Entrainment and psychology of rhythm perception

27th October 2022 by Alicja Barczuk | 0 comments

Murmuration of birds over Elephant and Castle roundabout. I believe that this is an example (on of many) of the entrainment among animals

People experiencing music are often tapping their feet, sway their bodies or nod their heads which is led by the main rhythm or pulse. But how do we find the pulse? Depending on the complexity of the rhythm this task can be less or more difficult. When we think of dance music, where the most common time signature is 4:4 but even broken beats are being played with frequent reoccurrence, entrainment occurs practically unconsciously. It gets more complicated when we deal with more complex rhythm and puls patterns like jazz and other polyrhythmic musical structures. Human movement studies have shown that we typically walk with the frequency of two steps per second, no matter of gender, age, height, or weight.

In the 17th century, Dutch physicist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens did an experiment with 2 pendulum clocks standing next to one another. They were not synchronised at first, but after a while pendulums adjusted to each other, which was caused by the oscillation that was being transferred from one clock to another through the surface. This is a concept that describes a relation where one pulse influences another.

In human aspect, entrainment with music can be observed in the early stages of human development, kids are trying to synchronise with the pulls and rhythms of music as early as they start walking. We synchronise our breath, steps and many other functions within ourselves, we synchronise with each other, our environments, machines etc. Entrainment can be observed in nature in various different areas of life, it feels to me that it is one of the most instinctive, widespread and essential aspects of our lives that, in a nutshell, let the world go around.

The concept of entrainment as a way people synchronise with each other musically is a very fascinating biological aspect of social life.

The way people unite through music and rhythm is something that can be observed all around the world. I think that deepening knowledge about the organic basics of how people unite and synchronise through the rhythm can unveil information that may be helpful in highlighting sound as a tool for propagating unity and community.