The Mechanism by Which Tatenori Arises

Summary of the Essential Difference Between Tatenori and Yokonori

The essence of tatenori lies in the way mora-timed rhythm recognizes rhythm.

Japanese:One syllable consists either of two sounds, an onset consonant and a vowel, or of a vowel alone. The rhythm therefore always becomes 2^n. The beginning of the syllable itself is felt to be the beginning of the syllable. This leads to tatenori.

English:One syllable always consists of three parts: onset consonant, vowel, and coda consonant. The rhythm therefore always becomes 3^n. The vowel is felt to be the beginning of the syllable, while consonants are regarded as irregular things drifting between vowels. This leads to yokonori.

The rhythm of Japanese and English differs most clearly in how syllables containing only a vowel are handled. Because Japanese does not distinguish consonants from vowels, if a syllable contains only a vowel, the vowel position advances past the consonant position. This is called Nuclear Advancement (NA).

English rhythm, by contrast, distinguishes consonants from vowels, so even if a syllable contains only a vowel, the position of the vowel always remains fixed. This is called Nuclear Isochrony.

This is reflected in how Americans perceive weak beats: weak beats are recognized as ornamental notes that enter before strong beats. This shows that they perceive them through an analogy in which weak beats correspond to consonants and strong beats correspond to vowels.

Japanese, however, has no such habit because it does not distinguish consonants from vowels. Such sounds are recognized merely as two successive syllables. In other words, Japanese people cannot perceive these “preceding weak beats.”

This means that, for Japanese people, the very concept of the weak beat does not exist. A weak beat is merely two successive beats. The essence of the weak beat lies in the division of time, but that very concept of dividing time is not built into the language.

This difference in perception appears when Japanese musicians perform jazz. When Japanese listeners hear a preceding weak beat, they mistakenly recognize it as the beginning of two successive beats, and their sense of bar position slips out of place. This corresponds to how, in Japanese, the vowel position moves forward past the consonant position when a syllable contains only a vowel.

I call this On-Beat Slipstream.

This also explains why Japanese people cannot understand laid-back timing.

English is known as a language with very long consonants. Once linked coda consonants are included, clusters of five or six consonants can appear. As a result, the last consonant of the coda acquires isochrony, and the vowel is delayed slightly.

When this habit is reflected in music, it appears as the expressive technique called laid-back timing: complex ornaments are added to the weak beat, the rhythm is taken at a point that preserves isochrony, and the strong beat appears slightly later than expected.

When Japanese listeners hear this delayed strong beat, they mistakenly perceive it as the start of the bar and recognize the wrong bar position.

I call this On-Beat Congestion.

The phenomena of tempo rushing and tempo dragging are uniquely Japanese rhythmic illusions that arise when Japanese performers play Western music.

In English, vowels have isochrony but consonants do not. In Japanese, however, not only vowels and consonants but even silence has isochrony. The “container of sound” itself has isochrony. I call this Mora Isochrony (MI).

Escaping from tatenori is the drama of escaping from the perceptual limits of the mora.

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Offbeat Count Theory