The Beatles Tempo Database | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

The Hole Got Fixed said
I can quite clearly hear the snare on 2 and 4 on I’ve Just Seen A Face – the tempo you’re suggesting would put it on the ‘and’ of every beat, which is less normal.

Baby’s In Black is an interesting one. I hear it in 3/4 but I understand your point.

  

The first 2 notes of the intro establish the tempo pretty clearly to me and that motif recurs throughout.

I can’t speak on the snare thing as much because I’m not a drummer, but it’s not that unusual to have drum emphasis on the backbeat, and ultimately it’s the harmonic progression that determines the strong beat of a piece.

When in doubt I check what Alan Pollack has to say about the song:

The slow triplet pulse creates a deceptive sense of tempo. When the verse finally kicks in with its four-square beat that is sustained for the remainder of the song you have a gear-shifting feeling of acceleration as though the tempo had changed. But this is entirely an illusion, anticipating what would show up later, even more forcefully, in “We Can Work It Out“. If you count the measures in “two half” time instead of the twice-as-fast 4/4 you’ll more easily grasp the extent to which the underlying tempo is constant.

I think this supports what I was saying? I may have misinterpreted what he’s saying here because it confused me a bit.

Not sure what the deal with I Me Mine is yet but there’s definitely a tempo shift when it changes from 6/8 to 4/4 feel. They don’t sync up much at all.

The Hole Got Fixed said

Kaniffee said

Also 240 is ridiculously fast for a tempo, hardly anyone plays things at 200 bpm let alone 240.

  

I’ve seen plenty of pieces over 200 – in fact my friend who did the music composition subject last year (and got 3rd in the state) wrote his piece at 240bpm. It isn’t impossible, is my point, but I’m starting to think tempo is relative anyway and different people hear different things.

  

The thing about tempos faster than 200 is that no one playing the song will actually internalize the the beat that fast.  If the tempo is technically 240 the players will internalize 120 as the tempo because that’s a reasonable tempo their brain can actually handle.  And because they’re playing it like 120 with offbeats that how it comes across. 

Tempo is mainly for the person playing the piece.  It’s not often that a listener will think about it to this degree.  So tempos should be a reflection of how the player actually plays it.

Oh and apparently I Me Mine goes from 6/8 to 12/16 so the speed stays the same i guess but the beat changes from being dotted quarter note to being a dotted eighth note according to the sheet music.  I tested this and if you imagine a duple rhythm with the dotted quarter beat the transition works very smoothly.