Timing in music refers to the ability to "keep time" accurately and to synchronise to an ensemble, as well as to
expressive timing
Expressive timing refers to the musical phenomenon whereby a performer introduces subtle temporal nuances to an otherwise metronomic ("perfectly" timed) interpretation. This is also referred to as ''microtiming'' or ''microrhythm''. For instance, ...
—subtle adjustment of
note
Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to:
Music and entertainment
* Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music
* ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...
or
beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
duration, or of
tempo
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...
, for
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
effect.
Research in
music cognition
Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of both psychology and musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behaviour and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, res ...
has shown that time as a subjective structuring of events in music, differs from the concept of time in physics. Listeners to music do not perceive rhythm on a continuous scale, but recognise rhythmic categories that function as a reference relative to which the deviations in timing can be appreciated.
[Honing, H. (2002) ''Structure and interpretation of rhythm and timing'' in ''Dutch Journal of Music Theory (Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie)''. vol 7(3), p. 227-23]
pdf
/ref> Temporal patterns in music combine two different time scales—rhythmic durations such as half and quarter notes on the one hand, and on the other, the continuous timing variations that characterize an expressive musical performance.
See also
*Rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...
*Time signature
The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...
References
{{Reflist
Music cognition