tempo as a function of body temp

[Patrick Burns]

There is a certain phenomenon regarding music tempo I have experienced for as long as I can remember. It is the perception that the same song can seem faster or slower when heard at different times.

examples:

• I was listening to a particular song last night for a long time. I listened to it this afternoon immediately after working outside in 86˚F weather, and instantly I thought to myself, "what the hell?" The song felt at least 10% slow than my memory was indicating.

• I have noticed that any music I listen to feels fast in the middle of the night or in the morning. I remember waking up in the middle of the night once and starting some music and being amazed at how fast the song felt.

• Whenever I listen to music during or after a workout or a run, it feels like its crawling by.

Has anyone else noticed this? I never thought to correlate it with body temperature until it happened today.

Here's a chart of body heat as a function of the time of day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1911_Animal_heat.png

I think it's interesting given the fact that, although pitch and tempo are essentially the same thing objectively, we have two different notions of them (obviously). Also, the perception of tempo seems to change with body temperature, but the perception of pitch remains identical. Perhaps more proof that every single perceptible frequency increment has a specific anatomical correlation in the cochlea? Body temperature may increase entropy in the brain, but it doesn't change the structure of your cochlea.

[Lemonectric]

Oh, cool. I thought I was going crazy; a lot of the time, music sounds faster to me late at night. Although I can't say I've noticed any other time of day when it changes. And it sounds normal at 7 in the morning, so I don't know.

Edit: Come to think of it, there have been times when it seemed a lot slower, but I can't remember the circumstances.

[Dhsu]

I think it's interesting given the fact that, although pitch and tempo are essentially the same thing objectively

Not really?? Pitch is the frequency of a wave form, tempo is the frequency of the beat in a piece of music. It's possible that if you sped up a given phrase enough, you could get something resembling a separate pitched tone, but at normal speeds your brain isn't going to be able to discern a fraction of a hertz variance due to body temperature.

[Patrick Burns]

Not really?? Pitch is the frequency of a wave form, tempo is the frequency of the beat in a piece of music. It's possible that if you sped up a given phrase enough, you could get something resembling a separate pitched tone, but at normal speeds your brain isn't going to be able to discern a fraction of a hertz variance due to body temperature.

I understand there's a difference between tempo and pitch, but there's only a difference from our subjective view point. Speed up a solo drum track enough, and it's going to change from a tempo to a pitch. I wasn't trying to say anything really profound – it was more like a transition to my next point.

I don't understand your last point, though.

[Chris8282]

Yes, I have felt it. But mostly, when doing activies such as lifting weights, and running.

[Chiwalker]

When I fall asleep in front of the T.V. the ppl always talk fast...supports that it is not 'music' but 'sound' and the frequency that sounds faster.

I personally think that this is because when you are asleep, you don't hear completely, but you piece together everything that you are hearing which creates leaps in speech that make it seem like the person is talking fast.

[Sinewav]

pitch and tempo are essentially the same thing objectively

For example, some of you may have heard of "A=440". This basically means that a click or similar drum sound will generate an A note when played at a tempo of 440. I think that's what he's getting at anyway.

I've experienced something similar, and possibly related. Sometimes when I'm listening to music (live or recorded), but not necessarily paying immediate attention to it... it will sound like the song skips a beat. Like a CD skipping, but it's almost always exactly 1 beat regardless of tempo. Am I going crazy or is this normal?

[Guy In Rubber Suit]

I've never experienced that. Or rather, I've never noticed it.

[Nohbody]

For example, some of you may have heard of "A=440". This basically means that a click or similar drum sound will generate an A note when played at a tempo of 440. I think that's what he's getting at anyway.

I've experienced something similar, and possibly related. Sometimes when I'm listening to music (live or recorded), but not necessarily paying immediate attention to it... it will sound like the song skips a beat. Like a CD skipping, but it's almost always exactly 1 beat regardless of tempo. Am I going crazy or is this normal?

In my professional opinion, you are going crazy.

Lucky for you I dont have a profession so you have nothing to worry about.

On a tangent, I hope that doing studies like these will allow us to engineer a song that is extremely forgetable. Wouldnt that be awesome? A series of pitches that the human brain has the most trouble storing and recalling. Also a license plate of the same nature would be cool.

[PassivePretentiousness]

this thread stinks of pseudoscience.

I entice dhsu to return and affirm my intuition.

[Gollgagh]

For example, some of you may have heard of "A=440". This basically means that a click or similar drum sound will generate an A note when played at a tempo of 440. I think that's what he's getting at anyway.

arrrggghh no

no no no no no

A440 is the tone made by an object vibrating at the frequency of 440 HERTZ, four hundred and forty vibrations per second, not a frickin tempo of 440 beats per minute.

Tempo has absolutely NOTHING to do with pitch.

Y'all don't know what the fuck you're talkin about

The only way "tempo" would have an effect on "pitch" is if you were artificially stretching or shrinking a recording of a sound to match a new tempo different from the old one, thus stretching or shrinking the frequency of the sound, thus lowering or raising the pitch of the sound.

======

Now as for your perception of tempo change, I'd say it sounds entirely possible

[Dhsu]

I understand there's a difference between tempo and pitch, but there's only a difference from our subjective view point. Speed up a solo drum track enough, and it's going to change from a tempo to a pitch. I wasn't trying to say anything really profound – it was more like a transition to my next point.

