Meanspeed™ Music Review

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.

Meanspeed Music Summary

	This short film is brought to show you the fatalistic determination of the speed of renewal. Mastery of the mental chronometry of music where the songs are between 85-89 beats per minute may help your self-control, thereby your mood and finally your level of *comfort*.

song=”True Colors”
performer=Cyndi Lauper
album=The Essential: Cyndi Lauper
recording company=© 1983 Sony Music Entertainment
Kind=Protected AAC audio file
Size=3.7 MB
Bit Rate=128 kbps
Sample Rate=44.100 kHz
Profile=Low Complexity
Channels=Stereo
Fair Play Version=2
meanspeed=85.9 beats per minute
meanemotion according to meanspeed music theory=renewal

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 March 28, 2008

song=”True Colors”
performer=Phil Collins
album=Phil Collins: Hits
recording company=© 1998 Atlantic Label
Kind=Protected AAC audio file
Size=4.4 MB
Bit Rate=128 kbps
Sample Rate=44.100 kHz
Profile=Low Complexity
Channels=Stereo
Fair Play Version=2
meanspeed=86.1 beats per minute
meanemotion according to meanspeed music theory=renewal

March 28, 2008