Lean On Me by Bill Withers has a mean speed of 73.9 beats per minute, and as you can see from the two dimensional linear graph, the song has a gentle upward sloping acceleration. The song itself is never slower than 69 beats per minute, and as we can see, each time it approaches or crosses the meanspeed line of 77.459666…, the performance creeps back into the land of grace, unconditional love and James Taylor-land in general.

Lean On Me crosses boundaries of age, race and gender. Bill wrote this as a working man—a factory man in his 30s—and African-American in Baltimore—yet, the power resonates through to children that can barely speak, as I know as some of my students are my nieces who are too young to form full sentences—but they do love the song.

The vertical two-dimensional linear graph speaks for itself. It is the graph on top.

There is a trick to reading the 3 dimensional graphs, though.
1) Each of the ten ribbons in the three dimensional graphs, or one of the ten tiles on the mountain-like graphs represent one of the ten trials I averaged and ultimately arrived at the two dimensional graph at the top of the post;
2) On the Y-axis, the three digit numbers, here with a mean-space of “325” as 3.25 seconds. Indeed, I could have put a decimal in for every entry thus avoiding this mini-code, but this method saves time and looks neater. So, for example, mean-space-b, the time it takes the song to process through one measure, four quarter notes, takes 3.25 seconds to complete. Therefore, the mean speed is 73.9 beats per minute.

Meanspeed=73.9 beats per minute.
Meanspace:
a) per beat=812 milliseconds between beats
b) per measure=3.25 second between measures.
Meanbeat=1.23 beats per second.
Meanfrequency=1.23 Hertz as pulses per minute.
Meantone=315.31 Hertz, 23 cents above D#4/Eb4=311.127 Hertz and 77 cents below E4=329.628 Hertz.
For the method I used to arrive at these results, for archetype songs and graphs at each speed, and for lists of songs to the precision of 1/10 of a beat per minute for your Playlist Power and pleasure, my home site at Meanspeed.com is open and today: free admission. Don’t let the price fool you on the value of making good mental use of those lists.

There are may things we take for granted–here is a letter from the Teserve troops in regard to Independence day:

Independence Day Message – 2006

Lieutenant General Jack Stultz
Chief, Army Reserve
Commander, US Army Reserve Command

America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact – the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.

- Adlai Stevenson, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

On this most precious of days, Americans from all walks of life pause to celebrate our freedom and liberty that was so brilliantly crafted in Philadelphia, 230 years ago. The Citizen-Soldier has played an integral role in ensuring those liberties and confronting the enemies of freedom since the early days of the republic. The heritage of the Citizen-Soldier goes back to colonial America and finds its roots in the enrolled militia of Anglo-Saxon England. It is a rich tradition of service to this Nation that is carried on in the ranks of those who serve in the present day Army Reserve.

Today, we are fighting a war the likes of which have never been seen. Our enemy is comprised of terrorist groups and extremists who blend into society while utilizing the forces of globalization to exploit our freedoms and liberties. Army Reserve Soldiers have utilized their unique Warrior-Citizen skills to help prosecute the war on terror while also providing much needed relief to those affected by hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

Like their Minuteman predecessors, Army Reserve Soldiers have left their civilian positions and families to serve their country in a time of war. Since September 11, 2001 more than 156,468 Army Reserve Soldiers have mobilized in support of current operations with more than 32,000 currently serving the cause of freedom. 22,000 Soldiers have courageously volunteered and deployed on more than one tour of duty. Since combat operations in the war on terror began, 121 Army Reserve Soldiers have paid the ultimate price and Sergeant Matt Maupin remains missing after his convoy was ambushed in 2004. Matt and his family remain in our hearts and prayers.

In between the barbeques, fireworks and baseball games, I urge all Americans to find a way to honor those who served. Whether that means flying the flag, taking time to write to our Soldiers serving overseas or simply thanking a Soldier for their service with a handshake and a smile.

The Army Reserve is changing to meet the needs of America’s national security and homeland defense missions while maintaining its unique contract with America: America provides the Army Reserve a Soldier who brings with him civilian skills and education that enhance his capabilities and contributions as a warrior. We will return America a Soldier who brings with him leadership, maturity, and responsibility that enhance his value and contributions as an employee and citizen. God bless you and your families on this Independence Day and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Best
Ian Schneider,
NY, New York
30 June 2006

These charts represent 2 versions of Let It Be–one version is the 1969 album version by all the Beatles: George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Sir Paul McCartney. The performance speed shown is from a concert by Sir Paul McCartney and his band from a 2002 concert DVD.



Numerical results are available on request at meanspeed@gmail.com.Best
Ian Schneider,
NY, New York
29 June 2006

These charts are visual represntations of the speed performances by the Beatles’ in Let It Be and Hey Jude in 3-D ribbon line form.Best,
Ian Schneider
28 June 2006ias


Ian Schneider

A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harem, is, first and foremost, a pure abstraction. There are lines about rooms humming harder and vestal virgins leaving for the coast and fandangos and millers’ tales—no coherent theme appears lyrically. Musically, it is a version of Bach’s Suite in D major, 3rd Movement Adagio commonly called Air On The G-String.
Whiter Shade of Pale is an artchetype song with graceful expression in speed.
Songs at the range of 70-76 beats per minute indicate a tendency toward an expression of unconditional love, grace, mercy, gentleness, understanding, pleasantness, charm, refinement and clemency.
I read that John Lennon used to listen to this song over and over during the “Summer of Love,” 1967 on long journeys through headphones. I always wondered if there was anything special to the song beyond the big organ and simplified Bach-derived chord progression that made the song sound so, well, loving. Alas, yes, the speed is right in center of divine grace—or did the ‘divine grace’ of the Bach and organ make them play at around the speed of sexual climax? I do not know. This is One of the songs that “Defined the ballads of the 1960s, most people will say, Yes, I heard that song in ‘The Big Chill’—love that song—don’t understand a word or of it, but I love it.
Whiter Shade Of Pale was recorded live in the studio, the song shows speed changes where 2 or 3 measures brush up against 77, much of the song bounces around the low end of 73 bpms. As a linear trend from start to end the song speeds up a natural 2-3 percent. This acceleration appears from section to section in the song, rather than a general trend toward accelerating sections of the song.
In this song the:
meanspeed= 74.7 beats per minute;
meanspace= 0.803 seconds between beats;
meanbeat= 1.245 beats per second;
meanfrequency= 1.245 Hertz as pulses per minute;
meantone= 318.72 Hertz, 41 cents above D#4/Eb4= 311.127 and 59 cents below E4= 329.628.The graphs are based on a spreadsheet generated with this method:
a) Calibration of groups of every comon measure (four quarter-notes) ten times with Seiko 300-lap stopwatches;
b) Ten trials were averaged, coordinated and synthesized.
c) Speed graphs were created in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware printed and scanned on an Epson CX4600.
For a list of 1000s of songs at 12 speed categories, they are available at meanspeed.com.Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com,

from the home of the New York Mets,
happy birthday [redacted],
Ian Schneider
28 June 2006

