Tempo in the performance reveals the emotion of the performer. Learn the patterns, control your mind
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Psychology, Timing and Speed Territory Exposes The Emotion Behind Mental Chronometry in Music - DIRE STRAITS - "Skateaway" - Music Fatalism, in action
The song Skateaway by the Dire Straits show a gritty and live studio performance. Besides Mark Knoffler's unique guitar playing, once again the bearded "Professor" Roy Bittan, who fits in seamlessly like this with Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks and everywhere else apeears in a classic late 20th Century Recorded Live In The Studio pop song.
Roy, who played for Bruce in the 1970s, could have gone one route or another. Let us just say that the only player besides Bruce Springsteen to appear on Bruce's 8-track home recorded Tunnel Of Love, probably Bruce at his most candid yet available: Roy. Nothing helps you to fit seamlessly into a band like that of a Professor Roy Bittan without an excellence of timing unmatched. Indeed, after outplaying both Billy Joel and Chuck Levell, Roy has stayed in a league of his own - though Bruce Hornsby's chords and playing, with his huge hands, devotion to practice and playing excellence, knowledge of music theory and a spark of creativity set a new standard. Still, Roy could have gone Jerry Lee Lewis - instead he did Keith Jarrett plays rock and roll.
This song is typical, in a fatalistic manner, of a song of foreboding. The story pattern is: Boy meets girls, Boy falls in love with girl, Boy gets dumped by girl, boy learns how to play the hell out of the guitar, gets a great band and sings about his frustration, in the refrain, "When ya gonna realize, It was just that that the time was wrong? Juliet!"
That's heavy - Romeo & Juliet. Oh, if only they had met at a different time?! The possibilities fan the flames of frustration and danger - foreboding embodied.
MeanspeedMusic Summary mean speed=116.8 beat per minute average beat=514 milliseconds mean emotion according to mean speed music theory=foreboding
most intersting rhyme='song' with 'long'
"She's making movies, on lacation, she don't know what it means,
And the music-maker wants to be the story,
and the story was whatever was the song,
Roller girl, don't worry,
D.J. play your all night long, all night long
"Imagine" - John Lennon - meanspeed=75.7 beats per minute, meanemotion=grace Calibrations, Two and 3 Dimensional Meanspeed Charts
At Meanspeed Music, with the key supervision of Sir James Manning, we calibrated the most famous John Lennon solo song ever: IMAGINE. All calibrations, spread sheets and graphs were produced by Ian Schneider and Sir James. We used 4 beats - one measure - contiguous groups as a basis of 5,400 beat measurements.
"Imagine" is a utopian-themed song performed by John Lennon, which appears on his 1971 album, Imagine. Although originally credited solely to Lennon, in recent years Yoko Ono's contribution to the song has become more widely acknowledged. The song was produced by Phil Spector.
"Imagine" is widely considered as one of the greatest songs of all time. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine voted "Imagine" the third greatest song of all time.[1] Former U.S. presidentJimmy Carter said, "In many countries around the world — my wife and I have visited about 125 countries — you hear John Lennon's song 'Imagine' used almost equally with national anthems."[2]
The lyrics were thought to be inspired by Lennon's hopes for a more peaceful world, though their origins are not known for certain. In 1963 Lennon penned the lyrics to "I'll Get You" with an opening verse of, "Imagine I'm in love with you, it's easy cause I know." The first verse of "Imagine" would seem to be a reworking of this. But the song's refrain may have been partly inspired by Yoko Ono's poetry, in reaction to her childhood in Japan during World War II. According to The Guardian, primordial versions of the song's refrain can be found in her 1965 book Grapefruit, where she penned lines such as, "imagine a raindrop" and "imagine the clouds dripping."[5]
The following is a quote by John Lennon on the message of "Imagine", interviewed by David Sheff for Playboy magazine in 1980:
Sheff: On a new album, you close with "Hard Times Are Over (For a While)". Why? Lennon: It's not a new message: "Give Peace a Chance" — we're not being unreasonable, just saying, "Give it a chance." With "Imagine," we're saying, "Can you imagine a world without countries or religions?" It's the same message over and over. And it's positive.[6]
Yoko Ono said that the lyrical content of "Imagine" was "just what John believed — that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out."[7]
Nutopia is a conceptual country created by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on April Fool's Day 1973. This country (or nation) was supposed to live up to the standards set by the song "Imagine".
In the official declaration of Nutopia, it is stated that it
"has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. Nutopia has no laws other than cosmic. All people of Nutopia are ambassadors of the country. Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of Nutopia."
The flag of Nutopia has only one colour: white. Some criticized this association with surrender, but Lennon & Ono defended that association, saying that only through surrender and compromise can peace be achieved. U2 later adopted the Nutopian flag as a part of their live performance of the political songs from their third album, War (album).
A plaque engraved with the words "NUTOPIAN EMBASSY" was duly installed at their home at the Dakota. It is believed that the whole affair was a jibe at Lennon's ongoing immigration troubles, as he and Ono (who already had a Resident Alien "green card", which Lennon had been denied, through her previous husband) tried to move to America.
