Timescales and the Temporal Emergence of Musicking

The aim of this chapter is twofold: to present a new way of mapping timescales of musicking, and to elaborate an explanatory approach that overcomes philosophical reductionism and allows interdisciplinary conversation. It proposes that the emergence of organizational properties in musicking is best understood by looking at the relations between timescales, using the heuristic of inter-scale relationships within temporal ranges. The chapter argues that simpler models of timescales have limited explanatory use and do not naturally capture the experiential richness of musicking. In contrast, the mapping of temporal ranges highlights the relations between many processes that mutually enable and constrain one another across timescales, and across brains, bodies, and environment. The map guides research into the complexity of musicking without sacrificing disciplinary focus. It consists of three domains of organization—sensorimotor, social life, and person/Self—interweaving ecological-enactive concepts of embodiment, self-organization, participatory systems, attunement, normative constraints, habits, and sense-making.