Music that is between 70-76 beats per minute is predictably full of Grace—speaking of which, a very happy 44th marriage Annivesary to my parents Sandy Silverman Schneider and Howard Joe Schneider [sic--not a Michael Jackson innovation--my dad has always been ahead of his time]. And not that Anna Schneider I was a Nashville wannabe, but she called my dad, a flawless eye surgeon of 45 years “Howie-Joey”–a fact that I am sure dad is glad to be reading–because but for my mom, well…44 years–impressive. To make it that long you need this unconditional love defined, as in Hey Jude.
Songs at the Hey Jude –aka–James Taylor Orgasm Speed (copyright 2008, Donald Trump)– indicate a tendency toward an expression of unconditional love, grace, mercy, gentleness, understanding, pleasantness, charm, refinement and clemency. Both as a noun and as a verb, Roget’s II Third edition thesaurus yields as fertile a ground in describing the emotional expression of a preponderance of songs at this speed. As a noun: “Kindly, charitable interest in others, and as a verb “to honor or to favor” fits this song’s true genesis: the song–Hey Jude, by the performers once known as The Beatles, originally known as “Hey Jules,” was written by Paul McCartney as a source of inspiration for John Lennon’s son Julian during a time when John Lennon was divorcing and Paul was [closer to Julian that John was]. Which is not to suggest that John Lennon was not a beloved father—we all know that as children there are plenty of adults with whom we feel that we can talk with more ease than with our parents. The song, recorded with a live 36 piece orchestra, featured Ringo not coming into the song until after it had started—he had been stuck in the washroom, but, as Ringo said, the room was “only yards from the drum booth” and as Paul as said “Ringo’s timing was impeccable.”
Now, we will see where John Lennon is noted many times as listening to a song soon to be seen on this page called A Whiter Shade Of Pale—which has the same speed element: the drifting of speeds between 69 and 76 beats per minute—but a measure or two above that—for example, 78.7—one could be assured that with a measure the speed with either:
a) Decelerate within a measure or two; or
b) stay accelerated but making up speed in order that unconsciously the overall meanspeed of the song is actively graceful.

Hey Jude accelerates slowly and in and arc form, as you can see. The acceleration is not extreme. In the first minute, one measure bottoms out at 69.5 bpm, and then between the 75% and 80% mark of the advance of the song, there is one spiked measure as fast as nearly 77. The song comes back to the mean speed in the last 20% ending by moving from 73 to 74 beats per minute—establishing the unconditional love speed.
The frequencies of the song are noted as:
meanspeed= 74.2 beats per minute;
meanspace= 0.807 seconds between beats;
meanbeat= 1.237 beats per second;
meanfrequency= 1.237 Hertz as pulses per minute;
meantone= 316.59 Hertz, 29.5 cents above D#4/Eb4= 311.127 and 70.5 cents below E4= 329.628.

The graphs are based on a spreadsheet generated with this method:
a) Calibration of groups of every comon measure (four quarter-notes) ten times with Seiko 300-lap stopwatches;
b) Ten trials were averaged, coordinated and synthesized.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.
For a list of 1000s of songs at 12 speed categories, they are available at meanspeed.com.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com,

from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
27 June 2006

These are charts of the song at the speed of grace called He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, by the performers: The Hollies.
For lyrical definition, let us turn to, for a change of pace, thefreedictionary.com, whom I thank, for their fine definition of grace as, noun, #4-“A dispency to be generous or helpful; goodwill. Our brothers and sisters at Mirriam’s online, 2d, : “disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency. Roget’s offers us charitableness, benevolence, altruism, decency, or , my favorite, 2: A sense of propriety, rightness, as conscience and decency.
The title, according to songfacts.com, came from the motto for Boys Town, a community formed in 1917 by a catholic Priest named Father Edward Flanagan. Located in Omaha, Nebraska, it was a place where troubled or homeless boys could come for help. It is now the motto of Girls and Boys Town that “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”—a motto of the camp asked on a phrase that appeared in The Messenger magazine in 1941, wherein a boy was shown carrying a crippled boy on his back, and when asked, “Isn’t that heavy?” the reply was “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” which is a phrase Flanagan so thought captured the spirit of the camp that he had a statue made of the scene, and made the phrase the Camp’s motto. Songfacts.com is amazing, so I can’t help passing on that in 1938 Spencer Tracey portrayed father Flanagan in the movie starring Ava Gardner’s ex-husband, Mickey Rooney. And of course Elton John played piano. Unlike the songs we see in the Bittersweet category, most online comments about this song are about love and inspiration, and how this song soothed the sickness or despair of a situation. And all that time: I thought the performance was about the singer’s own brother
I always thought that the singer hit’s the Bb going back into the 2d verse so well, with such a tiny bit of hesitation, that he pulls off what could otherwise be an over the top sickly-sweet song. This is just one of those songs that many people are opinionated about. Personally, I have two fantastic brothers and cousins I think of as brothers and I always think when this song is on Musk or Wendy’s or whatever, of the brotherly sacrifice bit. I try not to cross that Robert Blythe line of questionable gender-itude, and we all love our sisters too!
As you can see from the graph, there are some major “episodes” here, but from start to finish this is a song recorded live, of course, and has an acceleration of around 2 percent, when all quarter notes are averaged. Like the other songs I am bringing out in this category, there is a ying-yang element in play, as far as the mean and median and average speeds being securely in an area where expressions are genuinely confident and positive and loving, and such is show with some measures slowing as far as 67 bpms, and much of the song an almost life and death sincerity at around 76 bpms, with some of the song tearing at (at least the performer’s—how you react to this is a personal matter and varies with everyone) loneliness, with a considerable portion of the song played in what I call the category of Lonely. All said, the Hegelian duality thus described in concert with the songs words.
The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 76.0 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 790 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.267 beats per second.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.267 Hertz .
The mean-tone= 324.27 Hertz, located 29 cents above D#4/Eb4= 311.127 Hertz and 71 cents below E4= 329.628 Hertz , For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.
For a list of 1000s of songs at 12 speed categories, they are available at meanspeed.com.Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com,

