Clynes (1983; 1987) proposes composer specific and metre specific, discrete tempo patterns. This so called composer's pulse is assumed to communicate the individual composer's personality. E.g. in the Beethoven 6/8 pulse the subsequent half-bars span 49 and 51% of the bar duration and each half bar is divided again in 35, 29 and 36%. Clynes is opposed to analysis of performance data: the pulses stem from his intuition. Repp (1990) has undertaken a careful evaluation of this model.
Todd (1985; 1989) proposes an additive model in which beat duration is calculated as a summation of parabola shaped curves, one for each level of hierarchical phrase structure. He complemented the model with an analysis method that calculates phrase structure from beat durations.
Sundberg et al. (1983; 1989) proposes a rule system to generate expression from a score based on surface structure. His research was done in an analysis-by-synthesis paradigm and captures expert intuition in the form of a large set of these rules. An example of a rule is "faster uphill": A duration of a note is shortened if it is preceded by a lower pitched note and followed by a higher pitched one. Van Oosten (1990) has undertaken a critical evaluation of this system.