“Time may change me, but I can’t change time” – Bowie
I measured what I found to be the underlying tempo of the song Changes by the late wonderful David Bowie.
David Bowie
This is a tempo graph of David Bowie’s song “Changes,” showing how the timing of each beat slightly shifts throughout the track.
The jagged blue line represents moment-to-moment variations in tempo, measured in time per beat. While the tempo doesn’t stay perfectly steady, it hovers around a median expected tempo of 112.5 beats per minute.
Two trend lines are included:
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The straight line shows there’s barely any long-term tempo drift — overall, the tempo is pretty steady.
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The curved line suggests there are gentle waves or cycles in how the beat timing changes — speeding up a bit, then slowing down slightly, in a repeating pattern.
In essence: Bowie’s “Changes” holds a mostly consistent tempo, but with natural rhythmic fluctuations that give it a human, expressive feel.
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