in speech. An example is also of dances - which have movements, but the movements that are just functional and do not contribute to the aesthetic are not dances. There are both physiological and psychological constraints that exist. An entrainment at both levels: in the head, and interpersonal can be seen. Music, as an acoustic phenomenon is not universal.

The question then is, assuming a neutral level for analysis, can we any analysis at all, without bringing in the cultural context. Can we identify if the music is dense vs less dense, create histograms of pulse periods. Can we crate a metric/non-metric classifier ? Neutral level does not really exist, but needs to be created. A neutral analysis can sometimes generalize too much. Generalization can trivialize subtle distinctions in music, and we should be aware of that.

Given that there is no universal for rhythm, what is the granularity at which we can see some common ground. Can this common ground be useful for a set of approaches ? Are universals present in a meaningful set. Can we look for shared qualities across some music cultures ? Can we look at multiple models, with confidence levels assigned to each. Each model is trained to look for a specific shared characteristic in music cultures.

There can be some form of common analysis at a low level, but is that needed is a question. Such approaches cut up the music into distinct parts - non-holistic. Should we look at rhythm separately, or look holistically at one "melorhythm" aspect of music. Based on utility of common analysis tools, they can be used, being aware of all the caveats they come up with.