screenshot of iTunes® based playlist - Sugar Mountain - -0121†

Neumann Standard Tempo Scale. © Copyright 2008. Meanspeed® Music. Use Freely

The charts of the song written and performed live by Neil Young called Sugar Mountain, has a meanspeed of 81.9 beats per minute–the middle of Loneliness category of the meanspeed music theroy.

 

bpm graph - Neil Young Sugar Mountain -meanspeed music school - speed of pink recall

bpm graph - Neil Young Sugar Mountain -meanspeed music school - speed of pitman the fraud

 

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.

SPREADSHEET ELEVEN - meanspeed music school - measurements for bpm graphs spreadsheet

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 Neil is a thing Neil does that is true of his Comes a Time, but not Southern Man, Philadelphia or Ohio, all in this same speed category, is make the 4 beat pattern a two-beat pattern. This way, the song more as 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.

Meanspeed-Spencer Speed Summary

mean speed/average tempo/median velocity= 81.9 beats per minute.

emotional expression according to meanspeed music theory=loneliness
average beat= 733 milliseconds.
beat frequency= 1.37 cycles per second.
corresponding pitch= 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.  

bpm graph - Neil Young Sugar Mountain -meanspeed music school - speed of the pink memory spreadsheet 1

bpm graph - Neil Young Sugar Mountain -meanspeed music school - speed of the pink memory spreadsheet father

bpm graph - Neil Young Sugar Mountain -meanspeed music school - speed of the pink memory spreadsheet lzbn MCL

The graphs are based on a spreadsheet generated with this method: 

As adults we express our lament at this frequency, simply and truly: 710-760 milliseconds per beat, or 79-84 beat per minute.
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 hardwardware.

All the Best.

 from the home of  the

Somerset Patriots,

2008 Atlantic League Champions,