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SESQUIALTERA IN THE COLOMBIAN : PERCEPTION AND ESTIMATION OF BEAT AND METER

Estefanía Cano1 Fernando Mora-Ángel2 Gustavo A. López Gil2 José R. Zapata3 Antonio Escamilla3 Juan F. Alzate2 Moisés Betancur2 1 Fraunhofer IDMT, Germany 2 Universidad de Antioquia, 3 Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana , Colombia [email protected]

ABSTRACT tap the beat of a selection of (Section 2.1). We then investigate whether computational tools can help eth- The bambuco, one of the national rhythms of Colombia, nomusicological investigations on tendencies of bambucos is characterized by the presence of sesquialteras or the su- to follow a given meter. We extracted beat information perposition of rhythmic elements from two meters. In this from a bambuco dataset using state-of-the-art algorithms work, we analyze sesquialteras in bambucos from two per- and evaluate tracking performance (Section 2.5). spectives. First, we analyze the perception of beat and me- The contributions of this work are summarized as fol- ter by asking 10 Colombian musicians to perform beat an- lows: (1) To the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents notations in a dataset of bambucos. Results show great the first study on meter perception in bambucos. (2) We diversity in the annotations: a total of five different me- present an objective evaluation of computational tools for ters or meter combinations were found in the annotations, rhythm analysis on bambucos, and highlight analysis pos- with each bambuco in the study being annotated in at least sibilities for future research. (3) All the data including au- two different meters. Second, we perform a beat tracking dios, transcriptions, annotations, and code have been made analysis in a dataset of bambucos with two state-of-the-art publicly available to enable future research on the topic. algorithms. Given that the algorithms used in the analy- sis were designed to deal with the rhythmic regularity of a 1.1 The bambuco single meter, it is not surprising that tracking performance is not very high ('42% mean F-measure). However, a There are references about the presence of bambuco in deeper analysis of the onset detection functions used for Colombia dating back to the mid 19th century; however, beat tracking, indicate that there is enough information on despite numerous discussions about its origin and musi- the signal level to characterize the bi-metric behavior of cological characteristics, there is no clarity today about bambucos. With this in mind, we highlight possibilities the real origin of this music: Is it indigenous, African or for computational analysis of rhythm in bambucos. Hispanic? Is it urban or peasant mestizo? Despite this uncertainty, the reality is that little by little bambuco be- 1. INTRODUCTION came a regional and musical symbol of identity. Like all the great Latin American genres that fulfilled this purpose The focus of this work is the bambuco, one of the national towards the end of the 19th century and the first half of rhythms of Colombia characterized by the superposition the 20th (e.g. Habanera, Tango, ), to become of musical elements in two meters, 3/4 and 6/8. This phe- a worthy representative of this imagined regional identity sesquialtera nomenon is called , and while it is not unique and of those who coined it, the bambuco had to undergo a to the bambuco [1, 2], this work focuses on perceptual and computational aspects particular to the Colombian bam- buco. Our goal is to better understand how meter in bam- buco is perceived by cultural insiders. To do so, we con- ducted a study where Colombian musicians were asked to

c Estefanía Cano, Fernando Mora-Ángel, Gustavo A. López Gil, José R. Zapata, Antonio Escamilla, Juan F. Alzate, Moisés Betancur. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Interna- tional License (CC BY 4.0). Attribution: Estefanía Cano, Fernando Mora-Ángel, Gustavo A. López Gil, José R. Zapata, Antonio Escamilla, Juan F. Alzate, Moisés Betancur, “Sesquialtera in the Colombian bam- buco: Perception and estimation of beat and meter”, in Proc. of the 21st Figure 1: Bambuco example showing the downbeat, cau- Int. Society for Music Information Retrieval Conf., Montréal, Canada, 2020. dal syncopation and a accompaniment pattern.

