“Put It There” is a song written by Sir Paul McCartney for his album Flowers From The Attic.

Paul McCartney - Put It There -

Paul McCartney - Put It There -

Paul McCartney - Put It There -

Paul McCartney - Put It There -

A version of the song released on his Tripping The Live Fantastic is one of his last moments playing with wife Linda in concert.

Paul McCartney - Put It There -

The tempo of this song carries the rhythm of a celtic lilt which comes off as kind, confident and clear.

Meanspeed-Spencer tempo summary

/Ian Andrew Schneider/

August 20, 2009

meanspeed® music public music education

The Beatles YESTERDAY - meanspeed contemporary tempo map_2

“Yesterday” is a pop song originally recorded by The Beatles.

Through the FoxyTunes.com website listed below, you can find out anything that anyone would ever want to know about the song except: the speed. to remedy this hole in the public’s music awareness, we present the speed numerically and graphically here. We include songs near the same speed, as shown in the iTunes screen shot above. Music and self-control is in part about finding out a speed range that tends to make you function better and makes you feel happier than the others. This is not some wacky idea I made up on the toilet – this idea has been theorized since the mid 19th century, mainly in Germany. Thing is – now, we have the means by which to record and measure music in ways that could only be dreamed of 100 years ago.

Mix the songs around – keep them all fresh. So said, mean speed music theory, you can maintain your poise in any situation by creating a time sequence in your mind. You will start to wonder about all those people around who whine and complain and panic.

Control your speed, control your fear. Keep coming back! The theory is so simple that frankly when critical mass hits, and *everyone* sees and acknowledges the truth of these patterns, people will take the speed territories as obvious. Someone had to bring this information to light, though, and since I discovered the pattern in the chaos in 1988, I have seen nothing close to what you see on these pages.

I do see a lot of aging musicians who hate the theory – mainly because they say – “If only I had played knowing all *that*?!” – Many academicians who hate the theory even more, because their “jobs” requires that they pretend not to understand what I am saying. They hate that they spent millions of dollars and wasted millions of hours looking on part for something that a pianist/lawyer figured out practicing keyboards in a studio apartment the size of a shoe-box. Tough, guys and girls. Suck it up.

The Beatles YESTERDAY - meanspeed contemporary tempo map

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
meanspeed=96.0 beats per minute.
mean emotion according to meanspeed music theory=enthusiasm
average beat=625 milliseconds per beat.
mean slow phase=1.60 cycles per second.
corresponding pitch=409.60 Hertz, 80 cents above G4=391.995 Hertz, 20 cents below G#4/Ab4=415.305 Hertz.

Yesterday performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 16, 1965 -
meanspeed=99.0 beats per minute.
mean emotion according to meanspeed music theory=natural
average beat=606 milliseconds per beat.
mean slow phase=1.65 cycles per second.
corresponding pitch=422.40 Hertz, 30 cents above G#4/Ab4=415.305 Hertz, 70 cents below A4=440.000 Hertz.

The Beatles

The Beatles were a British pop and rock group from Liverpool, England. The group shattered many sales records and charted more than 50 top 40 hit singles, including 20 #1 hits in the USA alone, becoming arguably the most famous musical act of the 20th century. EMI Records estimates that the band has sold over a billion records worldwide. The band’s songs covered many genres, from ballads to reggae, and from psychedelic music to blues to heavy metal, and opened the door for many new musical styles. The Beatles influence extended beyond music into the social and cultural revolutions of the ’60s. more.

/Ian Andrew Schneider/
Meanspeed® Music School

July 15, 1009

revised from its publication here on November 1, 2007

meanspeed_loneliness_speed_graph_stairway_to_heaven

Meanspeed Music modern tempo map - Stairway To Heaven- Led Zeppelin - graph 2

Fitness

They’re Playing My Song. Time to Work Out.

Jon C. Hancock/Associated Press (left); Donna Alberico for The New York Times (middle); Stephanie Kuykendal for The New York Times

FITNESS magazines and Web sites love to ask readers about their favorite workout music while presenting their playlists or suggestions from celebrities. Self.com features the “ ’80s cardio playlist,” which includes the short-shorts video classic “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham! On Fitnessmagazine.com, the singer Rihanna reveals her favorite workout songs — immodestly recommending four of her own for “when you have to pick up the pace on the treadmill.”

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The playlist fixation has a scientific basis: Studies have shown that listening to music during exercise can improve results, both in terms of being a motivator (people exercise longer and more vigorously to music) and as a distraction from negatives like fatigue. But are certain songs more effective than others?

Generally speaking there is a science to choosing an effective exercise soundtrack, said Dr. Costas Karageorghis, an associate professor of sport psychology at Brunel University in England, who has studied the effects of music on physical performance for 20 years. Dr. Karageorghis created the Brunel Music Rating Inventory, a questionnaire that is used to rate the motivational qualities of music in the context of sport and exercise. For nearly a decade, he has administered the questionnaire to panels representing different demographics, who listen to 90 seconds of a song and rate its motivational qualities for various physical activities.

