This article presents a theoretical framework for understanding headbanging to metal music as an embodied practice of perception and offers several analyses to demonstrate how specific patterns serve as a common core of rhythmic patterning in the genre. Listeners express metal’s flexible rhythmic style through headbanging, creating experiences of heaviness and community. This motion brings felt beats into existence, guided by what I call “metering constructions,” familiar rhythmic/motional patterns that are both schematic knowledge of music and embodied practices of perception. I define metering constructions through theories of embodied meter and cognitive linguistics. Two constructions, the backbeat and the phrase-ending 332, are used throughout rock, but distinguished in metal by characteristic drum patterns and motional qualities. Headbangers thus create and perform their own beat interpretation, what I call a “patchwork quilt of recognized rhythms” stitched together in various orders and combinations—sometimes resembling regular isochronous meter, sometimes not.

中文翻译：

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敲响你的头：通过金属音乐中熟悉的鼓模式来解释节拍

本文提出了一个理论框架，将金属音乐的头撞理解为一种具体的感知实践，并提供了一些分析来展示特定模式如何作为该流派节奏模式的共同核心。听众通过headbanging表达金属灵活的节奏风格，创造沉重和社区的体验。在我所谓的“计量结构”的指导下，这种运动带来了感觉节拍，这是一种熟悉的节奏/运动模式，既是音乐的示意性知识，又是感知的具体实践。我通过具身韵律和认知语言学的理论来定义计量结构。整个摇滚都使用了两种结构，backbeat 和乐句结尾 332，但在金属中的区别在于其特有的鼓模式和动感品质。