I just realized that I haven’t done a “Know Your Tempos” post in months since I did my first one back in January. So here’s another one of these posts, shamelessly stolen from Todd Bishop. I think I’ll just start using a boilerplate description of what “Know Your Tempos” means:
If you ever see some sheet music that says “♩ = 215” and you don’t have a metronome on you, all you need to do is sing a song that you know was recorded at 215. Voilà. You’ll have a pretty good idea of how fast you’re supposed to play. It won’t be as accurate as using a click, but it’s a good trick to have… if you get a decent mental collection of these things, you’ll have a good reference for a variety of tempos. Or tempi. Whatever.
Today is Jimi Hendrix (technically the Jimi Hendrix Experience). I think it’s easiest to do these things with an artist that’s not cutting albums anymore, since then I don’t have to worry about updating these lists.
Let’s run through the Jimi Hendrix tempo trivia. The slowest song is “Voodoo Chile” at 55 BPM (that’s the 15-minute 12/8 version). The slowest 4/4 song is “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).” The fastest tune is “Third Stone From The Sun” (the swing section, that is).
You can download a full .csv file at the bottom of this post to see the BPM of all the Jimi songs from the three albums that everyone cares about. In the meantime, here’s a highlight reel:
- 55 — “Voodoo Chile” [Dotted Quarter]
- 68 — “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)”
- 70 — “Little Wing”
- 72 — “Bold as Love”
- 78 — “Wind Cries Mary”
- 80 — “One Rainy Wish” [3/4 Chorus]
- 82 — “Hey Joe”
- 88 — “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”
- 96 — “Foxy Lady”
- 100 — “Remember”
- 108 — “Purple Haze”
- 114 — “All Along The Watchtower” [Main Groove]
- 120 — “Gypsy Eyes”
- 128 — “You Got Me Floatin’”
- 134 — “Stone Free”
- 138 — “Highway Chile”
- 142 — “Little Miss Strange”
- 148 — “Manic Depression”
- 150 — “Fire”
- 230 — “Third Stone From The Sun” [Swing Section]
If you want some additional data that’s ultimately pointless, the mean, median, and mode of the tempos are 105, 110, and 110, respectively.
(Photo by By Hannu Lindroos / Lehtikuva — http://hs.mediadelivery.io/img/1920/9dbb99ea6c89473c9c8cec20806fa7b9.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65173550)
