logarithmic and 2d degree polynomial trends with live performance line for #41 by the Dave Matthews Band
In the music tempo category of 106-113 beats per minute, no song is as heartbreaking as #41. It is in the key of A minor. The A minor, though, is mixed with and borrows from D major in a way that is interlaced with a 1970s version of the band Chicago horn ostinato (b -a -a -g-g-a) melody line played on top of a harmony that sounds “very A minor 9th” despite the C# in the D chord which begins a false cadence that repeats either into an A minor verse or a G major reggae-like bridge.
Songmeanings.net is run by a Generation Y (Generation Spears) group of very bright people. They openly break the “obsolete” and “oppressive” and I say that as a 17 year lawyer, “Intellectual property” law as it exists in copyright. How? They simply send lyrics that are the property of, for example, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow or the estate of Kurt Cobain and repeat Billy1973′s submission. Yet, this same group presents themselves with the mark they earned: Songmeanings.net®. I wonder what they do when people steal their pages every day in the same way they steal lyrics? I always wonder why they think intellectual property law in the form of copyright does not apply to them, yet, by their stern Watch The Heck Out WARNING- if you steal *their* collection of quotes about a song, or their bizarrely stupid “astrological sign” and either delusional or just a stupid joke “color” of a song, you have violated their trademark and they will see you in a settlement room, and yes, they accept checks! As a lawyer I get to know that too. Big deal, I know.
The ® is an expensive process whereby a company has to prove itself unique. Songmeanings has so done, and this takes a minumum of $350 for the filing alone. The lawyers fill out all details, paralegals research any potential conflicting company name or class: it all add up, as all of you with trademarks and service marks reading know. In a smooth case a trademark or servicemark holder spends at least $950 in time, legal fees and extended worldwide searches. before the internet and digitized form, the same service would be double, triple the cost.
Is there a price? This same Generation Y has given us literally no creative music – unless you count the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus or American Idol’s David Cook. Mashups, samples and remakes do not count as new music. Am I wrong? I think when one is busy stealing lyrics and pirating music, time for practice just isn’t there. Motivation to write music: not there.
I have nothing against Generation Y (those born after 1980). By the time any of them could decide that they wanted to be contemporary music artists, “rock [was] dead” according to Gordon Sumner a/k/a Sting.
Can’t disagree with Sting, though when he made the declaration in 1984 rock had a solid 10 years left. By 1995, almost every harmonic pattern seemed to have been tried with every rock groove. Then, The Dave Matthews Band went national, and a new sound was born. Then, on August 29, 2008, horn player LeRoi Moore, after an accident on an off-road vehicle he had had months earlier from which he seemed to be recovering, but in Los Angeles, a few weeks after the crash, he died. That crash killed LeRoi, and in my opinion ended the era about which Sting opined.
#41, the Dave Matthews Band,
tempo graphics by meanspeed music company. © 2008. use by permission.
The Dave Matthews Band are:
David Matthews, vocal and acoustic guitar, Carter Beauford, drums and percussion, Leroi Moore, woodwinds and horns of every type, Boyd Tinsley, electric violin and Stefan Lessard, bass player of many strings.
In the Official sheet music of this masterpiece, #41, the ultimate song of lust, publisher Cherry Lane Publishers tell you that the speed, as given by John Nicholas,—”Moderately”-not much help at all.
Anyone interested in knowing or learning how such a creative song was played and built, Carter Beauford‘s instructional DVD Under The table And Drumming lays the song bare for all to learn. A big part of the excellence in this song is how is in one sense almost beyond simple-and just when you think that, it is beyond complex-a Virginia violin, playing of a folk pop/rock rhythm guitar, and Lerio Moore picks up where Clarence Clemens left off with Bruce Springsteen. Here are sax solos that range from bebop to quiet, and the whole time, as stated above, Carter and Stefan in their own world as one of the best rhythm sections ever.
The graphs on the bottom, the 3D speed graphs with 10 ribbons–along with the 2D graph of the ten trials is basically the mess we hear the song as—making a tempo difficult to pick up. The 2D graph showing the long Y-axis and not much apparent movement of the song line is how we hear it as a basic range.
St. James Neumann-Carlton Summary
The mean speed/average tempo/median velocity= 107.3 beats per minute
The mean slow frequency= 1.788 Hertz
The mean-frequencye=457.81 Hertz, located 68 cents above A4=440.00 and 32 cents below A#4/Bb4= 466.164 Hertz.
Tempo graphics herein are based on a spreadsheet generated with this method:
a) I calibrated groups of every single measure (four quarter-notes) ten times with Seiko 300-lap stopwatches;
b) Ten trials were averaged, coordinated and synthesized.
