Review of <i>Swinglines: Rhythm, Timing, and Polymeter in Musical Phrasing</i> , by Fernando Benadon (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Swinglines: Rhythm, Timing, and Polymeter in Musical Phrasing is in many ways the culmination of nearly twenty years of research by one of the field's most restless writers on musical time.Over the course of his academic career, Benadon has written extensively on aspects of swing, microtiming, metric perception, phrasing, and more. (1) His work frequently puts into dialogue quantitative and qualitative perspectives on musical time in ways that are imaginative yet grounded, rigorous yet approachable.This new book continues in the same vein, compiling dozens of in-depth analyses of recorded performances in order to explore the many ways that rhythms can flow outside of a strict, isochronous grid.