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APPLYING MUSIC
IN EXERCISE
AND SPORT
Costas I. Karageorghis
PhD, CPsychol, CSci, FBASES, AFBPsS
Brunel University London, UK
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Karageorghis, Costas I., 1969- author.
Title: Applying music in exercise and sport / Costas I. Karageorghis.
Description: Champaign, IL ; London, UK : Human Kinetics, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016010699 (print) | LCCN 2016013475 (ebook) | ISBN
9781492513810 (print) | ISBN 9781492530695 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Music and sports. | Music--Psychological aspects. |
Exercise--Psychological aspects. | Sports--Psychological aspects. |
Exercise music--Discography.
Classification: LCC ML3830 .K36 2017 (print) | LCC ML3830 (ebook) | DDC
781.5/94--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016010699
ISBN: 978-1-4925-1381-0 (print)
Copyright © 2017 by Costas I. Karageorghis
All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any elec-
tronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and record-
ing, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Notice: Permission to reproduce the following material is granted to instructors and agencies who have purchased
Applying Music in Exercise and Sport: Group Music Selection Tool on p. 48, Attentional Focusing Questionnaire on
pp. 50-52, Mental Preparation Profile on pp. 53-54, Music Mood-Regulation Scale on pp. 57-60, Music-Liking Item
on p. 64, Brunel Mood Scale on pp. 66-68, Motivation Scale Instructions on p. 69, and Figure 3.3 on p. 73. The repro-
duction of other parts of this book is expressly forbidden by the above copyright notice. Persons or agencies who have
not purchased Applying Music in Exercise and Sport may not reproduce any material.
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This book is dedicated to some inspirational teachers I have met along life’s path:
Professor Peter C. Terry, Professor N.C. Craig Sharp,
John J. Myhill, Junior G. Field, and Richard A. Glover (1949-2013).
And to inspirational teachers everywhere.
 CONTENTS
Foreword vii Preface xi І
Acknowledgments xv І І
What Do You Know About Music in Exercise and Sport? xvii

Part I How Music Can Help Exercisers and Athletes 1

Chapter 1 Music in Exercise and Sport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Music and Exercise Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Music and the Olympic Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
What Is Music? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Music Use in Exercise and Sport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Main Effects of Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
How Music Is Used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Music Use and the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Chapter 2 The Science Behind the Music–Performance Connection . . . . . . 21

Why Certain Tunes Resonate With Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Factors Influencing Responses to Music: A New Theoretical Model . . . . . . . . . . 36
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 3 Assessing Music and Measuring Its Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Using Psychometrics in the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Selecting Music for Exercise and Sport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Assessing the Effects of Music During a Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Assessing the Effects of Music After a Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Summary Points for Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Part II Using Music to Enhance Exercise and Workouts 77

Chapter 4 Individual Exercise and Workouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Pre-Workout Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Strength-Based Workouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Cardiorespiratory Workouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Using Music in Personal Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Cool-Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Chapter 5 Group Exercise and Workouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Classes With Choreographed Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Classes and Group Activities With Asynchronous Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

iv
 Contents v

Chapter 6 Exercise Case Studies and Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Case Study 1: Sophie, Mother of Three, Wants to Rekindle
the Exercise Habit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Case study 2: Ambitious Exercise-to-Music Instructor Marino
Supercharges His Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Summary Points for Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Part III Using Music to Enhance Sport Training

and Performance 149
Chapter 7 Individual Sport Training and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Serve-and-Return Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Endurance-Based Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Subjectively Scored Sports With an Artistic Component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Power-Based Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Ice Track Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Combat Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Aerial and Water-Based Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Motor Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Aiming and Shooting Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Chapter 8 Team Sport Training and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Serve-and-Return Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Paddle Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
High-Contact Field Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Subjectively Scored Team Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Bat-and-Ball Team Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Court-Based Ball Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Aiming Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Interactive Team Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Team Sailing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Miscellaneous Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Chapter 9 Sport Case Studies and Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Case Study 1: Frieda’s Run for Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Case Study 2: Coach Anderson Seeks a New “Sound System” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Summary Points for Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