One of the most important elements, Dr. Karageorghis found, is a song’s tempo, which should be between 120 and 140 beats-per-minute, or B.P.M. That pace coincides with the range of most commercial dance music, and many rock songs are near that range, which leads people to develop “an aesthetic appreciation for that tempo,” he said. It also roughly corresponds to the average person’s heart rate during a routine workout — say, 20 minutes on an elliptical trainer by a person who is more casual exerciser than fitness warrior.

Dr. Karageorghis said “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa and “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg are around that range, as is the dance remix of “Umbrella” by Rihanna (so maybe the pop star was onto something). For a high-intensity workout like a hard run, he suggested Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On.”

Music preferences are as idiosyncratic as workout routines, of course. Allison Goldberg, a 39-year-old life coach and amateur runner who lives in Texas and who is training for the Houston Marathon on Sunday, has been running to the Green Day CD “American Idiot” because, she said, “There’s no way you can run slow to Green Day.” (Though she may not be listening on race day; a rule bars runners from using portable music players and headphones.) Haile Gebrselassie, the Olympian from Ethiopia who has won the gold medal at 10,000 meters, often requested that the techno song “Scatman,” which has a B.P.M. of around 135, be played over the sound system during his races.

Ms. Goldberg also includes on her playlist “Don’t Phunk With My Heart” by the Black Eyed Peas (130 B.P.M.), “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers (150 B.P.M.), and “Dancing Queen” by Abba. The musical style that seems to most reliably contain a high B.P.M. is dance music, said Richard Petty, the founder of Power Music, a company that has produced workout compilations for instructors and fitness enthusiasts for two decades. “A rock song doesn’t have that same consistency,” said Mr. Petty, a former D.J. who takes a metronomic approach to making exercise music: He chooses a hit song with a catchy melody — say, “Gold Digger” by Kanye West — and produces a remix whose B.P.M. count is tailored to experience level and type of workout.

For a stroll walker going at a pace of around 3 miles an hour, a remixed track has a count of 115 to 118 B.P.M.; for a power walker going 4.5 m.p.h., the count is 137 to 139 B.P.M., while the B.P.M. for a runner elevates to 147 to 160.

The compilations, aimed largely at women doing cardio, with titles like “Shape Walk — 70’s Hits Remixed,” contain no pauses between songs. That unwavering beat allows a person to synchronize their movements to the music, something that Kate Gfeller, a music professor at the University of Iowa, said is crucial.

“Music provides a timing cue,” said Professor Gfeller, who after taking an aerobics class several years ago where the teacher picked music whose tempo didn’t match the moves, was inspired to study the components of music most important to a gainful workout. “It helps you to move more efficiently, which, in turn, can help you with endurance.” (She likes to warm-up for figure skating to the Buena Vista Social Club, in particular the songs “Candela” and “El Cuarto de Tula.”)

In other words, the best workout songs have both a high B.P.M. count and a rhythm to which you can coordinate your movements. This would seem to eliminate any music with abrupt changes in time signature, like free-form jazz or hard-core punk, as well as music that varies widely in intensity, like much of indie rock. It also rules out what the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks calls “music which doesn’t have adequate rhythmic force.”

“Here, I think of Wagner,” said Dr. Sacks, whose recent book, “Musicophilia,” discusses the link between rhythm and movement. “Nietzsche wrote of what he called Wagner’s ‘degeneration of the sense of rhythm.’ ”

Dr. Sacks is fond of swimming, and said the one-two-three cadence of his strokes often leads him to play a waltz in his mind. “Neurologically, it makes no difference if you’re listening to music or imagining it,” he said. “Vivid imagining activates motor parts.”

Much of the research done on music and exercise is geared toward aerobic workouts like jogging and cardio. But as anyone who has heard Metallica blasting from a weight room stereo knows, music is a motivator in strength training, too. “The vast majority of bodybuilders are fans of heavy metal, if not in their personal life at least in the gym,” said Shawn Perine, a senior writer at Flex magazine. Loud, aggressive music, he said, “keeps you elevated, especially in between sets.”

Mr. Perine prefers to work out to hip-hop. “Let’s say you’ve done a grueling set of squats,” he said. “You’re out of breath, and L. L. Cool J’s ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ comes on. Your energy won’t flag.”

But is there a perfect workout track, a song that transcends exercise forms and personal preferences? One comes up repeatedly: “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from “Rocky.” In a forthcoming book on music and sport that he contributed to, Dr. Karageorghis writes that the song “evokes a state of optimism and excitement in the listener,” and Ms. Goldberg said it helped her get through her first marathon. The band from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn has set up along the New York City Marathon route and performed the “Rocky” theme for runners each race day for the last 30 years.

Bill Conti, the song’s composer, shed light on why it continues to motivate. “I put a Da-Da! in the beginning,” Mr. Conti said. “any kind of Da-Da! gets your attention. Then it goes into a tune we’ve heard played so weepily throughout the movie, but now I put a beat behind it and put it in a major key.” When Rocky runs up the museum steps, musically, Mr. Conti said, “I am milking it as much as I can.”

meanspeed music tempo map - stairway to heaven - led zeppelin