speed graph synthesized by James Manning for Meanspeed Music. © 2007. Free use by permission only.
The “Badlands”speed graph above is based on three performances by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.
In our previous two posts, particularly the October 2 post on the studio speed, we tell you everything and more about we have heard about anything this song “means.”
meanspeed-chart-theme-from-rocky-tempo-psychology-78
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 chance 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
It’s the lyrical expression and the musical expression that make the song such an archetype grace song. The song is sung with infectious humility and curiosity and innocence. The chord pattern is laid down in an almost staccato, fun manner, again suggesting an innocent child finding new harmonies on the piano. I hear it as though no matter what the lyrics were, in other words, if one could not even understand a word of the song, the fun humble innocence of the song would still come through.
Supertramp is able to convey a childlike innocent curiosity about the millionaires in Texas with whom they were going to hob-knob. (I think “Dallas” was the #1 US television show when this song came out).
SO:
HOW IS ALL OF THIS DONE???? without sounding, well, like Sesame Street, or a Kenny G Christmas for people who love extra sweet ballads? By playing in C minor instead of C major. There it is.
I personally have always enjoyed this song a lot, especially for the originality in the simplicity, a la Bruce Springsteen or Paul Simon. It was a high school album for me and I remember this song as pure fun then and I still hear it that way now. This was not the most of the three huge singles from this album –‘The Logical Song,’ Take The Long Way Home,’ and ‘Goodbye Stranger’ were also very well known. I like the cheeky attitude of it.
The overall speed of the song stays the same—a linear trend line through performance shows that the song undergoes no change over the entirety. So said, it is an interesting “live in studio” performance with five major sections of the song that bubble up between 74-76 beats per minute, each with break in between that slow as far as 69 and 70 beats per minute. The trend—stays away from the mean speed at the time, keep from getting too ceremonial and austere by not going down below 69. The breaks are pronounced and they help turn the song into a short story.
mean speed/objective tempo=74.1 beats per minute
mean emotion according the the meanspeed music conjecture=grace
beat frequency=1.235 beats per second
mean space=0.810 seconds between beats
mean space=3.239 seconds between measures
mean slow phase=1.235 cycles per second
mean pitch=316.16 Hertz, 27 cents above D#4/Eb4=311.127 Hertz, and 73 cents below E4=329.628 Hertz.
