One might expect scientific investigations of music cognition to produce explanations independent of their cultural and historical situation. Alternatively, scientific work may be contingent: the situation of the music scientist influences their work. In this paper, I consider two interrelated types of this influence.

First, technological context influences which musical cognitive processes scientists study. Drawing from contextualist theories of cognition—which take the stance that the mind’s structure (musical or otherwise) is akin to a set of affordances to be applied to the tasks of the day, rather than a set of fixed, modular capacities—I argue that musicians do not just apply cognitive processes within technological context, but rather interaction with technology can define the processes that are then then studied scientifically. I support this argument with examples from music-theoretical scholarship describing human-technology musical interactions.

Second, experimenters must operationalize musical phenomena to do experimental work, that is, design laboratory-measurable proxy tasks for otherwise complex and polysemous acts. I focus on studies of improvisation because of the instructive difficulty in delimiting its processes. Notably, such operationalizations are not in fact neutral proxies for improvisation tout court. Instead, the tasks (which do not always align with each other) are influenced by the experimenters’ theorizations of improvisation. Accordingly, whatever scientific explanation is formed from experimental findings inherits (or sustains) the contingency that influenced the choice of task.

Finally, I synthesize these two forms of contingency to comment on the character of scientific explanations about musical processes, and argue that an embrace of contingency will better integrate scientific and humanistic aspects of music studies. Contingent scientific findings are still explanatory despite their respective influences, but should not be confused for ahistorical and acultural truths. Scientists might have created explanations of different processes had the context been different. Also, by acknowledging contingency, we validate the priority of humanistic scholarship that provides the scientist with phenomena to study in the first place (e.g., by describing human-technology interactions, or theorizing definitions of activities like improvisation). Finally, contingency invites a certain humility for cognitive scientific studies given the indeterminacy of some future musical mind, with unforeseen context.

While empirical investigation of rhythm’s interaction with other musical parameters dates back to the turn of the 20th century (Bolton, 1894; Woodrow, 1911), the role of timbre in rhythm remains underexplored. Previous research has demonstrated that rhythm perception is affected by changes in timbre (Wessel, 1979), and identified timbral changes as causes of accentuation (Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 1983; Fraisse, 1982). Singh’s (1997) findings suggest that changes in spectral complexity can significantly influence the perception of rhythm and meter, emphasizing the multifaceted role of timbre in shaping meter. Repeating timbral patterns, exemplified in Erickson’s New Loops for Instruments, create musical units and establish metrical structure (McAdams, 2013). While London (2012) conceptualizes meter as an attentional process, the ways in which attention to timbre informs rhythm and meter invite further investigation. This paper begins that investigation by exploring the role of brightness as a perceptual cue in rhythm perception, specifically examining its influence on grouping (identifying which sound is first or last) and prominence (identifying accented sounds) within binary sequences.
Guided by Wagner’s (2022) theoretical framework, which proposes four distinct ways to parse an alternating, binary sequence, this study observes the influence of timbral brightness on grouping and prominence perception. Thirty listeners heard twelve binary sequences, each comprising nine baseline and nine manipulated tones, with brightness levels systematically varied across six increasing levels, using Wood’s (2015) methodology. Sequences were concatenated in two formats: baseline-then-manipulated or vice versa. After each sequence, the listeners answered three multiple-choice questions.
Our findings show that relative brightness is a good cue for finality and prominence in binary groups. A greater percentage of listeners reported that sequences that ended with the brighter tone also ended flush with the end of a binary group. The responses further emphasized that sequences featuring timbral changes often conveyed a binary grouping with final stress (xX). These results highlight timbre’s impact on rhythmic perception, indicating that relative brightness serves as a reliable cue for finality and prominence. They offer a timbral explanation for the backbeat schema that proliferates popular music. Conversely, they may also be the result of exposure to backbeat influenced music.