FERNANDO BENADON
​Welcome!  Below you will find a listing of my work in music.  Hover over titles for links.

About me: I have a BM in Commercial Arranging from Berklee, where I also minored in saxophone as a student of Bill Pierce. Following additional studies at the Manhattan School of Music (composition) and the Dick Grove School of Music (Composing and Arranging Program), I earned a PhD in Composition at UC Berkeley, studying primarily with Olly Wilson and Jorge Liderman. Since then, I've led a hybrid musical life as a composer, music theorist, and—more recently—alto player. I'm currently Professor of music at American University in Washington, DC.
Book
Swinglines: Rhythm, Timing, and Polymeter in Musical Phrasing
Oxford University Press (2024)
Albums
delight/delirium
works for chamber music (New Focus Recordings)

intuitivo
blended improvisations (Innova Recordings)
More music
click here for tracks and videos
Articles
​Meter Isn't Everything: The Case of a Timeline-Oriented Cuban Polyrhythm
New Ideas in Psychology (2020)

Quantitative Analysis of Temporal Structure in Cuban Guaguancó Drumming
Music & Science (2018)
co-authored with Andrew McGraw & Michael Robinson

Near-Unisons in Afro-Cuban Ensemble Drumming
Empirical Musicology Review (2016)

​A Corpus Analysis of Rubato in Bach's C Major Prelude
Music Performance Research (2015)
co-authored with Damián Zanette


More Rhythmic Interactions in Two (or Three) Aksak Performances
Empirical Musicology Review (2015)

Metrical Perception of Trisyllabic Speech Rhythms
Psychological Research (2014)

Time Warps in Early Jazz
Music Theory Spectrum (2009)

Gridless Beats
Perspectives of New Music (2009)

How Hooker Found His Boogie: A Rhythmic Analysis of a Classic Groove
Popular Music (2009)
co-authored with Ted Gioia

A Circular Plot for Rhythm Visualization and Analysis
Music Theory Online (2007)

Commentary on Butterfield's 'The Power of Anacrusis'
Music Theory Online (2007)

Slicing the Beat: Jazz Eighth-Notes As Expressive Microrhythm
Ethnomusicology (2006)
Book chapters
Loco Vocable: Semantic Satiation in 'Aria Agraria' by Les Luthiers
In "Reframing Music Theory" (OUP, forthcoming), ed. J. Peterson & Kim Loeffert

Representing and Experiencing Rhythm in Drumming from Santiago de Cuba
In "Trends in World Music Analysis" (Routledge 2022), ed. L. Shuster, S. Mukherji, N. Dinnerstein
co-authored with Andrew McGraw
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Modern Drum Solos Over Ostinatos
In "Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm" (OUP 2019), ed. C. Hasty, R. Wolf, & S. Blum

Musical Structure: Time and Rhythm
In "Routledge Companion to Music Cognition" (2017), ed. R. Ashley & R. Timmers
co-authored with Peter Martens
Conference papers
On the Fluidity of Afro-Cuban Meter
Society for Music Theory (Columbus 2019)

Polymetric Phrasing in Rumba's Quinto
Society for Music Theory (Vancouver 2016)

Improvisations of a Quinto Player: Tone, Time, and Motive in Rumba's Lead Drum

Analytical Approaches to World Music (NYC 2016)
co-authored with Andy McGraw

Deep Syncopation in Hindustani Tabla Drumming
Analytical Approaches to World Music (London 2014)

Disentangling the Rubato-Groove Continuum
Society for Music Theory (New Orleans 2012)

Dynamic Exploration of Recording Sessions Between Jazz Musicians Over Time
ASEE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (Amsterdam 2012)
co-authored with Darya Filippova, Carl Kingsford, and Michael Fitzgerald

Metrical Properites of Fusion Drum Solos
Society for Music Theory (Minneapolis 2011)

Crossmodal Analogues of Tempo Rubato
Society for Music Perception and Cognition (Rochester 2011)

Expressive Timing Via Metric Hybrids
International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (Seattle 2010)
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Speech Rhythms and Metric Frames
Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music (New Haven 2009)

Bend It Like Bubber: Miley's Time in 'Creole Love Call'
Society for Music Theory (Baltimore 2007)

Towards a Theory of Tempo Modulation
International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (Evanston 2004)

​Spectrographic and Calligraphic Cues in the Identification of Jazz Saxophonists
European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (Hanover 2003)
Map of Jazz Musicians
An interactive online network of collaborations in recorded jazz
National Endowment for the Humanities, Digital Startup Grant
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