跨文化分析发现旋律与节奏独立演化，非协同变化。
Do Melody and Rhythm Coevolve?
- 从59国2.7万首流行歌中提取音高与节拍分布数据
- 旋律与节奏多样性无显著相关，但节奏与语言差异有关
- 揭示音乐成分可能受不同文化压力驱动
音乐包含旋律和节奏两大核心结构，其表现形式在不同文化间差异显著。二者是否协同演化仍不明确。本文提出一种新型计算流程，从59个国家的27,628首流行歌曲中提取声乐音高间隔与打击乐节拍间隔分布，实现大规模跨文化比较，避免依赖传统音乐标注。国家间的音乐相似性与地理及语言关系一致，验证了方法有效性。旋律与节奏结构在各国间存在显著差异，但两者的多样性未呈现显著相关性，挑战了协同演化的假设。仅节奏多样性与族群及语言异质性显著相关，而旋律多样性无此关联。结果表明，旋律与节奏构成部分独立的系统，受不同文化与进化压力塑造，而非单一音乐风格的组成部分。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Music comprises two core structural components, melody and rhythm, that vary widely across cultures. Whether these components coevolve in a coupled way or follow independent trajectories remains unclear. We introduce a novel computational pipeline to extract vocal melodic pitch-interval and percussive inter-onset timing distributions from 27,628 popular songs across 59 countries, enabling large-scale cross-cultural comparison that bypasses traditional music annotations. Musical similarities between countries aligned with geographic and linguistic relationships, validating our approach. Substantial variation emerged in both melodic and rhythmic structures across countries, yet the diversity of the two components was not significantly correlated, challenging assumptions of coupled evolution. Only rhythmic diversity was significantly associated with ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity, while melodic diversity showed no such association. These findings suggest that melody and rhythm constitute partially independent systems shaped by distinct cultural and evolutionary pressures, rather than components of a single monolithic musical style.
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