yes, I realized…and I guess that would work, but to my mind it makes me go 
Hi @Kate_South ,
When I play Country Roads I like to give it a bit more of a ballad feel & therefore slow it down to about 68 BPM… try it, it works! Have fun!!!
Tod
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Hi @Richard_close2u ,
If I look at Justin’s song lesson, when he’s demo’ing the song, he’s clearly his playing his down strums at around 160 down strums per minute. So, if you consider this 8th note strumming, then I would call the tempo 160 bpm. However, I could consider this 16th note strumming, in which case the tempo would be 80 bpm.
FWIW, Justin seems to describe the strumming as an 8th note pattern. This is evident also when he gives the number of measures for each chord.
Am I wrong then when I say there is ambiguity in the specified bpm?
@Jozsef, as for head-bobbing, I think that is subjective.
As an example: in the chorus, if I count the lyrics like this (which is what comes naturally to me):
Coun- try roads .....
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Take me home ....
1 2 3 4 etc.
This would be 160 bpm. It sounds like you might count it like this:
Coun- try roads .....
1 + 2 + 1 + 2 +
Take me home ....
1 + 2 + etc.
i.e. putting “try” and “me” on the upstrums. Then it would be considered a tempo of 80 bpm. (As I mentioned above, though, Justin is playing down strums on “try” and “me”.)
EDIT: Btw, if you look at John Denver performing this live, he is clearly hitting his down strums at around 160 per minute (or thumb plucks, when he plays it fingerstyle).
Maybe I’m being too nerdy about this, but I feel like saying “this is definitely played at 80 bpm” isn’t quite right.
I’m adding to the confusion by saying, that this song is at 166 bpm in the app.
I remember, I always turned down the speed because I didn’t like given tempo and thought it was double time.
I now play it on my own tempo…
I found a live version and the audience doesn’t seem to be clapping at 160 BPM. I still think that which some people consider to be 160 BPM is due to the 8th/16th notes played on the guitar. But all instruments in a song don’t have to play in the same tempo (i.e. playing only quarter notes, only 8th notes, etc.). Maybe the official sheet music of the song (if there is any) would set things right.
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Surely the bpm of a song remains a constant. You can choose strum slowly or quickly ie. to play 4 strums or 8 or 16, but the bpm is still the same.
I think I have come to see the issue … an aha moment that I should have had before now. My apologies. I can’t recall but it seems I probably didn’t look over at Justin’s lesson. Justin’s lesson gives two bars per chord.
You can view the song as one bar per chord at approximately 80bpm or two bars per chord at approximately 160bpm.
The doubling / halving makes them equal in sound.
I have created two audio tracks of the 1st verse. They will sound almost identical - but listen to the drums. Both play kick - snare - kick - snare as quarter beats. But because of the difference in bar-count you will hear the difference there.
The notation I am showing in each example is for the melody - not guitar tab. It shows the count for the lyric also.
TMHCR @ 160 bpm
TMHCR @ 80 bpm
Notice that you will need to adjust how you think of the count for the lyric.
The split word ‘Country’ that begins the chorus comes at the very end of the last bar of the verse. It does not begin at the 1st beat of the chorus. Beat 1 of the chorus is the lyric ‘roads’.
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Ah, ok, thanks for that. I didn’t carefully work out the exact count.
And thanks for your comprehensive answer.
I just listened to the original John Denver recording… For the first time in many many years.
In the intro, I can clearly hear a metronome ticking, with a low click on the down beat, and a high click on the upbeat. When I tap along with the low click, it feels like around 80 BPM … though I didn’t try to measure it exactly.
When the vocal starts, I hear what sounds like someone snapping their fingers… But only on the upbeat!
There is a lot of of what I would call "rhythmic ambivalence "in this song! That’s probably one of the reasons it’s interesting.
When I’m trying to figure out something like this, I generally find the best way to proceed is to pull it into Moises, and isolate various instruments to figure out what is really going on. Haven’t done that in this case, since I’m not trying to learn the song.
I’d be interested to know if other people hear the same things that I am hearing… My ears are improving, but I don’t totally trust them yet.
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I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter what you call it. If you want to play it like John Denver generally does, you will have to be hitting those down strums around 160 times per minute. Or, if playing fingerstyle, the alternating thumb is pumping away on the bass strings 160 times per minute.
That’s pretty quick.
Of course, you don’t have to play it that way, you could choose a rhythm where the down strums or thumb plucks occur around 80 times per minute and it will sound fine.
This is a very interesting topic.
and this is a brilliant sentence for a beginner like me.
I automate naturally at about 100-120 bpm a minute - that is easy for me-I’m a rushing kind of person. I could easily enough adjust to 160, but I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter the ‘proper’ bpm so long as it sounds right.
Thanks @Richard_close2u, those are very helpful.
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So…I originally started this thread when I had been playing for about a month. Two years on… It’s obvious to me now that it’s at 84bpm (roughly), and I don’t remember why I even had to ask! I guess it might have been the app showing 168, and playing on the 1 and 3 at 168 is the same as playing quarter notes at 84.
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Thing’s that are “obvious” to more experienced players are often not at all obvious to beginners.
This song is especially tricky, since it has no drum track…usually, the backbeat - snare hits on 2 and 4 - is the most reliable cue to a song’s true tempo.
And if the App has it wrong…of course that’s going to confuse people.
As I understood Sajid’s post, that exactly what they were saying. 
As an advancing beginner, I’ve had this experience. We sometimes learn things without even realizing the learning is happening. So when I find myself frustrated by something guitar-related, I remember that with time and practice, it will (most likely) come to me.
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