#28 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest of All-Time is called "(Sittin on) the Dock of the Bay," Otis Redding, meanemotion=natural, meanspace=580 milliseconds

The #28 song on the Rolling Stone List of The 500 Greatest of All-Time is called (Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay, performed by Otis Redding.

The song was measured for speed and we found:
meanspeed=103.5 beats per minute
meanspace=580 milliseconds per beat
meanemotion=natural.

The primary reason we measure for speed, and have been doing so for 19 years, is because until the digital revolution, your DJ was always someone playing unknown speeds *at* you. When you learn your speeds (take your time!), one of the coolest things you can do is play around with the setlists and playlists. Notice how different the Rolling Stone Top 28 songs of all-time look when arrange according to Rolling Stone rank:
compared with the top 28 arranged by speed, expressed as beats per minute.
Of course, the fantastic thing about this is that with digital music programs, you are not stuck with one arrangement of songs or the other. As most of you know, you can alphabetize, arrange according to "genre," arrange by artist--all without disturbing your songs or information about the songs. As you can see above, (Stiin' On) The Dock Of The Bay is listed as "104 BPM"--this is because my player of choice is iTunes which commands that you round the BPM to the nearest whole number--which works well.

Many times we have said: the measurements were obtained using the method as described on http://meanspeed.com. An example of what the method looks like sits below in these Microsoft Excel screenshots: each measure of 4 beats is measured ten times. The three did it numbers in each box below represent centiseconds, which are totaled, averaged and turned from "base 10"--milliseconds to base 6--beats per *minute*. Both representations of speed are based on the same measurement. Musicians, music lovers, conductors and DJs will use "beats per minute." Psychologists, physicists and neurologists will use milliseconds per beat--a reason we include both "meanspeed" (BPM) and "meanspace" (milliseconds per beat) in our daily reports. The concept of "meanemotion" is one based on listening to every lyric and song we could over 19 years--15,000 songs --and seeing a pattern of order within chaos that was discovered after seeing a mere 100-200 songs and testing and re-testing; in short, trying to prove our *own* theory wrong. So far, we think Meanspeed Music Theory is stronger than ever, and you are most invited to join in the discussion about it. MM Theory is not an invention or forced structure: it is simply a way to see that what appears, or sounds, like chaos in music tempo is really a spectacular act of nature. Speed is territorial and inescapable. We encourage you to try the method yourself--the spreadsheet pages for the speed graphs at the bottom for Dock Of The Bay look like:
page 1 of 5
page 2 of 5
page 3 of 5
page 4 of 5
page 5 of 5

Finally, we see the speed at a glance, whether we are professional musicians or *not*--true "people's sheet music." You will find that if you discover your preferred speeds, knowledge is power. That "different drummer" to whom you are marching to the beat of will be exposed, and instead of some old man Lite-FM DJ (like me!) setting your mental frame--*you* will be that drummer. Just as we all watch which television shows when we want with or without commercials, just as we know the speed of every baseball pitch, just as we can research everything and beyond on Google, MSN, Yahoo or any of the other 100s of search engines, we learn: Knowledge truly is power.

this speed graph is a Microsoft Excel radar chart based on exactly the number above

this speed graph is a Microsoft Excel linear chart based on exactly the number above.


Ian Schneider
James "The Senator" Manning
Sarah Anthony
meanspeed.com
May 28, 2007
Happy Memorial Day