<snip>
Recognition of beats, I would call a basic level skill. This has pertinence
to many different areas of experience. Not just music but sport, poetry,
fluent handwriting, stress in speech, dance among many other activities
all use depend at least to some extent on the recognition of beats. Musical
ability presupposes some sensitivity to recognition of beats, but also
pitch, intonation, pattern recognition, physical control etc.
<snip>
It's even more basic than a skill, I think, if by 'recognition' one means
*taking into account*.
I'm thinking of entrainment, which is a _physical_ phenomenon: the tendency
of two oscillators (eg pendulums) to come into phase. Stoppard had fun with
it in *Albert's Bridge*. Ditto Ligeti with *1,000 Metronomes*. But Cf also
the 1940 Tacoma Bridge collapse, a consequence of frequency entrainment.
We entrain nutually in working together and entrain to particular rhythms in
listening to music. We self entrain when we walk and also (I think) when we
read.
CW
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'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
(Franz Kline's mother)
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