409 Proceedings of the 21st ISMIR Conference, Montreal,´ Canada, October 11-16, 2020 transformation process referred to as “whitening” [3]. This whitening can be understood as a progressive adherence to the bourgeois ideal of chamber music. This particular process has been studied by the Colombian ethnomusicol- ogist Santamaria in [4]: “When relocating to the city since the mid-19th century, the bambuco progressively stopped being popular and became music to be per- formed and listened to in an atmosphere of literary or con- Figure 2: Tiple accompaniment patterns cert gatherings”. Bambucos show musical elements typical of ancient Spanish-Iberian and Colombian peasant dances, typified ception [3]. as sesquialteras, whose main characteristic is a bi-metric The different levels of complexity described in this sec- behavior (3/4 - 6/8) within the melodic line or between tion become critical elements when developing computa- the melodic line and the bass line. This behavior can be tional tools for musicological analysis of these music tra- observed in the example in Figure 1 where the guitar ac- ditions. companiment has elements from both 6/8 and 3/4. An- other characteristic element of bambucos is the presence 1.2 Beat and meter perception of caudal syncopation in its phrases (sixth eighth note tied The perception of meter and beat in music is directly as- to the first eighth note of the following measure -see Fig. 1) sociated with the perception of regularity. It is precisely which can result in the perception of a delay or a harmonic this regularity that allows the listener to create expectations anticipation [5]. Another element of bambucos which adds about the musical events in a given time span [8]. While to its rhythmic complexity is the characteristic accentua- beat perception is mostly linked to a perceived periodicity, tion of the third pulse in the accompaniment patterns in meter is additionally linked to an accentuation pattern that 3/4, which leads to the perception of a downbeat that is not differentiates, for example, beats from downbeats. Based the first pulse of the bar. on these ideas, Western music theory defines a hierarchi- Of the instruments that usually participate in the perfor- cal relationship between beats, measures (bars), and me- mance of this type of bambucos 1 (such as , tiples, ter (see Figure 3). For certain musical traditions where a and bandolas 2 ), the main role of the rhythmic accompani- unique meter cannot always be clearly defined (such as the ment is usually delegated to the tiple. The tiple is a plucked bambuco but also Bolivian Easter songs [6], the Southern string instrument slightly smaller than a guitar, with 12 Eve dance drumming of the Guinea Coast [2], among oth- strings grouped in four tripled courses. One of the instru- ers), Western music theory (and music notation) can of- ment’s most characteristic idiomatic playing techniques is ten fall short in providing an accurate representation of the aplatillado which is achieved by bringing the nails these traditions. In the particular case of the Colombian closer to the strings to alter their timbre. With an alternat- bambuco, its correct music notation has been the source of ing up and down strumming and the aplatillado (see Fig- many academic discussions [3]. Besides the superposition ure 2), textural elements are generated that can sometimes of 3/4 and 6/8 meters, bambuco’s characteristic accentua- interfere with rhythm perception. This is similar to what tion pattern (due to caudal syncopation and the accentua- happens in the (traditional string instrument) in tion of the third beat in 3/4 by the accompaniment - see certain Bolivian music [6]. Section 1.1) adds another layer of complexity as the tradi- Ramón y Rivera [7], proposed the term "free rhythm" tional definition of downbeats (Figure 3) do not hold in the in the context of Latin American music to refer to a certain case of bambuco. elasticity in the unit of time, in breathing and in the exe- Of particular interest in this context is the work by Sto- cution of rhythmic groups, as opposed to a rhythmic refer- bart et al. [6] on rhythm perception of Bolivian Easter ence subject to a measure or bar. This rhythmic freedom is songs. The study outlines how cultural outsiders perceived observed in the set of recordings that are part of this study and that account not only for particularities of the genre, but also for a historical moment of the recordings not rigor- ously subject to a metronomic guide. Additionally, tempo and micro-timing in bambuco appear to work in general in a flexible way, with even subtle differences between tim- ing of the melody and that of the various elements of the accompaniment. These freedoms could be associated with the rubato of European music or with the floating rhythm of ; however, it is a different phenomenon that con- tributes to the rhythmic complexity of bambuco and its per- Figure 3: Hierarchical relationship between meter, mea- 1 More information available: https://acmus-mir.github. sures (bars) and beats as defined in Western music theory. io/publication/ismir2020/ In both 3/4 and 6/8, the beats are indicated with vertical 2 Instrument descriptions: https://acmus-mir.github.io/ -music/ lines, and the downbeat with a blue arrow.

