Psychological time and its role in musical perception

The issue of temporal perception is clearly relevant to any study of musical rhythm. My thesis on periodicities in music proposed that periodic events which recur at a rate higher than approximately 6 seconds are very unlikely to be perceived as periodic without other related factors, due to the intervention of psychological effects and memory processing. Some of the main points are included in the presentation Superpulse: Clarifications, Refinements, Implications.

Issues of psychological time and its relation to music have been a favourite subject for my explorations, and my thoughts on them can be traced in the following:  "Temporal Aspects of Music - Perception of Time", "Perception of Time through the Lens of Music" and "Factors that Influence our Perception of Time through Music". I am working with Harry Mountain on a book on Time in Art which will build on these and on his research into Earthworks.

The current stage of this project is a proposed calculation, although admittedly speculative, of the specific factors within the music itself which will tend to expand or shrink our sense of time (as explained in the article The Breathing of Time in(to) Music.

Many of my compositions consciously examine aspects of this issue, as described in the article “Composition: my laboratory for auditory perception research"

Some of the issues addressed can be found in the presentation notes from the lecture:  "Time: Music's Medium".