A Platonic Model of Funky Rhythms

Abstract

Many popular and improvised musics project duple meter at multiple levels of a metric hierarchy, and superimpose upon them a series of three-unit spans that induce multi-levelled conflicts with that hierarchy. Adopting a real-time generative model from Pressing 1983, this paper attributes these metric conflicts to relations among the small numbers that underlie the meters. This model suggests a deep resemblance between funky rhythms and the acoustic relations at the core of Plato's model of musical tone. Examples of 3-generation, superimposed on cycles of 8, 16, 32, and 64 units, are examined in compositions of Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Robert and Richard Sherman, Bill Withers, and Deadmau5.