from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
26 June 2006

Let It Be is shown in these speed charts by the performers The Beatles. The theme of this song is simple: the answer to vexation and worry in life is to “let it be,” for answers will come in a spirit of grace on their own. This is the soft spoken secret: the answer is to let things happen, for worry only leads to trouble, and the definition of worry is being upset about an event about which we have no control. IN the song, though many people the reference to the biblical character of Mother Mary, this is in fact a reference to Paul McCartney’s Mother Mary. Both Lennon and McCartney’s moms had died while the two future-Beatles were children, and this loss help form a special bond between the two men.
This song was recorded for the Beatles’ final album, Abbey Road. McCartney had a dream one night in which he was paranoid and anxious. His mother, also called Mary, had by the time of the composition’s genesis had been dead for 10 years, yet she appeared to him in a dream, literally speaking words of wisdom that brought him the grace and peace he sought.
John Lennon thought the song had too many Christian and religious overtones (“what are we going to next, Hark The Herald angels Come?”). Lennon made sure that the next song on the album was “Maggie Mae,” a song about a Liverpool prostitute.
The phrase “let it be” is sung by Sir Paul 36 times in the studio version of the song. If you listen carefully in the beginning, you can hear Ringo pick his sticks up.
The definition of the word Grace, which you just showed, is etched in my mind from Webster’s Collegiate: 1a: “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their sanctification and renewal.” The key: no expectation by the assistance provider to be “paid back” in any way. Simply, a disposition to be generous and helpful and merciful, especially where a situation does not demand it had happened, and I will always be moved by those two weeks.
Let It Be, recorded without aid of electronic device to keep time, is a song that descends from 75 to 68 beats a minute. An idea of how universal this idea is strange came to me when I was buying some cookies at an Asian owned and operated food store here in New York City in 1996. The Korean man at the counter saw the chart for Let It Be, and to my surprise said, “I had no idea that song got slower as it went along.” I was (a) a glad he could read the chart so quickly and easily, (b) surprised that he knew a deceleration of a live song was rare. Spiking up to near the Meanspeed (77.459…beats per minute, as the mentioned in the Theory section, formula of the square root of 60 beats times 10, or the square root of 60 seconds divided by 10 as a frequency .77459 seconds between every beat) for a measure or two near the beginning, Let It Be’s first half is almost all between 70-75 beats per minute, while the second half steadies out, continuing to slowly decelerate, between 68-70 beats per minute. The church-like cadence at the end brings the song, and the Beatles, to a merciful close.The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 70.6 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 850 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.177 beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.177 Hertz.
The mean-tone= 301.23 Hertz in equal temperament, 43 cents above D4=293.665 Hertz, and 57 cents below D#4/Eb4=311.127 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graphs 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

The numerical coordinates are available upon request.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
25 June 2006

This song, Black by the band Pearl Jam is seen among these graphs as both a bittersweet performance–in the studio, from their CD Ten–and then compared with a graceful, slower live performance from their live CD Live On Two Legs.
The bittersweet category is the Meanspeed defined: 77.459666… beats per minute. The square root of 60 seconds is 7.746 seconds. Divided this square root by 10, is .77459… seconds, the exact same amount of space when the tick of the clock speeds the “second” hand to the square root of 60 multiplied by 10: 77.459… beats per minute.This central of central speeds points us to the space which provides a range where there seems to me a cluster of songs that literally hang in a languid way in the air. The love and confidence found in the category of grace turn bitter, to fear and languid introspection.

Bittersweet is defined as an adjective in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary’s 11th Edition as simply: “1: something that is at once biter and sweet; esp.: pleasant but including or marked by elements of suffering or regret”. Thefreedictionary.com: “tinged with sadness”, “both bitter and sweet at the same.” Merriam-Webster Online dictionary provides “pleasure alloyed with pain”. Interesting definition there, because other dictionaries have the pain and the pleasure reversed, as in thefreedictionary.com’s “tinged with sadness”’. Dictionary.com offers this definition: “1. both bitter and sweet at the same time 2. Producing or expressing a mixture of pain and pleasure”.
Pearl Jam‘s mean speed=77.4 beats per minute performance–
in researching these songs, I was amazed at the number and depth of thought and imagination as to what the song “really” means. After reading about 50 or so reviews of the song, the consensus seems to be that this song is a story of a man in a young, deep all encompassing love that is coming to an end, and the woman in the song, who is not referred to personally, had an abortion. So: the song is a gut-wrenching expression of the beauty of the perfect young love that never was, the child that never was—all with the love for the lover in tact, but the relationship, as in Never A Time, “played out”—or here, Burned Out, as a steaming relationship seems to have turned to sex to conception to abortion to beak-up. Most of the abortion discussion comes from the lines; “I’m surrounded by kids at play/I can feel their laughter/so, why do I sear?” Those lyrics combined with vocalist Eddie Vedder’s pro-choice stand apparently based on this based-on-a-true-story experience. And though I am no social butterfly, I have heard more than one woman who has been open about having abortions, and this seems to be a song of comfort for them. And as a man, you basically must stop the conversation there out of respect of another person’s body. As for the singer, his “bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything…”
From personal experience, I know of at least one Should have been high school couple that play this in their cars at full volume, as they are married to other people, wondering of the grass was not greener on the other side—should she have married the first man? Was the first marriage better than the last romance before that marriage? The essays about this song are massively voluminous and emotional. iTunes alone has 10-20 versions of this song in live situations—which should give you an idea of the way this song struck a chord with so many people—generally people that are in a bitter mood and try to bring themselves back by memory to that state of original innocence and perfect love—which is always real, and 99.7 % of the time temporary. Moreover, we can all spot those 0.3% of couples that Neo-sublime love over their entire lives—a lucky crew indeed.
As you can see, all quarter notes in the version studio song average out to literally the numerical mean speed. There are 77.4 beats per minute, and between each beat the time interval is 0.774 seconds. I theorize, especially based on a problem academicians have usually called “the problem around 700 milliseconds” (Paul Fraisse, France) and linguists at the University of Indiana point to this: when you read, process thought and speech at this speed, it means only one thing: indecision and languishing, would have beens, could have beens.

