International Symposium on Performance Science © The Author 2013, Published by the AEC

ISBN 978-2-9601378-0-4 All rights reserved

Microtiming in Ngòn: Categorical production

and perception of a non-isochronous meter

Justin London1 and Rainer Polak2

1 Department of Music, Carleton College, USA

2 Institute for World Music and Transcultural Music Studies, Cologne University of
Music and Dance, Germany

Timings data from six performances of Ngòn Fariman, a Mande ensem-

ble drumming piece characterized by a pattern of long-short-short beat
subdivisions, are analyzed, providing evidence of discrete categories of
beat subdivision (long versus short) as well as evidence of expressive
variations within each category. The effects of the large-scale structural
acceleration, characteristic of Ngòn, and the presence of performance-
specific microtiming patterns indicative of distinctive “swing feels” are
also assessed. The implications of Ngòn’s rhythms for the categorical
perception of duration, beat induction, and theories of musical rhythm
and meter are then discussed.

Keywords: non-isochronous rhythm; meter; expressive timing; categori-

cal perception

Recent theories of rhythm and meter that encompass both western and non-
western music (Arom 1991, London 2004, Temperly 2007, Toussaint 2013)
have included both isochronous and non-isochronous beat patterns with the
presumption that both are based on a substrate of rapid isochronous pulses.
In the most common types of western classical and popular music these
pulses form the duplets, triplets, and quadruplets that undergird the isochro-
nous beat, whereas in other musics non-isochronous beats are understood as
concatenations of a series of duplets or triplets (e.g. a series of three beats,
long-short-short, is heard as 3+2+2). In these approaches non-isochrony is
defined quantitatively. At the same time, data on timing musical perfor-
mances (Gabrielsson 1982) have shown that these isochronous pulses are
subject to expressive variations (i.e. rubato) in performance.
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Mande drumming from Mali involves moderate to rapid beat subdivisions

that are non-isochronous and which cannot be related to an isochronous
substrate. Yet the timings in Mande drumming also involve a sense of rubato,
or swing, and thus absent a quantitative definition for rhythmic categories
(i.e. duplets vs. triplets). Thus the question arises as to how these timings are
to be understood in their perception and production. Here we present
evidence from six performances of the piece Ngòn Fariman, giving details of
the timing structure of its accompaniment part. The performance data we
have collected show (1) that the musicians are able to produce stable non-
isochronous rhythms both within and across performances, (2) that these
rhythms are evidence of distinct metrical categories on the level of beat
subdivision, and (3) that these categories may also be nuanced, giving
individual performers distinctive senses of swing. These results raise further
questions regarding categorical perception of rhythmic durations and
metrical elements, and how theories of musical meter should best
accommodate pieces and performances like those found in Ngòn.

METHOD

Repertoire and participants

Ngòn-fariman (“The mean chipanzee”) is a popular masked dance perfor-

mance piece from the Segu region in central Mali. The percussion ensemble
involves three or four drums/drummers: two bòn, a high-pitched single-
headed cylindrical drum with light goat-skin membrane, played with one very
light stick (strong hand) and one bare hand; one cunba, a huge and heavy
(approx. 25 kg) kettle bass drum with cow-skin membrane, beaten with both
bare hands; and one ngangan, a very high-pitched (goat-skin) double-headed
cylindrical drum played with one stick. The first bòn is the lead drum, while
the second bòn maintains the basic accompaniment pattern that is the focus
of our analysis here. Performances 1, 2, and 3 were done by the Drissa Diakite
Ensemble, with A. Traole playing the accompaniment part; performances 4
and 5 were by the Lansina Diakite Ensemble, with B. Coulibaly (performance
4) and S. Diarra (performance 5) on the accompaniment part; performance 6
was a student ensemble led by Adama Boare, with B. Diakite on accompani-
ment.

Materials and procedure

The accompaniment pattern in Ngòn consists of a constantly repeated short-

short-long rhythm that is readily heard as anacrustic, with the two short high
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON PERFORMANCE SCIENCE 647

notes as upbeats to the long low note. This rhythm is known as “kèngèbu,” as
the kèn and gè onomatopoetically represent the high short notes, and bu
stands for the low long tone. Author RP made field audio and video record-
ings of these performances with each drum separately miked. Vegas Pro 11
(Sony) was used for video and audio editing, and Soundforge Pro 10 (Sony)
and Wavelab 6 (Steinberg) were used for additional audio editing and onset
detection. Timings were checked and markers for each onset inserted by
hand. Marker time points (running milliseconds) were then converted to text
files and then imported into Excel for data cleanup and organization, and
then into PASW Statistics (18.0) for analysis. As the performances of Ngòn
involved a large scale accelerando (average start=73 bpm, average finish=139
bpm, min=60 bpm, max=151 bpm), raw subdivision timings could not be
used. Timings were therefore recalculated as percentages of the “local” beat
duration (i.e. normalized for tempo).

