The Power of Anacrusis
Engendered Feeling in Groove-Based Musics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4390328 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew W Butterfield (Franklin & Marshall College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Publication date | 2006-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Music Theory Online (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1067-3040 • E-ISSN: 1067-3040 |
| Publisher | Society for Music Theory (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.30535/mto.12.4.2 |
| OpenAlex | W2547445179 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 20 |
| References cited | 16 |
In 1966, Charles Keil introduced the term "engendered feeling" to capture a crucial aspect of jazz performance practice, that certain something beyond notation that performers add to music to make it "swing." Engendered feeling subsumes the sense of rhythmic propulsion that Andre Hodeir once referred to as "vital drive," the impulse that makes music come alive and induces listeners to movement. It stems, Keil insisted, not from syntactical processes that can be represented in common musical notation, but from musicians' use of expressive microtiming at the sub-syntactical level in sustaining a rhythmic groove, a phenomenon he later dubbed "participatory discrepancies." Research on expressive microtiming in jazz and other groove-based musics has largely followed suit and neglected the relevance of syntactical pattern for the production of engendered feeling. By contrast, I propose that engendered feeling arises from the systematic interaction of participatory discrepancies with aspects of syntactical pattern. Supplementing Christopher Hasty's theory of metric projection with empirical research on expressive microtiming, I show how participatory discrepancies, operating at the sub-syntactical level, condition the way we experience rhythmic grooves at the syntactical level specifically through the operation of anacrusis at multiple levels of rhythmic structure, for it is the strategic manipulation of anacrusis that drives an effective groove. Analysis of the ride rhythm in jazz, the basic rock drumbeat, and the groove pattern of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" illustrate how variations in timing serve either to enhance or attenuate the affective power of anacrusis, leading to subtle differences in engendered feeling
Aesthetics · Art · Chorus · Cognitive science · Feeling · Jazz · Literature · Musical · Rhythm · Studio · Timbre · Visual arts · Communication · Music Technology and Sound Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Neuroscience and Music Perception · Psychology · Social Psychology
Motion Before Patterns
Sound-producing actions in guitar performance of groove-based microrhythm
Evolving Content and Design
Formal Functions of Metric Dissonance in Rock Music
Timing Is Everything…Or Is It? Effects of Instructed Timing Style, Reference, and Pattern on Drum Kit Sound in Groove-Based Performance
T he T ale of the T hree Y oung B rothers
Good things come in threes
Expressive Timing or Thematic Transformation? Onset Displacement in Performances of Jazz Standard Melodies
Finding a Fingerprint. Microtiming and Tempo Variability in Five Renowned Rock Drummers
Playing It Straight
Probabilistic modelling of microtiming perception
Instructed timing and body posture in guitar and bass playing in groove performance
Music on the timing grid
Variant Timekeeping Patterns and Their Effects in Jazz Drumming
Formal Functions of Drum Patterns in Post-Millennial Pop Songs, 2012–2021
The Tight-interlocked Rhythm Section
Mapping timing and intensity strategies in drum-kit performance of a simple back-beat pattern
Beats and Flows
Flexible Ostinati, Groove, and Formal Process in Craig Taborn'sAvenging Angel
Rhythmic Feel as Meter
| Unique citing works | 20 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,18 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2026 (18) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 13 |