Meanspeed™ Music Journal: The Rich Genius Laughs at Us: Apple's Inaccurate BPM Consistent with Steve Jobs' Arrogant Greed and Intentional False Dumb Down

The article below was first published over a year ago.
Among many things I find disturbing a bout Apple is the Know it all mind set, the take it all money grab -- and still, their math is simply *wrong*. If listeners continue to accept horribly incorrect BPM in the once in a Blue Moon that they are actually given, I have a lot of work to do.
You all are not so lazy to get Apple get away with their Fuzzy Math - are you?

The speed, as you see below,

is a solid 2 beats a minute wrong in a key place on the mean speed theory scale. if I can be instantly wi-fied a download as I zoom under the Hudson River in a tunnel, the idea that Apple is giving out shoddy BPM, or none at all - makes me wonder if anyone is actually paying attention to objective speed.

When I calibrated these songs in the late 1990s I was struck by the similiarity of speed patterns. The speed graphs shown in this entry are based on numerical coordinates that show the song with the basis of a moving average of every ten beats, or two and one half measures instead of every 4 measures as I almost always do now.
Today begins an experiment in the helpfulness in the accuracy of breaking the song down--to the point where the speed patterns are 2 and one half times more exposed. These are the two songs as compared as "10's"--tomorrow, let's just see if the patterns are as striking after an analysis of Yusef's Wild World alone.
The songs, Wild World by Yusef Islam, recorded as Cat Stevens, meanspeed=76.0 beats per minute and The Boston Rag, meanspeed=77.1 beats per minute sit on the fence of where speeds that carry songs that are graceful turn bitterswweet. In Yusef's song he sings, as the song gets faster and counterintuitively more uncomfortable :
"If you're going to leave,
take good care,
but just rememeber a lot of things
Turn BAD ! -out there"

In The Boston Rag we hear the nostaligic meanspeed:
"He was singing this song,
when Johnny came alive,
Bring back the Boston Rag,
tell everybody that it ain't no drag."

The speed graph marked:
A) shows the entire meanspeed scale and where the songs fit therein;
B) shows the songs amongst all the speeds--from fast bebop at the top, 400 BPM to ultra-slow trance at 29 BPM. From this vantage, it is hard to see any pattern at all;
C) Shows the performance lines and the linear trends of both songs;
D) Is (c) above as a radar type chart;
E) Is a 3 dimensional view of (C);
F) Is (E);
G) Is (E);
H) Is (E);
I) Shows the performance lines and the logorithmic trends of both songs.

The song The Boston Rag can be searched on the page for a seperate entry I have in the archives dedicated only to The Rag measure by measure. So, tomorrow we will look at Wild World alone measure by measure, and compare the two songs whe broken down into groups of four beats and see if the patterns are still as striking.

Coffee courtesy of Meredith and United States Army Bronze Star Army Captain Jeff Schneider of TexasRoast.com.