In regard to the “speed arond 700 milliseconds” being a source of confusion in all mental processing matters, please look at this artcle by Sandra Blakeslee of The New York Times, where she explains how the Hesitation and Tip of the Tongue effects are at a speed between 700 and 800 millliseconds. This is her short aricle, which is not edited, as I will not take anything out of context from “the Times”:

Traffic jams in Brain Networks May in Verbal Stumbles

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE (NYT)

It is so frustrating: You are talking to a friend when suddenly you cannot remember the name of something. It is on the tip of your tongue but no matter how hard you try, you cannot say what it is. Even more maddening, you know so much about it: It is an animal that lives in South America. It gives wool that is sometimes made into sweaters. You met someone in California last year who raises them. It is an, .. er, um…

To scientists who study the brain, this is a tip-of-the-tongue experience. It even crops up in a slightly different form among users of sign language. They call it a tip-of-the-finger experience.

“Humans love to talk,” says Dr. Willem Levelt, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. “Most of us spend large parts of the day in conversation. If we are not talking to others, then we are talking to ourselves.”

Dr. Levelt’s interest is in the problem of how people go from thinking about something to actually saying it. In the course of studying the component systems involved in generating spoken words from thought, he has developed a theory about what is happening inide the brain when a speaker blocks on a ord.

The identification of these systems is base on advanced techniques for imaging the brain, he said. These two techniques allow the researchers to watch the process whereby thoughts are transformed into a seamless flow of words, to see where the process breaks down, and to show how people correct errors on the fly.

Dr. Levelt and his colleagues base their research on the assumption that the human brain contains distinct modules for processing thought into language. Dr. Gary Dell, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, said that this assumption is widely accepted among psycholinguists.

The exact anatomy of the proposed modules is not yet known, Dr. Levelt said in a telephone interview, but their existence can be demonstrated experimentally. They are not little boxes in the brain, he said, but widespread networks of interconnected neurons that cooperate, with precise timing, to carry out specific tasks.

Dr. Levelt calls the three modules the lexical network, the lemma network, and the lexeme network. Essentially, the lexical network handles thoughts, the lemma network handles syntax, and the lexeme network manages spoken sounds.

In speaking, the first module to be activated is the lexical network. “Conceptualizing is deciding what to express, given our intentions,” Dr. Levelt said. “As speakers, we spend most of our attention on these matters of content” and how to order thought sequentially.

Once a message is thought-out, he said, “we must capture it by some lexical concept.” To do so, we dip into our stored vocabulary — typically tens of thousands of words. Speakers can retrieve two to three words per second containing 10 to 15 speech sounds.

Imagine you want to say the word llama, Dr. Levelt said. Perhaps you saw a picture of a llama, or you thought of the animal while talking to a friend. The mind first activates the lexical node for llama, which contains everything you know about llamas. It is an ungulate with a long neck, it is used as a pack animal, and so forth.

When the lexical node for llama is activated, nodes for words of similar meaning are also stimulated. These might include the nodes for sheep and goats, nodes for beasts of burden in general, nodes for hoofed animals, and so forth. At this point, you still don’t have the word for llama. But you have activated a great deal of information about llamas and similar animals.

The next stage in processing is handled by the second module, the lemma network. When the lexical concept for llama and other activated concepts are passed to this level, two things happen.

First, the lemma assigns proper syntax to each incoming concept. These are the rules of the speaker’s language, including word order, gender if appropriate, case markings and other grammatical features. Also at the lemma level, verbs, nouns, and modifiers are put in their proper place in a word string.

Second, the various activated lexical concepts engage in a competition. Most of the time, the most highly activated concept (llama) will win. But sometimes there is interference from other lexical concepts. The more that are activated, the longer it takes to generate the desired word.

Timing experiments done in Dr. Levelt’s lab show how this works. Subjects are shown picture and asked to name them as fast as they can. The average naming time is 700 milliseconds. Then the experimenter adds a distraction — such as muttering the word horse when a picture of a cow is presented. People need 800 milliseconds on average to name cow when the lexical concept of a horse is also activated.

The third part of the process is to turn a chosen lexical concept into a spoken word. This is called the lexeme level. “Accessing the lexeme is harder than you think,” Dr. Levelt said. The mind has to find the correct sound and match them to the syntactic elements in the lemma network. This is where the process of generating thoughts into speech can fail, Dr. Levelt aid. Many things can go wrong.

One is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. You are at the lemma level but the word refuses to come. You know a lot about it. You might even know it has two syllables with the stress on the first syllable, which suggests that part of the lexeme information is accessible.

People who speak languages with masculine and feminine words almost always know the correct gender of the missing word, said Dr. William Badecker, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University who works with brain-damaged patients who have trouble naming things.

Why do words become blocked?

“We don’t know for certain,” Dr. Levelt said. But one idea is that a given lexical node is not sufficiently activated to spread to the lexeme level where speech sounds are stored. Thus llama might not win out over sheep and goats, leaving the speaker fumbling for the word. But as most people have discovered, waiting for a few minutes will help retrieve a word on the tip of your tongue.

Dr. Dell explains what happens: “Say you are trying to remember the name of that funny stuff inside a sperm whale, the stuff used in perfume. You may think it sounds like amber but you know it’s not. But you keep thinking amber, amber, which makes the amber part of your network activate. Eventually, you give up and think about something else. Later, when you think about it again, the word may suddenly appear — ambergris.”

Other kinds of speech errors can occur in the transition between the lemma network and the lexeme network, Dr. Dell said. Sometimes people exchange one word for another (Fill up my gas with car) or mix up speech sounds (queer old dean instead of dear old queen).

So-called Freudian slips of the tongue are also common. Freud thought that they represent deep sexual urges but they are more innocent. Dr. Levelt said. While talking, people are often thinking about other things, which can caue an unrelated lexical node to become activated.

But if all goes well and a word is retrieved correctly, it goes to the next level of processing which is articulation, Dr. Levelt said. This is the process whereby the syllables are mapped into motor patterns generated in the tongue. lips, mouth, larynx, and lungs.
(used with permission of the New York Times)

Literally the speed of the check swing in baseball, the speed at which Irrevocable Commitment is at a standstill. This speed, not only in music, but also by pure temporal sequencing in the brain, in my judgment, is, quite simply, the speed of indecision.
This song, recorded live, takes us on a fairly steep acceleration—approximately 8-10% from the beginning to end. So said, like The Boston rag, much of the first part of the song lies in or near the speed category of-grace. However, at beat 220, nearly 3 minutes into the song the 77-79 bpm performances dominates, and the end quarter of the song rises all the way to the category of lonely. I would call this: a brilliant emotional journey, expressed naturally and unconsciously by pearl jam, taking us from grace to bittersweet to loneliness is in a smooth yet rugged fashion, as you can see by the graphs.
The graphs 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

The numerical coordinates are available upon request.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
24 June 2006

These are charts of the remake of True Colors by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly as remade from the Cyndi Lauper version discussed three days ago in a straight comparison of speed performance with the Phil Collins version.On Each of these four charts, you will see the Phil version in red, and the Lauper version in blue.One thing we have spoken of in the first 2 of three in this last of three posts on True Colors: The Lauper version is recorded in a live setting—as a result, she freely moves between the 80-90 beats per minute range—with the mean, the pull and he average being at 86 beats per minute, the heart of the speed of Rebirth.

