The Scale-Free Analysis of the Chinese Musical Rhythm

The music rhythm is considered very regular, and the unexpected changes give some surprise to the listeners. In music apreciation, the special rhythm aesthetics comes from its balance and altering of the regularity and change. To reveal this rule from mathematic and physic view is a scientific question which is concerned by people. 123 pieces of Chinese music are selected from four kinds, including ancient music, children's songs, popular music and traditional opera; the multitaper spectra analysis is utilized to compute the power spectra of these music pieces. The results show that the scale exponents of most music pieces range from 0.5 to 1, and the ancient music has the largest exponent about 0.8, a significant difference from the other three kinds. The research reveals that the rhythm of Chinese music is scale-free as same as the natural phenomena, representing the theory of “the harmony of human and nature”.