Example 1. Rhythmic delivery in the first line of the first verse of “Alright” (a) (upper left): Syllable duration in beats (logarithmic axis) versus syllable onset in seconds. Dashed lines indicate musical durations of a sixteenth note (.25 beats), eighth note (.5 beats), and dotted eighth note (.75 beats). (b) (center left): Syllable onsets against meter. The four beats of the measure are indexed from 0, dashed lines indicate each half beat. (c) (lower left): A plausible quantization of the rhythm into a cardinality-16 metric space. (d) (right): Syllable onsets within beat. A transformation of the previous “linear” plot, each clockwise rotation around the spiral represents one beat; “minute” positions provided for orientation. Positions within the cardinality-16 metric space are thus located at 0:00, 0:15, 0:30, and 0:45. Darker lines show the distance between syllables and their nearest cardinality-16 position.