The Weight of Slow Time, or, Metre without Entrainment

Abstract The experience of time is not only an experience of duration, but of weight; that is, of some moments featuring more prominently in experience than others. In musical time, the weight of a note can be described as ‘heavy’ or ‘light’, and, when arranged in a cyclical pattern, these form a metre. In empirical as well as philosophical investigations of rhythm, it is generally accepted that the experience of metre entails entrainment. This understanding, however, defines metrical music on the basis of the neural mechanism it affords, rather than the characteristics of its musical structure. It also excludes music which, although unable to drive entrainment, is nonetheless heard as metrical by those encultured to it. In this article, I propose an understanding of metre as patterns of salience, enacted through an opponent process between bottom-up and top-down functions. This results in a concept of metre able to describe species of metrical rhythm that afford entrainment, as well as species of metrical rhythm that do not.