Monthly Archives: March 2008

Ray Charles – GEORGIA ON MY MIND, 63.5 bpm – #44 the on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest – Seeing Tempo with graphs and controlling your mind. Really.

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The song which ranks #44 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time is called “Georgia On My Mind” by the late Ray Charles.


I measured the speeds of the Charles ultra-classic using a Seiko 300 lap stopwatch which facilitates contiguous calibrations. James C.C. Manning supervised.

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
beats counted=220
mean time=3 minutes, 28.0 seconds
meanspeed=63.5 beats per minute
average beat=945 milliseconds
meanemotion according to meanspeed music theory=ceremony (songs between 63-69 beats per minute).

linear speed graph created by James The Senator Manning for meanspeed music © 2007


In order to see the speed, let us look at the measurements I entered into Microsoft’s Excel 2004 spreadsheet program. The first sheet shows the measurements of 10 trials of the first 15 of 55 contiguous measures of 4 quarter-notes were entered and subsequently synthesized by James The Senator Manning–

Spreadsheet of contiguous measures of 4 quarter-notes in contiguous measurements were entered and subsequently synthesized by James C.C. Manning. Excel spreadsheet by Ian Schneider on which the measurements of 10 trials of the measures entered and subsequently synthesized by James C.C/ Manning

An excellent article by the folks at “The Stone” about the Ray Charles song appears at
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6595889/georgia_on_my_mind


Ian Schneider
James The Senator Manning
Meanspeed Music
March 27, 2008

Tina Turner – "Drenched in my sweat, I took my shirt off and sang in my bra" – Calibrations, images of speed of River Deep, Mountain High

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Song #33 on the Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time is called River Deep, Mountain High. This song is performed by Ike and Tina Turner. The Rolling Stone has an article on the song found at http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6595878/river_deep__mountain_high, which features this passage:

“I must have sung that 500,000 times,” Tina later said. “I was drenched with sweat. I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra to sing.”
Ike & Tima Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High" - meanspeed neurology and tempo graph. © 2009.

Ike & Tina Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High" - meanspeed neurology and tempo graph. © 2009.

Meanspeed®-Carlton Summary
song title – River Deep, Mountain High
performer=The late, great, misunderstood Ike and the still-too sexy-at-whatever-age Turner
beats calibrated per trial=540
mean time per trial= 3 minutes, 20.7 seconds
mean speed/average tempo=156.9 beats per minute
average beat=0.382 seconds.

/Ian Andrew Schneider/

River Deep, MH-3d-meanspeeed music school tempo graph - lrhfmn

River Deep, 3d-meanspeeed music school tempo graph -




Song #33 on the Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time is called River Deep, Mountain High. This song is performed by Ike and Tina Turner. The Rolling Stone has an article on the song found at http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6595878/river_deep__mountain_high, which features this passage:
“I must have sung that 500,000 times,” Tina later said. “I was drenched with sweat. I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra to sing.”

We measured the song for its precise speed. Our results:
beats measured=540
mean time= 3 minutes, 20.7 seconds
arithmetic mean speed/average expected tempo=156.9
average time per beat=0.382 seconds per beat.


/Ian Andrew Schneider/

Meanspeed Music School

June 29, 2009