One of the things that you said caught my eye: “it is quite expected to those who like it and are culturally accustomed to it.” I definitely agree with you on the cultural part; it’s quite likely that people who have been exposed from a very young age to systems of music that contain certain time signatures or other features would show an OEP closer to the traditional placement of a note than listeners who grew up with Western (or any other system) of music.

However, what really piqued my curiosity was the idea of aficionados of a certain kind of music adjusting their expectations, even to patterns that violate the systems of music they grew up with. I’ve been reading a bit about brain plasticity lately, and I think there’s something work investigating there—how long do people have to be exposed to a non-standard system for their neural oscillations to regularize to it? Will they then start showing OEPs to more standard variations? Do children adjust more rapidly than adults?

I think all of these are very good questions. Thanks for contributing—I really enjoyed your comment!

I would be curious what their results would be had they tried a 3/5 subdivision, and if they were to try it at faster and slower speeds (because the slower the tempo, the stranger the 3/5 feels). I imagine they would get mixed results depending on what each listener was accustomed to.

This article, pondering the significance of the tests that were performed, ponders whether swung 8th notes are “unexpected” to the listener of whom it appeals, but the truth is that it is quite expected to those who like it and are culturally accustomed to it. In the test that was performed, if they had used the 43% subdivision with someone who had been listening to music with 43% subdivisions their whole life, then the OEC would occur at 43%. It’s that simple. If they were to try it on me (or someone from West Africa), they would get an OEC reading at around 44% or 45% because there is a very common African rhythm to which I am well accustomed that is a lilted triplet. It has a 4/9 subdivision followed by a 2/3 subdivision, hence, a “lilted” triplet.

As an American who plays West African music quite well, I have seen countless Americans try and fail to play West African rhythms with that 4/9 subdivision (some of them very talented musicians). They will change the 4/9 subdivision to a 1/2 subdivision and change the 2/3 subdivision to a 3/4 subdivision because that is what they are used to hearing. But it doesn’t matter if an American can read music or not, they will “Westernize” it into simpler metric subdivisions because that is what they are accustomed to hearing and so the electrical signals from their brains cause their hands to move with those simpler subdivisions.

Those who are more clever among the classically trained will keep the 2/3 subdivision but still change the 4/9 subdivision to 1/2, because the 1/2 followed by 2/3 is something they have become accustomed to in classical music. But it doesn’t matter if they are knowledgeable of rhythmic theory and I explain it to them in any of several ways using Western context (one example: a quarter-note-triplet followed by a quarter note in 3/4 time, then the bar is repeated over and over, then sped up or “shrunk down” into one beat). It all fails because the electrical signals from their brains can not send the signals to their hands with rhythms that have not been engrained in their brains first.

And don’t get me started on Brazilian music … it has extremely non-metric subdivisions. If they were to conduct the 43% test on someone from Brazil, the OEC would read at about 40 to 42%. That’s a whole other discussion.