“Whatever it is, it’ll keep to the morning, haven’t we both got better things to do?” MIDNIGHT BLUE – Speed of Enthusiasm,1970s American style

Meanspeed® Music Review

Very often in science, the unexpected discovery turns out to be the most significant. The meanspeed® conjecture in music asserts: the square root of three-fifths of one second (V3/5") is the speed of the beat where V3/5" x 10^2= 77.459666… per minute, while V3/5" x 10^(-2)=0.77459666… seconds per beat in length. Tempo is to music as the weather report is to the news." ONE speed does NOT suit all: message to Charlatan Central led by Donny Campbell.

meanspeed school_contemporary tempo map_midnight blue_melissa machester_91 bpm 1

meanspeed school_contemporary tempo map_midnight blue_melissa manchester_91 bpm 2

meanspeed school_contemporary tempo map_midnight blue_melissa machester_91 bpm 4

meanspeed school_contemporary tempo map_midnight blue_melissa machester_91 bpm Heather Tom

meanspeed school_contemporary tempo map_midnight blue_melissa machester_91 bpm HORNSBY in spired

meanspeed school_contemporary tempo map_midnight blue_melissa machester_91 bpm 3-Dimensional space-time graph 2

meanspeed_enthusiasm_speed_graph_midnight_blue_melissa manchester 1

MIDNIGHT BLUE is a lilting ballad sung by adult soft-rocker Melissa Manchester. Harmonically, the song is but a huge C7sus2 chord interwoven with an F7sus4 chord – in other words, a lot of C’s, F’s and Bb’s. Despite this seeming harmonic limitation, the song sounds “thick” and lush, as they say in the music industry, WET.

Midnight Blue was one of the first songs I calibrated when this project began 20 years ago this week. The song accelerates in a gliding, positive and comfortable pace. It uses the speed territories at the fast end of the mean emotion of renewal and the slowest end of enthusiasm. Looking at the music elements of the song now, I think the perfect speed was played that day with the lush rich voice and phrasing of Melissa Manchester singing a song partially written by Peter Allen. Peter Allen could knock out hits like DON’T CRY OUT LOUD and ARTHUR’S THEME (along with Burt Bacharach and Christopher Cross) as the naturally gifted composer he was.

Meanspeed-Spencer Summary

song=Midnight Blue

performer=Melissa Manchester

composer=Peter Allen

mean speed/average expected tempo=90.9 beats per minute/”bpm”

mean length per beat=660 milliseconds

mean emotion as predicted by meanspeed music theory=enthusiasm/confident anticipation, seen in context in the proposed Newman Tempo Scale in the right column