Meanspeed® Music Review

This year I have been lucky enough to see a few musicians in concert that I’d never seen before but have always been on my List of people to hear before I die.

Two men that I saw at the Keswick Theater, my home theater near my adopted home town of Philadelphia, were Bela Fleck and Chick Corea. I had heard Bela the fist time when he was on Dave Matthews’ brilliantly creative and awesomely performed BEFORE THESE CROWDED STREETS, released in 1999.

As the century went out, Alanis Morissette and Bela Fleck joined Dave Matthews, Carter Beauford, the late LeRoi Moore, Boyd Tinsley, and Stefan Lessard in the final song of that album called SPOON. Shout all you want about the band’s music not being “real” rock music. Shout all you want about Bela playing on albums that are beneath him. And shout and criticize Chick Corea bouncing from Hancock to Bobbie McFerrin to Dyanetics: all these players are *on fire*.

In concert, Bela shocked me by playing in a straight E-A-D-G tuning the entire time, not even changing banjos. Chick was as I expected him to be: a workman’s perfectionist. Chick has the cleanest jazz fingers I have ever heard. Bela is an amazing playing in the way that Pat Metheny can mesmerize: they can play the most complex of bebop measures, but unlike most others, their lines are almost always going somewhere. These are the rare guys who don’t play several of diminished mixolydian minor scales on top of a chord and hope that some note “hits” and if they are lucky enough they can just riff out on that note. In contrast, they will take you down to playing at literally a 3rd grade level, and playing with no “trick” notes, can play simple and new melodies that are unbelievably creative not for how many but how few notes they can get their emotion across with. I find it no coincidence, as I have written many times before, that the only Pat Metheny song left out of his Songbook is the masterpiece AU LAIT, my favorite Pat song. By chance I looked up the 100s of songs that Bela has covered: the only Pat song he covered was AU LAIT. The sound can be summed up as 1967 brought into 2008, without the loss of the 6′s and the 3′s and the 5′s over groups of 4, with the Burt Bacharach/Carlos Santana-like percussion section making you feel, well, any way you want. Fleck and Metheny are fantastic at naturally being able to pull off gorgeous runs of 11-notes, which are very hit yet beg for resolution. We get the resolution, which is really the difference between Fleck or Metheny’s ‘hard’ from ‘contemporary’ jazz.

A man on my list that I have never seen but lobed his music from the first measure: Bruce Hornsby. Bruce has so many things of praise written about him I will not bore you with his awesome resume and accomplishments. I must say, though, that along with Roy Bittan, the pianist from the E Street Band that has played with the Dire Straits, Stevie Nicks and possibly 10s of ‘pop’ keyboard riffs we never knew were his by Springsteen and others is Bruce Horsby. His playing is so brilliant in his full use of his 1.5 octave reach with his huge hands that can sound like 5 hands that his solos are in a league of there own.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD PERFORMING tangled up in blue

The other day I was lucky enough to get a private copy of “Tangled Up In Blue” as written by Bob Dylan and performed by Bruce Hornsy on piano and voice and Bela in the mid range driving the song with his “I’m so laid back I can never miss the perfect note *without trying*” style, a manner of comfort in playing that comes with 10s of thousands of hours of practice, that I eventually found online in several places, on being Last.FM which I had avoided – but the version of this song by these two extraordinary creative artists was just something I had to hear again. The version shown as measurements here: the bluegrass festival version. If you Google ‘Fleck Hornsby Tangled Up In Blue’ you should find 100s of places, including my computer feed, to listen to this simple yet brilliantly memorable song.
According to meanspeed music theory, the song’s mean speed indicates a tempo that is usually found n the emoting of enthusiastic and confidence toward the future emotions. Indeed, in this performance, Bruce sounds as relaxed and confident for his future as I have ever heard him – and yeas, I have bought his albums hoping to sound something like him – I picked up the most from him when he said in an interview: I can cover over 20 notes with tow hand without even moving.
Last.FM describes Bruce as: Bruce Randall Hornsby (born November 23, 1954 in Williamsburg, Virginia) is an American singer, virtuoso pianist, accordion player, and songwriter, best known for his 1980s signature song “The Way It Is” and the top five hits “Mandolin Rain” and “The Valley Road”. Later in his career he moved in a less commercial, more musically challenging direction.

This article presents tempo graphs on this page help show how tempo is naturally handled on the song.

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
song title=”Tangled Up In Blue”
composer=Bob Dylan
performers=Bruce Hornsby and Bela Fleck
beats measured=3,760
trials=10
time elapsed, total=24,701 2/5 seconds
average beat =657 milliseconds
mean speed/average tempo/median velocity=91.3 beats per minute
average measure=263 centiseconds
emotional concept, as would be predicted by the meanspeed music conjecture=enthusiasm
emotional concept, by lyrical content and song delivery=enthusiastic relief

/Ian Andrew Schneider/
December 10, 2008

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Tempo - Tangled Up In Blue - Meanspeed Music Speed Graph A - Bela Fleck and Bruce Hornsby