First, a look at the chart named “full rhythm range,” we se the top speed, 390 beats per minute—a song that would fast even by bebop jazz standards, and the slow speed—so slow, that, well, if it was any slower, it would no longer sound like a repeating rhythm—this is an axiomatic audiology. We all know the [Asian] Water Torture Effect that occurs when a rhythm is like a drip in a sink—it is painful. Within that chart, we can make out the line for both version where I wrote in red “Rebirth.” From this distant view, we can see most baldly how from a distance, the speeds look nearly identical through the whole song.

The chart marked “speed between 1-2 Hz” (60-120 cycles per second) shows the Rebirth speed category, 85-89 in a green bracket, inside of which we see a comparison of the two versions. We can see how Phil’s version sticks to the 86 line, within one beat per minute at all times, whereas Cyndi is more adventurous as far as acceleration and deceleration.

I want too be very clear again—this seems a good point to interject this: I do not think in any way at all that one version of the song in any way, especially in regard to speed performance is better. Drum machines are great, live recording is fantastic too. Simply different styles.

Ok: the graph marked as “The 2 version Close Up” restricts the y-axis to 80 and 90 beats per minute. Again, in red, we see Phil sticking to the machine, and in blue, Cyndi wandering off live.

Yet, ironically, this song, which was written as a song at the speed of Grace (72 beats per minute) was changed by Lauper to make a Coming Out Of It sog at the speed of renewal and rebirth. Collins then teams with Babyface for a tight drum sample version of the song: 14 beats per minute faster than it was originally written. Know what? Remember: when Kelly and Steinberg were making their own demonstration recordings playing the song at 72 beats per minute, they both said, “[the speed just was not right. We didn’t know how good a song it was until we were shocked by the fabulous changes Cyndi had made].” (Thank you songfacts.com and the participants on that most excellent website.

And finally, under the heading of: Yup, I am going to put songs in their space in the entirety of the meanspeed music theory are of 55-128 beats per minute, and will continue to write the predictable emotional expression found at each speed range until…well, until they shut this site down, OR everyone learns this simple scale as well as they know, say not the months of the year but please, at least the horoscope? Isn’t What Speed Are You? A much more happening opening conversation line that “What’s your sign, baby, I’m a Pisces?”

I plead guilty to having a love for the songs at the enthusiastic speed. My phone number is….

Also, thanks for all the thing sales, keep them coming. Uh, keep buying them. Thanks! We need to pay for the page, ad what better way than through 1998 classic White House inspired Thongs? None better, that’s my thinking, and yours too, by sales! Hey, I’ve tried the boxers and they are surprisingly comfortable and thick—plus, with the logo in the leg, well, need I say more?

For the Cyndi version:
The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 85.9 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 698 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.43beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.443 Hertz.
The mean-tone= 366.51 Hertz in equal temperament, 83 cents below F4=349.228 Hertz, and 13 cents above F#/Gb=369.994 Hertz.

The Phil version:
The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 86.7 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 698 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.435beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.435 Hertz.
The mean-tone= 367.36 Hertz in equal temperament, 87 cents above F4=349.228 Hertz, and 13 cents below F#4/Gb4=369.994 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.

The graphs for all versions are based on a two spreadsheets 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

The numerical coordinates are available upon request.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
23 June 2006

The charts of the song written and performed live by Neil Young called Sugar Mountain, has a meanspeed of 81.9 beats per minure–the middle of Lonely category of the meanspeed music theroy.
The song is lonely on at least two levels: For one, Neil is singing about the joys and wonders of all of childhood and adolescence and young adulthood–but, as he note in the song: “you can’t be twenty On Sugar Mountain–Though you thinking that you’re leaving there too soon….”--in other words, 19 is carefree, 20 is time to start about Reality–and reality is mean, indeed.
Ok–so the song is lonely because it’s a man–Neil Young– looking back at childhood with wistful melancholy about the awkwardness of awkward social moments, as when you are 16 and feel lonely in a crowd.
A twist on the 82=Lonely theme perfected by Neilis a thing Neil does that is true of his Comes a Time, but not Southern Man, Philaldelphia or Ohio, all in this same speed category, is make the 4 beat pattern a two-beat pattern. This way, the song song more likek a line dance and simplified Let’s get Over it hop. As the gret two-step at a lonely speed that pulls it out—Blackwater, by one of the best United States pop groups ever, the Doobie Brothers.
This linear graph has a Y-axis of 30-150, and from that distance, you can begin to see how the song stays in the lonely frequency.
Using the same set of co-ordinates, the next chart represents the song as it moves around the radar screen once in a counterclockwise manner. Anytime the blue is inside the red, the song is going that much faster than the meanspeed. When the blue moves out of the circle of the red, it is going as fast as marked above the mean speed.
The blue the black chart is a horizontal view of the last chart the vertical linear frequnecy chart–both charts include trendlines of the song. The X-axis represnts times as milliseconds, Hertz, and other units–depending on one’s area of study, they will use, for example, on the Speed as ‘beats per minute’ element=pulses per minute, or Hertz, or beats per second, or cycles per second.Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.
(I like a glass of Texas On Ice while doing the math):
The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute= 81.9 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 733 milliseconds.
The mean-beat= 1.365 beats per second.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.365 Hertz.
The mean-tone= 349.44 Hertz, where each of the frequencies correspond to the tones, in equal temperament, to between F4=349.228 Hertz, over which the song’s frequency is faster by less than one cent where the next note in proximity is F#4/Gb4=369.994 Hertz , over 99 cents away. For more on tones and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with the author’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graphs are based on a spreadsheet generated with this method:
a) I calibrated the (quarter-notes) ten times with Seiko 300-lap stopwatches;
b) Ten trials were entered, averaged and coordinated.
using Microsoft’s Excel, created in on Windows XP, on Gateway hardware modified by Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware.
The linear trendlines are courtesy of/derived with same Microsoft Excel program.Oh–that speed chart at the top? It is vital yet simple: it shows in a simple way the diminishig marginal returns of doing multple trials. As you can see, after about eight trials, a line is seen that moves not much after that–after 9, most movement is set. The 10th trial is more useful on a drum machine song, where the cheating on the beat from measure to measure is so tiny that sometimes it takes a good 14 trials to get that solid song that is playing around the drum machine. On live performances, a solid nine gives an accurate line, as seen above. All the numbers I used (recorded after speed calibration)

Best, from the home of the NY Mets,
Ian Schneider
21 June 2006–happy summer solstice.

