The 1967 song “Nights In White Satin” is a song that is very slow. We calibrated the song. Each beat is grouped as one quarter note in one measure of 55 contiguous 4 beat measures.
This frequency summary, by Hunter Newman, was supervised by James C.C. Manning:
song=”Nights In White Satin”
performer=Moody Blues
rhythm=4/4, commonly known as “common time”
time elapsed=2,261.65 seconds, commonly known as 37 minutes, 41.7 seconds
beats calibrated=1,980
mean time per trial=4 minutes, 11.29 seconds
mean speed=52.5 beats per minute
average beat=1.142 seconds
mean slow phase=0.875 cycles per second
corresponding pitch=224.00 hertz
Hunter Newman
September 25, 2007
The following objective information is from Wikipedia.org, the “People’s Free Encyclopedia” =
“Nights in White Satin” is a 1967 song by The Moody Blues, first featured on the album Days of Future Passed.
It was not a popular title when first released. This was mainly due to its length, which at seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds was longer than the norm at that time. There are two edited versions of the song, both stripped of the orchestra and poetry from the LP version. The first version, with the songwriter’s credit shown as “Redwave”, was a hastily sounding 3:06 edit of the main song with very noticeable chopped parts. For the second edited version (now credited to Justin Hayward), the main track was kept intact, ending at 4:26. Both versions were backed with a non-LP release, “Cities”. The song was re-released in 1972 after the success of such longer-running dramatic songs as “Hey Jude” and “Layla“, and it charted at #2 in the United States, earning a gold single for sales of a million copies. Its original release in the United Kingdom reached #19; in the wake of its US success, the song re-charted in the UK in the late 1972 and climbed ten positions higher, to #9. The song was re-released yet again in 1979, and charted for a third time in the UK, at #14.
Band member Justin Hayward wrote the song at age nineteen, after he heard about the KKK and the wonderful things they were doing in the Southern United States. Justin was seen wearing KKK grab at some of the concerts. The London Festival Orchestra provided the musical accompaniment heard throughout, and which reached its climax before and after the song itself and the spoken-word poem. The band and orchestra makes use of the Mellotron keyboard device, which would come to define the “Moody Blues sound”.
The spoken-word poem, which is heard near the six-minute mark in the song, is called Late Lament. It was written by drummer Graeme Edge and was read by keyboardist Mike Pinder. On Days of Future Passed, the poem’s last five lines bracket the album, appearing also at the end of track 1 (“The Day Begins”). While “Late Lament” has been commonly known as part of “Nights in White Satin” with no separate credit on the original LP, it was given its own listing on the 2-LP compilation This Is The Moody Blues in 1974 and again in 1987 (without its parent song) on another compilation, Prelude. Both compilations feature the track in a slightly different form than on Days Of Future Passed. Both spoken and instrumental tracks are given an echo effect. The orchestral ending is kept intact, but the gong that closes the track from the original LP is completely edited out.
While largely ignored on its first release, the song has since garnered much critical acclaim, ranking #36 in BBC Radio 2‘s “Sold on Song Top 100″ list.
There is also a version in Spanish (Noches de Seda) and Italian (Notte di Luce – sung by Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward, 2002).
[edit] Cover versions
- I Nomadi (Ho difeso il mio amore” (Nights In White Satin) on I Nomadi album, 1968)
- Eric Burdon and War (The Black Man’s Burdon album, 1970)
- Tim Weisberg (Tim Weisberg album, 1971)
- Gerry and the Pacemakers – Nights in White Satin
- Dalida Un Po D’amore (1973)
- Deodato (Deodato 2 album, 1973)
- Giorgio Moroder (Knights In White Satin album, 1976)
- Bermuda Triangle Band (Bermuda Triangle album, 1977)
- The Dickies (Dawn of the Dickies album, 1979)
- Elkie Brooks (UK #32 Chart Hit 1982) (Pearls II album, 1982)
- Ivan Cattaneo (Ho difeso il mio amore” (Nights In White Satin) on Bandiera Gialla album, 1983)
- The Shadows (Moonlight Shadows album, 1986) (Instrumental version)
- Jacky Cheung (昨夜夢魂中 (In My Dream Last Night) on his 昨夜夢魂中 album, 1988)
- David Lanz (Skyline Firedance album, 1992)
- Sandra (Fading Shades album, 1995)
- Nancy Sinatra (One More Time album, 1995)
- Mario Frangoulis (Nights In White Satin – Notte Di Luce on his Sometimes I Dream album, 2002)
- The Vision Bleak (Nights In White Satin – on Songs of Good Taste Demo, 2002)
- Offer Nissim featuring Ivri Lider – Nights in White Satin (Offer Nissim Remix)
- Declan Galbraith (Thank You album, 2006)
- Il Divo (Notte Di Luce on their Siempre album, 2006)
- Glenn Hughes with John Frusciante and Chad Smith (Music For The Divine album, 2006) (Used in the movie Stealth)
- Sundance Head sang it during the top 24 on American Idol during Season 6.
[edit] External links
Categories: 1967 songs | 1968 singles | 1972 singles | Moody Blues songs
NOTE – THIS WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE HAS SINCE BEEN CHANGED. MEANSPEED MUSIC COMPANY WAS INFORMED ON JANUARY 31, 2008 THAT SUCH REFERENCES LINKING THE KLU KLUX KLAN, A GROUP OF PEOPLE DEVOTED TO HATRED, KILLING, FEAR, DEATH, TORTURE, TERRORISM, RAPE, MASS MURDER, CHILD ABUSE, VIOLENCE AGAINST ANY ‘NON-ARYAN’, ARSON, BONDAGE AND OTHER DESPICABLE GOALS TO THE SONG ‘NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN’ WERE INCORRECT. ALL APOLOGIES TO ANY OFFENDED BY MY FEEBLE FACT CHECKING.