I don't understand your last point, though.

You seemed to be wondering why body heat might affect tempo but not pitch. Going along with your assertion that they're "essentially the same," my explanation is the difference in scale makes a slight difference in beat frequency much more noticeable than a slight difference in pitch.

That said I'm not sure I entirely buy your theory. It might work with unpitched instruments like drums, but what about say a musical phrase or chord with several different pitches? Or let's use light waves as an example: if you strobe a blue light fast enough, does it eventually begin to look red? Even if you played a drum beat 440 times per second, you would most likely get the same pitch, but it would end up being an odd continuous drumroll sound.

[Dunnowhathuh]

Never. I can't really think of a neuroscience based answer for that phenomenon (either cuz there isn't one cuz it's bullocks or cuz we haven't covered it in my course material). Nevertheless, interesting thing some of you are experiencing there.

[friendlyHunter]

Gollgagh knows what he's talking about.

Also, I have noticed tempo differences before, but I've never correlated it with anything like body temperature or time of day...

[Edit]

Not related to music, but:

I'm currently working on a little game that has a low low framerate of 15 frames per second, so you can imagine it looks kind of choppy. A few times I've played it while I was overly tired, and the animation looked completely smooth!

[Gollgagh]

that's just your brain making some wishful thinking

[friendlyHunter]

Hehe, nah, it's just my brain being too tired to process 15 "frames" a second. Strangely though, the game doesn't seem to go by faster, as this tempo phenomenon might suggest - it just makes me suck at playing it.

Certainly there is some validity to the idea of perceived tempo change - we've all heard of people having moments where where a couple of second "feels like ages"... but that could be something entirely different altogether, unless it's "playing those tricky couple seconds of the guitar solo felt like ages", or something.... arg, it must be ramble o' clock, I'm outta here ><

[Chiwalker]

Weird, it's 12:50 in morning, and I'm listenting to techno and it seems crazy fast...placebo or reality?

[chumble spuzz]

Uh, guys. Time goes faster at night.

[Patrick Burns]

I'm not trying to redefine tempo and I'm not publishing a study. These are anecdotes, and I think it's interesting that my body temperature, or some related process, seems to affect my perception of tempo without affecting my perception of pitch. And yet, when the speed of any audio recording changes, the tempo and pitch are equally affected. If it came across as a big cock wave in need of counter-cock maneuvers, I didn't intend it.

In any event, here is a sequenced drum loop going from 90 bpm to 1320 bpm in my sequencer, and here is a guitar doing the same. 1320 beats per minutes = 220 vibrations per second. That's an A. Any repeated pattern of sound, from an entire drum loop to a single sine wave, can become a tone.

[Gollgagh]

yes,but tempo =! pitch

[Patrick Burns]

Take any bpm, divide it by 60, and you've got pitch in a sense – as long as each beat has the same sound in between.

[SirChadlyOC]

I don't buy a person's body temp affecting tempo recognition. Heart rate? I could be convinced of that. You mentioned that when you are sleeping or otherwise in a state of relaxation that the tempo seems to go faster, and perhaps that is related to your slower heart rate. On the other hand, you said it seems to go slower while exercising, which obviously increases your heart rate. I suppose your heart rate has a tempo. So there.

[Patrick Burns]

I guess a relation is possible, but heart rate changes so quickly... songs don't seem to slow down just because I stand up and start walking from lying down

I wanted to clarify the pitch/tempo thing again. I'm not saying we should start telling orchestras to tempo up before a performance or that a drummer needs to keep his band in pitch. I'm saying that both concepts are basically "sound event" per time interval. In a recorded piece of audio, it's impossible to change one without affecting the other, at least not without advanced algorithms which essentially put a band-aid on one or the other if you're trying to change them in isolation. That's why I said I think they are objectively (from a computer's point of view) the same thing.

Yet, I find that my perception of tempo of a recording can change noticeably without affecting the pitch or timbre in the slightest. I think that's interesting info for the music cognition enthusiast.

[DrumUltimA]

I'm more inclined that it does have to do with heart rate. I experience this phenomena all the time-- when I'm working out, pieces I thought were fast suddenly are not fast at all. Same when I was playing DDR--songs that I thought were fast while watching weren't all that fast while playing. I'm more inclined to think that if it has to do with the human body at all, it would have to do with heart rate--or perhaps the amount of adrenaline in the body, or something. Heart rate is a rhythm that we're subconsciously hearing constantly. Having a faster heart rate doesn't mean that we will hear music more slowly, but rather will seem slower in comparison to our heightened heart rate.

I guess a relation is possible, but heart rate changes so quickly... songs don't seem to slow down just because I stand up and start walking from lying down

That's a fairly minute change in heart rate, and if you're listening to music while you're getting up you won't notice a difference because you're hearing your heart rate change gradually. It's the same sort of effect as if you were to listen to like, 5 dragonforce songs in a row and then immediately go to a slower song that you still considered fast--it would sound very slow to your ears.

[The Author]

It might be a minor form of synastesia. Although I know that when I drive, if I listen to a wider variety of genres, I won't notice anything strange, but if I listen to upbeat or faster music, I will get more aggressive and my heart rate will rise. To a point where, if the music is of a certain speed for a long time, I will be short of breath and physically exhausted afetr driving.

However, I have multiple traits of synastesia, different lights have different sounds, and I figure that sound must have a different effect on my brain.