"My Hometown," Charlie Robison, meanspeed=70.6 BPM, category=Graceful

I asked my cousin Jeff on Independence Day what he thought a proper American song or set of songs might be. He has had far bolder and wider experiences than I have: in his mid-30s, Jeff has spent 1/4 of his adult life at war, while I never even thought about putting on a uniform--my generation---I am 43 years old--was lucky enough to avoid the draft, see the draft abolished, then get so old that the Army won't take us any more.

Anyway, I asked Jeff, who moved to Texas from New jersey about 10-15 years ago, about the tasks of being a father and being a Captain--a Bronze Star (2005) leader of the 227th Division of the United States Army based in the East Coast at Fort Eustis, Virginia. Jeff is a bold leader--he had a CNN crew embedded on one of his 100s of missions from Kuwait to Iraq and maybe some of you can find those archives, which ca be found around February 2005, as Jeff's heavily bleeped commands to the troops are featured. He has put his life on the line--and this is a courage beyond what I can imagine.

I asked Jeff what song, and maybe a sentence about that song. His reply is below regarding the song My Hometown by Charlie Robison of Texas. This, the first of a Texas series, a fantastic song, is available, as all the songs on this site are at iTunes--I do not want to tease the reader--so if you want to hear a sample, it is there and free check out, 99 cents to own.
Oh--and that is Jeff "Texas Roast" Schneider in the picture above--I have permission, as you may read--Jeff wrote:

"...Feel free to use the picture.

Thoughts about the song:
As silly as this sounds, given the song name,
the song reminded me
of home.
That almost dream like tempo had the images
of "my hometown" going
through my mind.  I was able to visualize
the slower times of life,
where I could
enjoy my friends and family,
as opposed to the nonstop go of Iraq.  It was
soothing..."

Captain Jeffrey Schneider,
US Army

The speed of this song is identical to the studio speed
of Let It Be by the Beatles.

The musicians on My Hometown are:
Charlie Robison vocals/acoustic guitar
Rich Brotherton guitar/mandolin

Charlie Sexton     guitar
Gene Elders        fiddle
John Ludwick       bass
Lloyd Maines       dobro
David Grissmon     guitar
Bruce Robison      background vocals

The mean speed, or the speed of the song expressed as beats per minute on this live recording= 70.6 beats per minute.
average beat= 850 milliseconds.
beat frequency= 1.177 beats per second.
mean slow phase= 1.177 Hertz.
corresponding tone= 301.23 Hertz in equal temperament, 43 cents above D4=293.665 Hertz, and 57 cents below D#4/Eb4=311.127 Hertz. 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.
c) Eight speed charts were created the 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, as always.
Coffee courtesy of Meredith an Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.
Best, from the home of the New York Mets,


Ian Schneider
May 20, 2008