ABSTRACT
The author discusses the ways in which timbral relationships affect the experience of microtemporal distance between musical events. His music-analytic point of departure will be African-American hip-hop music, a groove-based genre that relies to a significant extent upon microrhythmic tension and originates in a cultural tradition characterized by its play with expectations. In his Auditory Scene Analysis, Bregman defines perception as 'the process of using the information provided by our senses to form mental representations of the world around us'. Bregman proposes that timbre affects grouping so that sounds with a similar timbre will be grouped as one auditory stream. The author explore the role of timbre in this process through a comparative analysis of 'The Hustle' from the album Electric Circus by the hip-hop artist Common and 'Untitled (How Does It Feel)' from the album Voodoo by the neo-soul/contemporary r&b artist D'Angelo. Sonograms are seldom used in analyses of microrhythm.