410 Proceedings of the 21st ISMIR Conference, Montreal,´ Canada, October 11-16, 2020 these songs as anacrustic 6/8 rhythms, while footfalls of 2.2 Participants locals dancing to the rhythm of the music indicated a 2/4 A total of 10 Colombian participants took part in the per- rhythmic perception. The authors highlight that accentua- ceptual study (8 male, 2 female, ages 25-50), all of whom tion patterns of the charango (traditional string instrument) had been exposed to bambuco music throughout their lives accompaniment as well as stress patterns in the local lan- (cultural insiders). All the participants had musical train- guage Quechua in which the songs are sung, are possible ing, and were either university music students or profes- causes of the differences in perception. sional musicians: five guitarists, two bandola players, two pianist, one flutist, one singer. The majority of the par- 1.3 Music Information Retrieval (MIR) approaches ticipants had previous experience performing bambucos for rhythm analysis within their musical practices. The computational analysis of musical beat has been widely addressed in the literature, predominately applied 2.3 Survey to Western popular music [9] but also applied to non- As part of the perceptual study, each participant also an- Western music [10, 11]. While beat tracking accuracy swered a short survey consisting of three questions: (1) for Western popular music can already be very high, beat Which musical elements guided you when tapping the tracking of non-Western music presents many more chal- beat? (2) Was there any element that made the annotation lenges, and performance highly depends on the rhythmic process difficult? and (3) Do you have any observations complexity of each music tradition. In the particular case about the tempo in these bambucos? 1 of Latin American music, work on computational analysis of rhythm has either focused on understanding character- istic patterns in micro-timing that implant local rhythms 2.4 Annotations their unique rhythmic feel (e.g. Brazilian Samba [12], and 2.4.1 Beat Uruguayan [13]), on using rhythmic pattern templates for beat tracking (e.g. Afro-Cuban rhythms [14], For the perceptual study, the 10 participants were asked to and Uruguayan Candombe [15]) or on genre classifica- tap the beat to the selection of 10 bambucos using the com- 4 tion [16]. puter keyboard in Sonic Visualiser. Participants were To the authors’ knowledge, an in-depth computational given freedom to tap the beats that felt more natural to analysis of rhythm in the Colombian bambuco has never them. No indications about meter were given to the partic- been performed. This motivated the preliminary beat ipants to avoid biasing them. Two sets of annotations were tracking evaluation where the goal was to understand how recorded: (1) Beat annotations tapped while listening to state-of-the-art tools for beat tracking perform when me- the audio (without any visual information) without allow- ters superpose in music. However, we approach this evalu- ing corrections by the participants (Audio Only). (2) Par- ation not with the expectation that the algorithms will suc- ticipants were allowed to modify their initial beat annota- ceed in tracking rhythmic patterns they were not originally tions in Sonic Visualiser using both audio information and designed to track; we approach this evaluation with the a visual representation of the audio waveform. Participants goal of understanding the potential of these techniques to were allowed to make as many corrections as necessary for be expanded into meaningful musicological analysis tools them to be satisfied with their annotations (Audiovisual + for bambucos and music from the Andes in general. corrections). If participants were satisfied with the Audio Only annotations, the correction step was not performed. 5 For the computational beat tracking analysis, the anno- 2. BAMBUCO ANALYSIS tations from the Rhythms Set of the ACMUS-MIR (V1.1) 3 2.1 Dataset dataset were used. With the awareness that in many cases a unique meter in bambucos cannot be defined, beat anno- The data used in this study is part of the ACMUS-MIR tations in the dataset were performed independently for the dataset (V1.1), 3 a collection of annotated music from the two predominant meters, 3/4 and 6/8. For the 73 bambu- Andes region in Colombia [17]. To evaluate beat track- cos, these two sets of annotations were used, each assum- ing performance, all the bambucos in the Rhythm Set of ing a unique underlying meter [17]. the ACMUS-MIR dataset were used (N=73). From the 73 bambucos, a smaller selection of 10 bambucos were 2.4.2 Melody, bass and chord annotations 5 used in the perceptual study (see Table 1 for details). The melody line and the bass of each bambuco in the per- The 10 bambucos in the perceptual study were chosen as ceptual study were transcribed by four professional mu- they clearly exemplify the bi-metric behaviour of the bam- sicians in Colombia. The transcriptions in MIDI format buco genre, and include a diversity of instrumental formats were manually aligned to the audio signal resulting in time- (duets, trios, wind orchestra). Additionally, the majority of aligned transcriptions. The chord progression of each bam- the tracks were composed by Luis Uribe Bueno, a repre- buco was also annotated (see Fig. 4 for an example). 5 sentative composer and performer of bambuco in Colom- bia. 4 https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/ 5 Audio and annotations: https://zenodo.org/record/ 3 ACMUS-MIR: https://zenodo.org/record/3965447 3829091#.Xxd3IZ7TuUk

