Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver Lesson

[Kate_South]

@LadyOfTheCastle

(who says John Denver always played it at the exact same bpm?)

So true I like that actually, every concert sounds slightly different.

[Kate_South]

Not sure why I get around 80-84 then…are we counting different beats? Or are you counting the &s as well? It’ probably me, I’m terrible with timing

or a friend suggests I may be counting in 2/4, but I have no idea what she means

[jjw]

I think you’re probably counting every other beat. I checked against Justin’s demo at the beginning of the verse: at ~84 bpm I count 4 beats on the G chord. But that is 2 bars (as Justin explains when going through the chords), so I would be counting at half speed.

Even so, our bpm’s don’t quite agree. Your 84 should correspond to 168 for me. Perhaps we were listening to different versions. Or maybe one of us is a bit off.

By the way, there is some arbitrariness to all this: You could think of the song as 84 bpm and the G chord at the beginning of the verse as 1 bar. Or you could think of the song as 168 bpm and the G chord covers 2 bars at the beginning of the verse (as Justin does). The result is the same.

[Kate_South]

I think I must have been too. Aha, a more mathematical mind than mine, for sure I am probably the one a bit off, I am terrible at timing, as I said.

@jjw

By the way, there is some arbitrariness to all this: You could think of the song as 84 bpm and the G chord at the beginning of the verse as 1 bar. Or you could think of the song as 168 bpm and the G chord covers 2 bars at the beginning of the verse (as Justin does). The result is the same.

ahhh! complicated! even the abbreviation ‘bpm’ in a sentence stops my mind from working properly

[jjw]

Yes, it is a bit mathy. Going back to your original question: No, knowing the bpm is not really important!

[Kate_South]

Thanks, that is a good thing…freedom!

[MAT1953]

BPM on this song has been raised before, see this topic.
Michael

Super fast chord changes needed for Country Roads?

I’ve set myself the challenge of playing through Country Roads verse and chorus, with a D-D-U-U-D strumming pattern on the chorus (so downstrums on the 1, 2 and 4). The song is at about 160BPM, so does that mean that, when a chord changes between bars, I need to fully make the chord change in the time between the final downstrum on beat 4 on the previous bar and the first downstrum on 1 with the new chord on the next bar? I can change chords on the ones I’ve practised for this song at a max of…

[stitch]

@jjw

You could also figure it out yourself (it’s a good exercise): put the song on and go to a bpm calculator website (e

Or you could use the free tempo calculator on Justin’s website. It’s in the Tools dropdown

[jjw]

Ah, good point, I didn’t realize Justin had one. Here’s the direct link:

Tap Tempo BPM Tool