There are two elements that are prominent in this song:
1) the expression of young male random anxiety–his apartment is a “hell…hole” (“know where you stand”!), he is “confused…weak…indifferent…” and just full of all sorts of nerves.
So he is in pain;
2) What does he want to soothe that pain? Well, according to the lyrics, as put beatifully in one sentence at songfacts.com, “a low maintenance lover who knows when to go away and doesn’t require commitment.” The chorus beatifully condensed by songfacts.com as usual.

YET, what is the mood expression of this song? To anyone? To someone who couldn’t understand a word of English? Victory and joy. How? The singer admits to living in a hell hole and all, so he is free of mind–the end of the song is so joyous it sound like Santa Clause’s arrival.
Ok–this is finaly a story I read, and I forgot where–but it was highly credible–that here’s the deal with the ebbulient mood of this song: the band has just learned to transpose. Transposing is moving the same song to one of the other 11 notes, begin on the new note, and hence you change the key. Doing this gives you much more room as a composer than staying within the confines of the same key—especially in a rock song like this, where essentially a three-chord riff holds 5 and a half minutes of music together. Anyway–this had to be John on VH-1 Storytellers–something like that–telling the story of why the jam before the vocal comes on in almost half the song–very Lou Reed, Sweet Jane, in pop form–was so happy and keeps changing key (modulated)–the victory the band had won against a part of music theory.

Above the writing I attached seven scanned charts:
1) all ten trials on top of each other in a radar graph;
2) the view from a distance, with the expanded Y-axis for a wide angle listen;
3) all ten trials, 3 dimensions from below;
4) same as (3), from the reverse agle;
5) 3D view, 30 degree angle, approximately 5 [feet] high;
6) standard radar graph indicating speed of the song, measure to measure (4 quarter notes);
7) Linear Frequency Graph–same as (6), except linear replaces radar and a linear trend-line is added.

The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 126.9 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 473 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 2.115 beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 2.115 Hertz.
The mean-frequency= 541.44 Hertz in equal temperament, 58 cents above C5=523.251 Hertz, and 42 cents below C#5/Db5=554.365 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graphs 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

The numerical coordinates are available upon request.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
20 June 2006

This song, True Colors is performed by Cyndi Lauper,
a simple and bold declaration of the theme of rebirth. Like a big sister, an understanding mother, or a good friend, Cyndi Lauper sings about gentle advice. Cyndi’s advice–song by Tom Kelly & Billy Steinberg, composers of Like A Virgin. Cindy’s version, of all the many cover versions of this song, including the Kodak commercial from my hometown of Rochester, New York, to two variations by Phil Collins. I enjoy them all—that it just my taste. The message: Make yourself a better person by realizing that already are that person, because of you look very hard, you can see the true colors inside you, and they are Beautiful like a rainbow. The message is taken a step further: Don’t be discouraged, and don’t be afraid to let your true colors show. Getting on with your life realizing that you already had what it took to accomplish whatever it is that Cyndi is referring to, much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz—she always had the power—-she just did not see it herself. When Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz is Reborn by going home, simply by clicking her heals, in the midst of what is still acclaimed as the movie to make best use of color itself—in fact that regard, no film has ever tried to “out-color” it. The Wizard of Oz is literally Dorothy thinking she is living in a sad world—she is next shown the rainbow—she is the, like the song, reborn in spirit.
As Paul Anka’s most central of mean speeds: Times of Your Life, which, as I noted, was the opposite in regard to release as a single: Anka’s song was owned by Kodak first—then it was made a #1 hit by popular demand. In contrast, True Colors was Kodak second-hand. Note the difference in the moods and the speeds and what the Kodak advertisements are trying to say: in the first, that you should take pictures in order to preserve your bittersweet future memories, in the latter, the message is more aimed at the idea of taking out the old photo album and feeling reborn as a result of good feelings coming from looking at the pictures. The pictures make you realize that your “true colors” are always there—you just must remember that happiness comes from within. In general, people are happy to extent that their life exceeds their expectations.
When the song is analyzed from beginning to end, there exists a deceleration overall, subtle and under one percent. We here bold ventures in the speed areas that I have labeled Lonely. There are also numerous ventures of measures of 89 beats per minute—the speed itself is getting a perfect workout. What the speed is saying is: don’t be sad about what you are now—you need to recapture your perspective: “It’s hard to take courage/In a world full of people/You can lose sight of it/And the darkness inside you make you feel so small/but I see your true colors/…and that’s why I love you.”The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 85.9 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 698 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.43beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.443 Hertz.
The mean-tone= 366.51 Hertz in equal temperament, 83 cents below F4=349.228 Hertz, and 13 cents above F#/Gb=369.994 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graphs 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.The numerical coordinates are available upon request.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
19 June 2006

Father And Son is a song reflecting the relationship between a father and son. It was recorded as “Cat Stevens” by a man named Yusef Islam.
Yusef’s music is some of what my dad exposed me to musically, and for that I am especially appeciative. HJS, MD–especially on those long New Jersey to Sarasota round trips, gave me an acquired taste for Yusef’s music, Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin, and simply a lot of music that I never would have played in my own–all “acquired taste” music for a 7 -year old used to Sesame Street and Partridge Family jingles. I remember saying to my dad, during Yusef’s Moonshadow: GET THIS OFF!!!! Now of course, that is one of my favorite songs ever.
Main thing: that Bach from the time I was ever around. And Debussy, the most underrated of all.On Father And Son:
The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 67.6 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 888 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.127 beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.127 Hertz.
The mean-tone= 288.43 Hertz in equal temperament, 29 cents below D4=293.665 Hertz, and 71 cents above C#4/Db4=277.183 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graphs 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.The numerical coordinates are available upon request.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
18 June 2006

Phil Collins curently has a show on broadway called Tarzan.
He was a drummer with a band called Genesis–the links to his work with that band is on the right margin of this page.
The song Father To Son is from Phil’s 7 time-nominated album from 1990 …But Seriously, which won the award for Best Song of the Year 1991, Another Day In Paradise. This song in particular has a straight message: “[I am an older man much life experience, you are my son, I will always be behind you, be bold and go forth, even when you feel scared.]” Simple as that. I love you, I will support you, you are my son.The song is recorded at mean speed of 75 beats per minute, and there are almost no measures that go lower than one beat per minute slower or faster than the mean. The trend is straight across, no acceleration or deceleraton overall. The song is Phil’s playing around that 75 beats per minute pulse.