Despite its popularity, "Imagine" has received critiques over the years, some of which have perceived the lyrics in a negative light.
Journalist and broadcaster Robert Elms said "Imagine" was written by a "multi-millionaire with one temperature-controlled room in his Manhattan mansion just to store his fur coats."[10]Elvis Costello also commented satirically on the song in "The Other Side of Summer", wherein he asks the question, "Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine no possessions'?"
Irving Bible Church Senior Pastor Andy McQuitty wrote a sermon in which he analyzed the lyrics of the song. His sermon explains the belief that a world where one would "live for today" and have nothing worth killing or dying for would be negative. Lennon's utopia is described as a "souless, passionless, religionless, Heavenless, Helless, transcendantless reality". [1].
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The Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park, New York
Virgin Radio conducted a UK favorite song survey in December 2005, and Imagine was voted into top spot, beating Beatles songs "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be".
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The song is referenced in George Harrison's song "All Those Years Ago". One of the lines is "You were the one who imagined it all, all those years ago."
The song was used in the last sequence of the 1984 film The Killing Fields.
The song was performed during a show commemorating the 30th anniversary of Star Trek.
In 1990, the song was featured in the Quantum Leap episode "The Leap Home" and is also on the soundtrack of the series.
When the Liverpool airport was named after Lennon, a phrase from the song, "above us only sky", was painted on the ceiling of the terminal. When commenting on this, the panel of Have I Got News for You joked that the baggage handlers' motto was taken from the same song: "Imagine no possessions".
A mosaic was constructed as a part of the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park, New York City, near Lennon's final home, in memory of the singer. In the centre of the mosaic is the word "Imagine".
A humorous telling of this song's origin appears in Forrest Gump. The main character, Forrest, is a guest on The Dick Cavett Show alongside John Lennon. Forrest recounts his experiences playing ping pong in China; he claims that the Chinese do not have much stuff ("no possessions") and, unlike him, do not go to church every Sunday (which Lennon interprets as "no religion too"), to which Dick Cavett responds, "It's hard to imagine", and Lennon says, "Well it's easy if you try".
"Imagine" and other songs by John Lennon were used in the movie Mr. Holland's Opus. (1995)
In 2005, post-hardcore band Thrice released a b-side from their album Vheissu called "Lullaby". The song is a response to "Imagine". Though Thrice lyricist Dustin Kensrue is an admitted fan of Lennon, he has stated that he disagrees with the message of the song because it doesn't offer any realistic solutions to world problems.
The song was WABC-AM 's final song before switching to its current NewsTalkRadio format.
In the Iranian left movement, the song usually relates to Mansoor Hekmat and his party, the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. The WPI plays the song in all of its meetings and demonstrations, and in its TV channel. Within Iran, the song is sometimes sung in protests and symbolizes the left movement, especially the WPI.
George Galloway quoted the line I'm Not the Only One for the title of his autobiography.
On November 18, 2006, UFC fighter and known anarchist Jeff Monson used "Imagine" as his walk in/entrance song for his heavyweight title fight against Tim Sylvia at UFC 65: Bad Intentions in Sacramento, California.
The song is a popular choice for students learning the piano. [citation needed]
Some artists, disagreeing with the song's anti-religion stance, have changed the line "and no religion too" into "and one religion too" in their cover versions.
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Khaled and Noa released an Arabic and Hebrew duo cover of "Imagine" and released it in Khaled's album Kenza.
Bassist Jeff Berlin covered the song on his 1997 album "Taking Notes". That album also featured Jeff's solo interpretation of Eric Clapton's song "Tears In Heaven", which has went on to become one of his most recognisable songs after gaining much praise from fans.
Joan Baez has recorded and performed the song numerous times throughout her career. She first included it on her 1972 album Come from the Shadows, and often includes it in her concert set lists.
Dana covered Imagine on her 1980 album Everything is Beautiful.
Tommy Emmanuel did an instrumental cover verson of Imagine on his album Determination.
American R&B/soul singer, Tracie Spencer, remade the song for her 1988 self-titled debut album. The song did moderately well in the USA, hitting #31 on the R&B/Hip-Hop charts. She was only 11 years old when the album was released.
Late singer Eva Cassidy has a version of the song on her 2002 album Imagine. Although not released as a single, it appeared on Now That's What I Call Music! 53 the same year. The album was released in November, the month Cassidy died six years earlier.
In 2004, alternative rock band A Perfect Circle covered the song on their third album, eMOTIVe. This song is significantly darker and gloomier than the original version and was quite popular upon release.
Canadian rock musician Allison Crowe, who performs the song in concert, recorded "Imagine" for release on her 2005 double-album, Live at Wood Hall.
Dolly Parton recently released a cover of the song (2006), in a duet with David Foster. The video for Parton's cover of the song featured vintage footage of Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Ozmosis (British MC) covered the song but added a new set of lyrics [3]
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