411 Proceedings of the 21st ISMIR Conference, Montreal,´ Canada, October 11-16, 2020

Title Composer Tempo 3/4 Tempo 6/8 Duration BLIND RE- [bpm] [bpm] [sec] VIEW IDs Mimí Unknown 181 121 19.4 rh_0001 Campanitas de mi pueblo Luis Uribe Bueno 154 102 18.8 rh_0002 El espinaluno Carlos A. Rosso Manrique 213 142 16.4 rh_0003 El marco de tu ventana Luis Uribe Bueno 130 89 13.9 rh_0038 Baile de ranas Luis Uribe Bueno 153 102 16.5 rh_0039 Bambuco instrumental Luis Uribe Bueno 192 128 15.1 rh_0067 Bambuco instrumental Luis Uribe Bueno 195 128 20.1 rh_0079 Bambuco instrumental Luis Uribe Bueno 199 132 17.0 rh_0080 Bambuco instrumental Luis Uribe Bueno 169 113 25.5 rh_0100 Bochicaniando Luis Uribe Bueno 184 123 25.6 if_0172

Table 1: Selection of bambucos from the ACMUS-MIR dataset used in the perceptual study. Each segment corresponds to a complete musical idea or phrase taken from the original recording. Due to the superposition of 3/4 and 6/8 meters in these bambucos, tempo annotations for both meters are presented.

