I would like to direct your attention to our study on 1/f fluctuations in human music performance: Rankin, S.K., Large, E.W., Fink, P. (2009). Fractal Tempo Fluctuation and Pulse Prediction, Music Perception, 26,(5),401-413 http://www.jstor.org/stab...
Our study showed that a musician exhibited 1/f-type long-range correlations in her tempo fluctuations while playing various piano pieces. We then, asked subjects (musician and non-musician) to tap with the fluctuating tempi and with a control (quantized versions). We found that subjects taps scaled with the piece (Inter-tap intervals were persistent when tapping with the performance and anti-persistent when tapping to the quantized version).
There is also a paper on the perception of the long-term structure in tempi. Dixon, S., Goebl, W., Cambouropoulos, E. (2006). Perceptual smoothness of tempo in expressively performed music. Music Perception, 18, 1-24.
Regards,
Summer K. Rankin