The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 75.0 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 800 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.250 beats per second.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.250 Hertz .
The mean-tone= 320.00 Hertz, located 52 cents above E4= 329.628 Hertz and 48 cents above D#4/Eb4= 311.127 Hertz , For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

For a list of 1000s of songs at 12 speed categories, they are available at meanspeed.com.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Happy 64th birthday “Sir” Paul ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ McCartney.
Happy 64th birthday Sandy ‘The Sweetest Punch” Silverman,

from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
18 June 2006

This song is called The Sweetest Punch abd it was written and recorded (by a bizarre overseas/fax method) by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello.
This is the next to last song on this song compilation called Painted From Memory–which is essentially as an old-fashioned 1970s “concept album,” these songs tell the story of a breakup, struggle to hold on, ad finally letting go and breaking up.
The song is about a romabtic breakup–yet it is at the speed of Victory, a category of speed: 119-128 beats per minute. So what gives?
This song is about the joy that the singer feels over the breakup. He is saying–[Yes, you broke up with me when I least expected it, I was emotionally destroyed, by now I am finally over it].So the: this is the victory song most of us have felt at some time or other when there is a simple joy in not missing a person for whom we once had strong romantic and possessive feelings. The desire is gone, the feeling of love is gone. Life can be a celebration, even for men such as that of a Burt Bacharach or an Elvis Costello, still dumped but glad to single and available.The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 121.2 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 495 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 2.020 beats per seocnd.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 2.020 Hertz .
The mean-tone= 258.56 Hertz, located 79 cents above B3= 246.942 Hertz and 21 cents below C4= 261.626 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM–many more.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
17 June 2006

meanspeed

Holding Back The Years by Simply Red is about the ravages of time and lost love and feeling old, taking stock of life, and finally, after contemplation of the battles of life, deciding to redouble your efforts and try to re-energize—become, quite literally, Reborn.
The video features the vocalist on a European train in a state of sublime contemplation, wearing a tipped cap and singing. Are we to know that he is being filmed or not? That is up to us. The lyrical expression of the song shows Simply Red taking an account of his life, taking a pause in life is a stressed theme here. The singer is pleading: he has made mistakes, he has had wishes die; he has also, in his estimation squandered the chance to be “good.” At the same time, he reminds us, with the powerfully subtle chorus that he will “keep holding on.” We are reminded of this fantastic singer in with an amazing coif of Red beneath a cap “escaping from all he’s known,” and like other songs in the Reborn category, we hear a plea for a new lease on life.
When first I saw this video, like many or all of you do, “out of the blue,” I had never heard of the band “Simply Red.” I was also about 2 years short of discovering this speed spectrum with the working title of meanspeed theory. I simply (no pun intended) liked the song straightaway. I include it as one of the songs, therefore, which were my privilege, self-serving, a bit grandiose, admittedly, to determine speed. I have written before that I am unable to hear a speed without some kind of basic watch, like anyone else. I did not develop this theory because “my ears were so good that I could hear what everything mean.” Quite the opposite was true. It was only after I calibrated speeds that the patterns became clear.
Holding Back The Years was recorded with the aid of a drum machine. The speed graph reflects a natural performance staying so close to the 86 beats per minute mean line. As with most drum machine-based songs, from start to end, there is no acceleration or deceleration. At the same one, a look at the chart shows that even though no single four beat measure ventures beyond 87.5 beats per minute or slower than 84.5 beats per minute Simply Red does not just sit on the drum machine line. The use of hesitation and anticipation, in a subtle way, makes this a most excellent speed and musical performance.The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 86.0 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 698 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.433 beats per second.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.433 Hertz .
The mean-tone= 366.93 Hertz, located 16 cents below F#4/Gb4=369.994 Hertz , and 84 cents above F4=349.228 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
16 June 2006

“GONNNA FLY NOW” is by
Bill Conti. The:
mean-speed=94.1 beats per minute,
mean-space=638 milliseconds between beats,
mean-beat=1.57 beats per second,
mean frequency=1.568 Hertz
mean-tone=401.49 Hetz, 41 cents higher than the note G4=391.995 Hertz and and 59 cents lower than the next corresponding note in equal temperament, G#4/Ab4=415.305 Hertz.This song falls squarely in the speed and emotional correlate of Enthusiasm.The songs which occur in this speed range have predictive expressions of themes dominated by a confidence and enthusiasm. As: being so looking forward to an event that you say to yourself: “I am so excited about what is about to happen I almost don’t want it to begin. Also, I am confident, I have earned this moment.” In a similar way, this is the speed of “Getting ready: and as I get ready, I realize how much I love what I’m about to do. I don’t look back. I’ve made mistakes but I’m always moving ahead.”
This is the speed of controlled strong, positive energy.
The quote by Stevenson applies: “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.” As you will notice in the twelve examples below, the songs are radiant in the happiness in the journey itself.

This song by Bill Conti brought tears–literally–to Sylvester Stallone‘s eyes when he presented it to him as the proposed theme from Rocky.

This song is all about the journey to get ready for the chancce of a lifetime.