RESULTS

Beats in Ngòn are organized in a four-beat cycle. Within this cycle the grand
average of all normalized beat durations for all performances was 0.248 (beat
1), 0.250 (beat 2), 0.250 (beat 3), and 0.252 (beat 4; SD=0.004). Thus, while
there was some typical measure-final lengthening (and perhaps an artifact of
the long-term accelerando), the beat-to-beat IOIs were remarkably stable and
consistent. Within each beat the long-short-short figure (aligned to the beat
as “bu-kèn-gè”) had an average timing ratio of across all performances of
40.83-30.66-28.53. Timing details for each performance are given in Table 1.
T-tests comparing all subdivision elements within each performance were
highly significant (p<0.001), showing consistent expressive timing differ-
ences between the two short elements. Results of a one-way ANOVA com-
paring differences among each element across all six performances were also
highly significant (“bu” F5,2310=199.36, p<0.001; “kèn” F5,2310=8.43, p<0.001;
“gè” F5,2310=98.55, p<0.001), showing distinctive expressive timings or “swing
feels” for each performance. While these results are not surprising, given the
size of the data set, the smaller F values for the “kèn” element are of interest.
A Bonferroni post-hoc comparison across all six performances showed that
while the contrasts between 14 of the 15 of the “bu” and “gè” pairwise com-
parisons were significant, for “kèn” only 6 of 15 pairs reached significance.
Thus the first element of the kèngèbu figure seems to be most constrained in
terms of expressive variation, and may serve as a timing anchor for the other
elements.
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Table 1. Mean timing ratios for each element of the kèngèbu figure in all six perfor-
mances of Ngòn, with standard deviations and standard errors for each.

Beat Version Mean SD SE

Long:“bu” 1 41.42 1.51 0.09
2 41.31 1.63 0.07
3 41.85 1.78 0.09
4 40.29 1.42 0.07
5 38.93 1.51 0.08
6 40.95 2.92 0.15
Total 40.83 2.09 0.04
Short1:"kèn" 1 30.71 1.59 0.09
2 30.39 1.44 0.07
3 30.75 1.76 0.09
4 30.97 1.18 0.06
5 30.87 1.98 0.11
6 30.33 2.49 0.13
Total 30.66 1.79 0.04
Short2:"gè" 1 27.87 1.50 0.09
2 28.30 1.74 0.08
3 27.40 1.67 0.08
4 28.74 1.30 0.07
5 30.20 1.59 0.08
6 28.72 2.98 0.16
Total 28.52 2.07 0.04

Time series analysis in each performance also showed a tendency for the
ratios of the two short elements in the kèngèbu pattern to converge over the
course of the performance as the tempo accelerated (see Figure 1). This
suggests that there may be an absolute limit on the duration of the shortest
element in a rhythmic pattern, analogous to similar findings in jazz
drumming (Collier and Collier 1994) and in tapping studies (Repp 2006).

DISCUSSION

The six performances of Ngòn involved stable and replicable performances of

a pattern of non-isochronous beat subdivisions. They are a real world analog
to the experimental findings of Povel (1981) and Repp, London, and Keller
(2012, 2013), who found that that the production of non-isochronous
rhythms need not be yoked to simple integer ratios which would imply an
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON PERFORMANCE SCIENCE 649

Figure 1. Change Timing ratio over the course of performance No. 1: Y-axis=normalized
timings expressed as percentages of the total beat; X-axis=metric cycle. Top line=Long
(“bu”); middle line=Short1 (“kèn”); bottom line=Short2 (“gè”). (See full color version at
www.performancescience.org.)

isochronous substrate, such as 2:1. The timing data (both in terms of the ab-
solute values of the durations of the long versus short elements, as well as the
tendency for convergence between the short elements) suggest that two dis-
tinct rhythmic categories are involved in the production of the kèngèbu pat-
tern (Fraisse 1956, Clarke 1987, Desain and Honing 2003). Preliminary re-
sults from recent fieldwork (conducted by author RP) which tested the per-
formers’ ability to discriminate amongst these categories also support this
claim. Finally, music with non-isochronous beat subdivisions poses chal-
lenges for theories of rhythm and meter which presume an isochronous “den-
sity referent” (Arom 1991) or N-cycle (London 2004). In Ngòn, non-
isochrony on the lowest level is “contained” by isochrony at higher metrical
levels. Kvifte (2007), in his analysis of Norwegian Springar rhythms, pro-
posed an analogous “common slowest pulse” to contain non-isochrony on the
beat level. Kvifte asks if it is possible to image a meter with no isochronous
units (2007, p. 82). While we are not quite prepared to do this, we recognize
that pieces like Ngòn-fariman demonstrate that well-formed metrical struc-
tures need not be recursively organized, and this lack of recursion has mani-
fold implications for theories of musical meter as well as rhythm and timing
behaviors more generally.
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Address for correspondence

Justin London, Department of Music, Carleton College, One North College Street,
Northfield, Minnesota 55057, USA; Email: jlondon@carleton.edu

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