number of false positives (extra detections), and the num- ber of false negatives (missed detections). Under this met- ric, completely unrelated beat sequences typically score around 25% by virtue of beats arbitrarily falling within the range of tolerance windows. Continuity-based evaluation considers regions of con- tinuously correct beat estimates relative to the length of the audio signal. This is the case of the Correct Metri- cal Level Continuity (CMLc) measure, which computes the ratio of the longest continuously correct segment to the length of the input. By definition, continuity is defined Figure 4: Example transcription of the first two measures using a tolerance window of ±17.5% around each annota- of track rh_0067. Conventional music notation and their tion, considering an estimation as correct if it falls within MIDI representation is displayed. this window. To include the effect of beats in other seg- ments, a less strict measure considers the total number of correct beats at the correct metrical level without the con- 2.5 Automatic beat tracking tinuity criteria (CMLt) [20]. Lastly, to account for ambi- guity in the metrical level, two additional metrics consider For beat tracking evaluation, two state-of-the-art algo- beats tapped at double or half the annotated metrical level, rithms were used to predict the beat positions. The first with the same continuity criteria as before. This conditions set of beat tracking estimations was obtained using Mad- are considered allowed metrical levels resulting in the Al- mom. 6 In the context of the Madmom library, we specifi- lowed Metrical Level Continuity (AMLc) metric and its cally used a multi-model approach that uses recurrent neu- less strict alternative (AMLt) [20]. 8 ral networks to track beats [18]. The second algorithm used for beat estimation was the Multi-Feature Beat tracker (MultiBT) [19] implemented in Essentia. 7 This algorithm 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION selects between beat estimations from a single beat track- 3.1 Meter perception in bambucos ing model with diverse input features. Given the bi-metric characteristics of bambucos, independent ground-truth an- The beat annotations obtained from the 10 participants notations assuming either a 3/4 or 6/8 meter were used (see (Section 2.4.1) were analyzed by three musicologists in Section 2.4.1). Colombia to determine the underlying meter(s) perceived For evaluation we use a subset of metrics from the stan- by each participant in each track. 5 Even though partici- dard evaluation methods described in [20]. Among all the pants were given freedom to tap beats that felt natural to proposed metrics, we chose the F-measure (F1), along with them, each annotation can be directly mapped back to a the continuity measures originally defined in [21,22]. This given meter. This can be understood by looking at Figure allows us to analyze both the ambiguity associated with the 3: If a participant taps three beats per bar, these annotations annotated metrical level and the continuity in the beat esti- are mapped back to a 3/4 meter. Conversely, if a participant mates. The F-measure (F1) is a generic score often used in taps two beats per bar, the underlying meter is assumed to information retrieval. For beat tracking, it is common prac- be 6/8. In total, five different meters or meter combinations tice to use a ±70 ms tolerance window around annotations were observed: 3/4 meter, 6/8 meter, a combination of 3/4 to consider a beat prediction as correct. The F-measure and 6/8, "one count" annotations where participants anno- takes into consideration the number of correct beats, the tated the first beat of the measure (blue arrows in Fig. 3

6 https://madmom.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ 8 Code available: https://github.com/ACMUS-MIR/ 7 https://essentia.upf.edu/ publications-resources/tree/master/ISMIR2020

412 yai aueo ee ecpini bambucos. the in indicate perception and further meter "1", results of to These nature "6/8" dynamic "3/4". from to two "6/8" "6/8", from "3/4- to one to "3/4" "6/8" from from two modified 6/8", were instances two "6/8", to ( annotations rections revised showed the instances with ( 10 tations the of comparing total when a meters different participants), 10 x tracks rh_0003. than tempi slower with them bambucos of seven all annotated alterna- "1", p8 in "1-6/8" Participant the case. choosing this in p8 tive with mostly is "6/8", which in rh_0003, annotated is dataset The 1 our Table dataset. in bambuco bambuco our here. fastest of case distribution the tempo not the be fast shows is longer in no this music might However, bar to a comfortable. related in beats often all is counting where "1" practice tempi, The in 3). music Fig. counting (see of "3/4" first and the "6/8" as in perception coincides meter beat annotation in of ambiguity type the only the removes is that in- who this is that sense This (p8), the eight in "1". teresting in participant bambucos in the annotated interest me- predominantly particular "3/4" Of a perceived ter. "3/4-6/8" participants the two and and "6/8" meter. combination, perceived 6/8 participants in tracks the the of all Two annotated participants five 10 that the seen be of can It participant. per aggregated there notations 6/8. to hence, default and to musicians 6/8, trained in in tendency convention a bam- a be today, might of as as written that is noted, be buco should It in predominant annotations. be the to proved combinations meter 6/8 meter The or perceived. meters were different two least at bucos, ( annotations corrections revised + the from track per gated "1", "3/4-6/8", "6/8", respectively. "1-6/8", "3/4", and These denoted are annotations. alternatives count" com- five "one a and and 6/8 bambucos), in between beat bination traditions accentuated Western the not in are downbeats but the to correspond which observed. were combinations meter or meters distinct Five tracks. 10 the over 5 Figure rceig fte2s SI ofrne Montr Conference, ISMIR 21st the of Proceedings

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       Proceedings of the 21st ISMIR Conference, Montreal,´ Canada, October 11-16, 2020

3/4 beats 6/8 beats Madmom MultiBT Normalized Superflux Normalized

Time [sec]

Figure 6: Onsets detection function extracted using Superflux on a segment of track rh_0002. Ground-truth annotations in 3/4 and 6/8 are shown, as well as beat estimations obtained with Madmom and MultiBT.