The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

For a list of 1000s of songs at 12 speed categories, they are available at meanspeed.com.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
14 June 2006

meanspeed

Today I am highlighting once again—last time, I promise, the song that made Taylor Hicks of Alabama the next “American Idol,” Do I Make You Proud.Speed Chart #1, so marked on the top left, shows Taylor’s speed on the iTunes single released today from a close up perspective. As you can see, There is not a single measure that is either faster than 74 beats per minute or slower than 71 beats per minute, while most measure are within one half a beat per minute of the 72 BPM mean. There is nothing unusual about this—the steadiness of speed is not a crutch—it’s just. most lkely, a form of a digital metronome in the studio, which is the way 99% of “pop records start.Chart #2 is the same as Chart #1—except you are farther away—the Y-Axis has expanded to the full range I am looking at, 55-128 beats per minute. It is clear from that graph that the song remains squarely with the range of grace. Beyond that, I wrote down the Meanspeed categories as they move up-tempo, as I did on Graph #3.Graph #3 is a comparison chart, using lines from Taylor’s performance to win the final on Fox (May 22), play his encore on the Today Show and NBC (May 24) and finally release, with an extra verse, explaining the difference in length of the performance lines, released on June 13. So while chart #4 shows us up very close, with a Y-axis of only 70-77 beats per minute, the way Taylor is about to “Soul Patrol” his way around any drum sample or loop that may be in use, Chart #3 puts it in the perspective of the overall meanspeed theory, and each category is once again explained, as simply and clearly as I ca do it—as it is a simple and clear idea, after all.The song, again, is all about grace and gratitude, and Taylor sings it with the conviction of same. Congratulations to him again. And I know everyone says this—but first time I heard him perform on the preliminaries I thought he ought to win but his look with he would lose—lesson: America prefers gray haired singers to bald ones. That was a joke, but I am glad to see that he “overcame” premature gray hair to win.I’m still waiting to find out he’s 49, not 29, and that couple posing as his parents were for hire! I t would only make the show better, and as I’ve noted, It really ties the country together (Big Lebowski reference intended.)The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on the studio performance= 72.0 beats per minute.The mean-space, or time between each beat= 883 milliseconds. The mean-beaton the recording = 1.20 beats per second.The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.20Hertz .The mean-tone= 307.20 Hertz, located 78 cents above D4= 311.127 Hertz and 28 cents below D#4/Eb4= 311.127 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.The graphs 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
14 June 2006

This song, Lie In Our Graves, by the Dave Matthews Band, with Dave Matthews, Carter Beauford, Stefan Lessard, Leroi Morre and Boyd Tinsley, comes from the fantastic CD Crash, a review of which can be found on meanspeed.com.Lie In Our Graves is another in a series of songs, starting with Move Yourself To Love, by Rob and Friends, and seen in Oh Very Young by Yusef Islam, by and again yesterday by Paul Simon with his Surprise: Father And Daughter that have the same message: have a lust and passion for life, as life flies by.

This song says, in essence: “[I cannot imagine dying in a state of regret for not having made the best of life. I cannot imagine being dead, or lying in my grave in a state of remorse for not having lived my life in a state of joy and appreciation].”

In the United States there is a car advertisement—I think it is for a Ford truck—who’s slogan [is]: Grab life by the horns. Have some passion and lust and show your desire to make the best of your life.

Meanspeed music theory on one page: on one of the graphs, I wrote across the graph with the expanded Y-axis and explain the entirety of the theory in the simplest form. What I am trying to get across? the twelve speed categories across time. Ok. There are the graphs on the top, featuring the tempo of the song with a Y-axis that exhibits only the rage of the song: 103-115 beats per minute. You can also see a third graph that shows the same in 3 dimensions. The graph on the bottom is vital, and if you can read my handwriting I show that when you divide the beats per minute into groups of 5 what generally happens in the emotional expression in music—it shows Meanspeed music theory in its complete form. 55-60, melodramatic turns sincere. 61-65, sincere becomes ceremonial. 66-70, the romantic becomes graceful. 71-75: just grace. 76-80: the center of meanspeed music theory: in 5 beats, 77-80, grace turns into bittersweet turns into loneliness. 81-84: an amazing preponderance of songs about loneliness. 85-90 sees rebirth. 91-95 is getting psyched! 96-100 is the liftoff: from confident enthusiasm to being free and natural. 101-105 usually exhibits songs that are fee and natural. 106-110, the natural gets lusty and desirous. 111-115, the lust becomes a foreboding—a ripple on the surface. 116-120: the haunted and foreboding becoming victory. After 128 beats per minute, themes are mixed. The numerical coordinates are the same for all four graphs and are available by writing to ian@meanspeed.com.

The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 110.8 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 542 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.847beats per second.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.847 Hertz .
The mean-tone= 472.75 Hertz, located 76 cents above A#/Bb4= 493.883 Hertz , and 24 cents below B4=466.164 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
12 June 2006

meanspeed

Happy Father’s day all you fathers out there. And all you mother’s that conferred the status thereon—you made it happen!
This song, FATHER & DAUGHTER is by Paul Simon from his new CD called Surprise.
The production is by Brian Eno, and as you can see from the speed graphs, the recording was made around a beat driven by an electronic digital device at approximately 106.1 beats per minute. Through the sub-rhythmic and style changes that occur in the song, only two or three measure stray beyond one beat per minute of the mean speed, 106.1 beats per minute.
The theme of Yusef Islam’s OH VERY YOUNG as posted two days ago is revisited here: life and death, but with a Lust and passion and desire for life rather the gloom & doom that we all must face death and therefore should lament about our ultimate demise all our lives being the focus. It is simple lust for life that drives these songs with their themes of appreciating one’s parents and your children and your families while you can. In a bright way, both of these songs contain messages of: Go out and grab life—your parents are behind you, they will always love you, but they “won’t last forever.” The Yusef song is from the father to the son; Paul’s song is as a father to a baby daughter. Both are classics. I think Paul’s Surprise CD in general—it’s the best work I’ve hears from Paul since Rhythm Of The Saints. Well worth the iTunes 99 cent download, though I bought the entire CD and was surprised how creative Simon remains at sixty-two years old.

The mean-speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 106.1 beats per minute.
The mean-space, or time between each beat= 566 milliseconds.
The mean-beat on the recording = 1.768 beats per second.
The mean-frequency, or the speed of the song expressed as cycles per second= 1.768 Hertz .
The mean-tone= 452.69 Hertz, located 49 cents above A4= 440.000 Hertz , and 52 cents lower A#4/Bb=466.164 Hertz. For more on tone frequency, sound vibration and their correspondence to beats per minute, see Stephen Jay’s The Theory of Harmonic Rhythm, linked with Stephen’s kind permission on meanspeed.com.
The graph is 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.
I the created the speed graph in Microsoft’s Excel for MacIntosh 2004 on an Apple iBook G4 as hardware. One of the graphs derived from the results, in a radar graph style was printed on an Epson CX4600, scanned on same printing device.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.

dad–happy Father’s day—thank you for teaching me math.

Best, from the home of the New York Mets,
Ian Schneider
11 June 2006

happy birthday and happy father’s day to Gary of New Jersey, United States and Sean of Johannesburg, South Africa

meanspeed