Grace notes

A grace note is a musical ornament, that is, a short note played just before a main one. It falls within the broad music-theoretic category of ornaments to which, for example, trills belong as well. In the musical score the duration of these notes is not indicated, their actual length is left to convention and the performer. They are not part of the metrical hierarchy, they are overlaid on the rhythmical structure, as one would expect of an ornament. There are different types of grace notes, depending on their musical context, the most important classes are appogiatura, so-called time-taking ornaments and acciaccatura, timeless ornaments

This study's goal is the inference of a typology of grace notes from the dependency of their timing on global tempo, the influence of their existence on perceived local tempo, and the structure of mental timekeepers that control their production as deduced from co-varying time intervals. The typology will be formalized as an object oriented decomposition of behavior and will be compared to the music theoretical constructs.

• Timmers, R. (2002). Freedom and Constraints in Timing and Ornamentation: Investigations of music performance. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing.
• Timmers, R., Desain, P., Honing, H., & Trilsbeek, P. (2002). Introducing a model of grace note timing. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Music, Motor Behavior and the Mind. Ascona, 32.
• Windsor, W. L., Desain, P., Honing, H., Aarts, R., Heijink, H., and Timmers, R. (1998) Graceful Timing: Ornaments, Tempo and Musical Structure. In Proceedings of the 7th Rhythm Perception and Production Workshop, 35.
• Windsor, W. L., Aarts, R., Desain, P., Heijink, H., and Timmers, R. (2001) The timing of grace notes in skilled musical performance at different tempi: a preliminary case study. Psychology of Music, 29, 149-169.
• Timmers, R., Desain, P., and Honing, H. (2000) Timing of grace notes in piano performances of a Beethoven Theme In Proceedings of the eighth International Workshop on Rhythm Perception and Production.
• Timmers, R., Ashley, R., Desain, P., Honing, H., & Windsor, L. (2002) Timing of ornaments in the theme of Beethoven's Paisiello Variations: Empirical Data and a Model. Music Perception, 20(1), 3-33.
• Windsor, W. L., Desain, P., Honing, H., Aarts, R., Heijink, H., and Timmers, R. (2000) On Time: The influence of tempo, structure and style on the timing of grace notes in skilled musical performance. In Desain, P. and Windsor, W. L Rhythm Perception and Production 217-223. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger
• Desain, P., & Honing, H. (1994). Does expressive timing in music performance scale proportionally with tempo? Psychological Research, 56, 285-292.