Temporal focus
Flow and continuity
Listen for coherence and continuity versus interruptions, pauses, silences.
Listen for free flow versus marked rhythm.
Listen for events, gestalts and fragments, if there is no rhythm and pulse.Music with a pulse:
Listen for regularity and drive: pulse, meter and rhythm.
Listen for tempo, tempo contrasts, syncopation.
Listen for small tempo variations, rubato.What is the relationship between tones and underlying meter:
“pushing” / “on the beat” / “laid back”?
Is the relationship variable?Music with a groove:
Describe the groove and the rhythm group.
Has the music got swing? If yes, how can you describe it?
What are the relationships between soloist and rhythm group?What is the single instrument’s relationship to the regular meter:
”pushing” / ”on the beat” / ”laid back”?Temporal presence and absence
Listen for the beginning and ending of a phrase, layer or section, and the ensuing silence.
Listen for attack – sustain – and release of a single sound.
Does the sound appear from silence and disappear in silence?
Listen for the field of temporal presence: retention – now - protentionHermeneutical
General question:
What unfolds in this music?