These results indicate that in certain occasions, the algo- and MultiBT (dashed lines) are also shown in the figure. rithms are tracking a higher metrical level, detecting the The complexity of the task is further confirmed by the fact first beat of the bar as the underlying beat (similar to the that, not surprisingly, the estimations obtained by the Mad- "1" annotations in the perceptual study). As previously mom and MuiltiBT also tend to overlap with peaks in the mentioned, this is the only beat where 6/8 and 3/4 coin- onset detection function. cide. When focusing on those metrics that only consider the correct estimations and not the false positives and false negatives, namely AMLc, AMLt, CMLc and CMLt, Mad- mom appears to be consistently better at estimating beats 4. CONCLUSIONS in 3/4 than in 6/8. In contrast, MultiBT shows better per- formance for 6/8 for the same set of metrics. This work presented an analysis of beat and meter in the Evaluation results confirmed our initial hypothesis that Colombian bambuco, a rhythm characterized by the pres- the bi-metric nature of our dataset can be challenging for ence of musical elements from two different meters. Our the beat tracking algorithms. However, to better under- perceptual study confirmed that even for human listeners, stand the potential of beat tracking algorithms when work- there is not an unique understanding of the rhythmic struc- ing with our dataset, we analyzed the onset detection func- tures of the genre. Even though current conventions as- tions, as obtained by the spectral flux or the superflux, 6 sume a 6/8 meter when writing bambucos, our perceptual of the 10 bambucos in our dataset. 8 Onset detection func- study confirmed that reality is much more complex than tions are intermediate signal representations often used in that. A total of five metric alternatives were found in the beat tracking algorithms that highlight time instants of the annotations produced by the participants in the study. Not signal where onsets might be present. A peak in the on- surprisingly, results from the computational analysis con- set detection function suggests that there is a high prob- firmed that beat tracking models developed to deal with ability of an onset occurring in that position. With this the regularity of a unique meter, do not fully characterize analysis, the goal was to understand whether enough infor- the complex rhythmic interactions in bambucos. However, mation could be found on the signal level to characterize our analysis of onset detection functions suggests that there the bi-metric behaviour of bambucos. Figure 6 shows a is relevant information in these signal representations that segment of the onset detection function obtained with Su- could be leveraged for musicological analysis of bambu- perflux on track rh_0002. The ground-truth beat annota- cos. It is clear from the findings in this study that the de- tions in 6/8 and in 3/4 are also displayed for reference. It velopment of tools for rhythm analysis of bambucos –or should be noted that the annotations in 3/4 and 6/8 were of any other music tradition that shares similar rhythmic extracted independently by different annotators, and hence properties– cannot be approached from a binary decision the downbeats (which in theory should coincide) do not ex- (right/wrong) perspective. This calls for rhythm analysis actly overlap in all cases. Strong peaks in the onset detec- tools with an exploratory nature, where the existence of tion function can be observed in most beat positions from several truths is permitted, and the choice of the most rele- the ground-truth annotations (solid orange line (3/4) and vant one is both task- and context-dependent. Our hope is solid green line (6/8) lines). This suggests that regardless that this study as well as the data and annotations collected of the rhythmic complexity, there is information that can be in it, will serve as a preliminary step in the development of exploited to characterize the metric behavior of bambucos. computational tools for musicological analysis of bambu- For reference, the beat estimations obtained by Madmom cos and .

414 Proceedings of the 21st ISMIR Conference, Montreal,´ Canada, October 11-16, 2020

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