Study reveals that the tempo of musical performance slows down significantly as artists age

Study reveals that the tempo of musical performance slows down significantly as artists age

A groundbreaking study has revealed that the tempo of musical performances slows down significantly as artists age, reflecting well-established patterns of motor behaviour degradation across the adult lifespan. Drs Geoff Luck and Alessandro Ansani from the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies analysed 14,556 songs released between 1956 and 2020 by artists with careers spanning at least two decades in a bid to examine how ageing affects creative performance.

Scientists have long recognized correspondences between motor behaviour and musical performance timing. However, it is also well-documented that motor abilities decline with age due to neurobiological decay. Specifically, performance in speed-dependent tasks deteriorates, spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) slows, and upper motor rate limit decreases.

The aim in this new study was to investigate whether slowdown in motor behaviour with age impacts tempo of musical performance. Because the dataset contained both fixed effects (tempo trends across time in general) and random effects (individual artist variations in tempo), and to allow for the possibility of a non-linear trend of tempo across the lifespan, Luck and Ansani used both Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs) and Linear Mixed Models (LMMs) to examine the difference between the artist's birth year and the release year of each track.

Their results revealed that tempo slightly increases from early adulthood to age 30, but then undergoes a significant linear slowdown for the remainder of an artist's life. From artists' thirties to their eighties, the tempo of songs they release decreases by almost 10 beats per minute (bpm), averaging around 2 bpm per decade.

Geoffrey Luck