BEN LEEDS CARSON

Structures of ratio exposure considered in conjunction with orientations of rhythm experience:

The most basic distinction we can make with respect to a rhythm's structure of exposure is the distinction between rhythm that we perceive in the abstract -- a simple succession of events, with a distinctive distribution in time -- and rhythm that occurs as a result of 'acoustic' distinctions that, in A. Bregman's classic sense, serve to segregate a subset, or a stream, of events from a larger auditory environment.

However, before considering how 'properties' are affected by stream segregation, note that stream segregation is also inherently stream aggregation. What distinguishes a stream from its environment is that stream's collective distance (e.g. in pitch, or loudness) from events not in the stream. Likewise, what makes the stream itself possible is a collective similarity; members of a stream should be more similar to each other (in at least some way) than they are to non-members.

As a preliminary exercise, the distinction of metric and motivic orientations of experience is can be illuminated through its juxtaposition with structures of exposure. When stream segregation is absent, motivic and metric orientations toward time remain abstractions; when it is present, complex temporal structures arise that their unsegregated counterparts do not specifically predict.