Research Interests
My main research interest is the production and perception of groove-based music, with focus on on temporal relationships between rhythmic features on both the micro- and macro-level. Questions such as "what makes some rhythms groove" and "how/what do performers do in order to create good grooves" are central to my research.
In my current Post Doctoral project at RITMO, I am investigating the thresholds of timing perception in groove-based popular music. Perceptual experiments are being undertaken to discern the JND (just noticeable difference) thresholds of common groove-based microrhythmic devices (onset asychrony/anisochrony, beat delay/anticipation, swing, etc.) within a wide range of real musical stimuli (e.g. funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, rock).
For my Ph.D., I investigated the expressive means through which musicians well versed in groove-based music shape the timing of a rhythmic event, with a focus on the interaction between produced timing and sound features. In three performance experiments with guitarists, bassists, and drummers, I tested whether musicians systematically manipulate acoustic factors such as duration, intensity, and brightness when intentionally play with a specific microrhythmic timing feel ("pushed", "on-the-beat", or "laid-back"). The results supported my central research hypothesis that both temporal and sound-related properties contribute to how people perceive the location of a rhythmic event in time. My Ph.D. was undertaken a part of the Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm (TIME) project at the RITMO Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion.
In my master’s thesis, I empirically investigated the extent to which pioneer musicians of classic funk and jazz-funk (1967-1971) applied microrhythmic expression devices such as ‘swing’ (non-isochronous subdivision) as well as asynchrony, at the 16th-note level.
Background
I have a Bachelor’s (2013), Master’s (2016) in Musicology from the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo, and a Ph.D. in Musicology from the RITMO Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, University of Oslo.
Parallel to my scholarly pursuits, I have been a performing musician (guitar and percussion) for several years, playing with a variety of funk/soul, reggae/ska and samba/bossa-nova groups, as well as a composer/arranger and recording engineer/producer. I am currently active as guitarist, composer/arranger, and band director of the 8-piece funk-soul ensemble, ‘Baba Soul & The Professors of Funk’, which served as the house band for the Norwegian late-night talk show "Senkveld" on TV2.
Teaching
- MUS2120 - From Sketch to Stage: Songwriting in Theory and Practice
- MUS1450 - Music History 1
- MUS1603 - Music Production 1
- MUS4320 - Music Psychology
- MUS4605 - Research Seminar in Popular Music
- MUS1450 - Music, Identity and Genre