What Do You Now Know About Music in Exercise and Sport? 211 І
Answers to Quizzes 215 Glossary 219 References 223 І І І
Further Reading 231 Index 239 І
About the Author 244 І
 FOREWORD
PART I: THE ATHLETE’S
PERSPECTIVE
Mark Shearman
Dina Asher-Smith is a Great Britain Olympic track
athlete and member of Blackheath and Bromley
Harriers Athletics Club in southeast London. She
is the first British woman to have broken the
11-second barrier over 100 meters. Asher-Smith
has achieved numerous honors that include win-
ning gold medals at the 2013 European Junior
Championships (200 meters), 2014 World Junior
Championships (100 meters), and 2016 World
Junior Championships (100 meters). In 2015,
Asher-Smith took a silver medal at the European
Indoor Championships (60 meters) and equalled
the British record of 7.08 seconds. In the same year,
she placed fifth at the World Athletics Champi-
onships in Beijing where she broke Kathy Cook’s
long-standing British record over 200 meters with
a time of 22.07 seconds. She capped 2015 with the
Sunday Times/Sky Sports Young Sportswoman of
the Year award. Alongside her daily commitments
on the track, Asher-Smith is reading for a degree in
history at King’s College London. She is the British
60-meter, 100-meter, and 200-meter record holder
and fastest British woman in history.
W hen I was growing up in South London, I
listened to a lot of the music that my mum
and dad liked—what I would often refer to as
their ’80s mega-mix. Since then I have developed
my own music taste, which has a strong hip-hop
and R&B flavor. The kind of music that I listen
to in my everyday life often has a bearing on the
music that I choose to listen to in preparation for
competition. The songs with which I am most
familiar tend to make me feel most comfortable
in the often inhospitable domain of international
track and field.
For many athletes, music listening has become
a staple for competition because it’s a great way to
block out the pressure and control feelings. In par-
ticular, I find that music is an ideal way to achieve
my desired mood state. Given how much of my
sport depends on psychological readiness, this
can make a telling difference. If I feel extremely
nervous, I will listen to something calming like
Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” that will put me
on an even keel emotionally. Contrastingly, if I’ve
had a long flight the night before or feel tired, I
use music to get fired up about an hour before I
am due to compete. In these instances, I select a
powerful, up-tempo track such as “Not Letting
Go” by Tinie Tempah or “Run The World (Girls)”
by Beyoncé.
The nature and personality of the artist per-
forming a song can be an important factor for
me. Beyoncé, for example, is an incredible role
model for women the world over. She is such a
strong person, so tenacious and hardworking,
plus she likes to rule the roost—they don’t call
her Queen B for nothing! These are all qualities
that I like to bring to the sprint events, so when
I play one of Beyoncé’s songs during the crucial
pre-­competition phase, my association with her
approach to performing on stage helps me get
zoned in. The importance of the personal connec-
tion with an artist and the artist’s music is some-
thing that comes across strongly in this book.
Accordingly, I would encourage up-and-coming
athletes to think carefully about musical role
models as well as sporting ones.
vii
viii Foreword

Life can be lonely on the circuit, and I don’t

always have my coach John alongside me. It seems
that my music can serve many purposes: at times
as a companion, often as a means by which to
wind down and relax, and at other times as a
rhythmic cue to get my legs turning over just
that little bit faster. I feel incredibly lucky and
blessed to have gotten as far as I have in my sport,
and, looking toward the future, I take comfort in
knowing that my music will continue to be with
me every step of the way.
Dina Asher-Smith

PART II: THE COACH’S

PERSPECTIVE

I have to declare from the outset that, like most
athletics coaches, I am not particularly musical!
Nonetheless, I am realizing more and more the
important role that music plays in the preparation
of my athletes and elite sprinter Dina Asher-Smith
in particular. There is hardly a circuit or strength
and conditioning session that we do without
musical accompaniment. It brightens up the atmo-
sphere and dulls the pain. Having read a draft of
this excellent book, I am not sure that I will ever
again allow the strength and conditioning coach
to monopolize the music selection!
It is perhaps in the competitive arena that my
athletes truly experience the power of music.
Many of them use it to psych up before a race,
but Dina tends to use it mostly to switch off and
unwind. A big race such as a world championship
final makes Dina super-excited, and sometimes
it is hard to put a lid on that excitement, particu-
larly in between the rounds. A playlist of soothing
music selections really seems to do the trick in
terms of her mental state. Dina is able to blank the
opposition, ignore the burden of public expecta-
tion, and just lock herself into a listening bubble.
Because she has been so successful, the younger
athletes in my squad tend to copy everything that
she does—her routine getting into the blocks,
the way she carries her arms, and even listening
to some of the same music. From the content of
this book, coaches can get a good handle on how
specific qualities of music, such as the rhythmic
structure or bass frequencies, can influence the
mind-sets of their athletes.
Mark Shearman
John Blackie has been a track and field coach for
over 15 years and is one of the directors of the 365
Athletics Academy, which attracts more than 400
children to attend coaching sessions each week.
Blackie has been recognized through several honors
for his coaching achievements, including England
Athletics National Development Coach of the Year
and UK Athletics Development Coach of the Year
(both in 2011). He coaches a 25-strong athletics
squad in southeast London and has facilitated
the progression of his athletes toward numerous
county, regional, and national titles. Among his cur-
rent crop of athletes is the fastest woman in British
history, Dina Asher-Smith as well as Shannon Hylton
(UK top-ranked under 20 over 200 meters), Cheriece
Hylton (UK third-ranked under 20 over 200 meters),
Helen Godsell (multiple European sprint champion
in the veterans’ ranks), and Isabella Hilditch (UK
second-ranked under 17 over 60-meter hurdles).
When I am coaching sprint hurdles, I find
music to be particularly helpful. Hurdles are a
very rhythmic event and so, in preparation, the
athletes need something with a beat to get them
into the rhythmic mode. One of our drills entails
skipping over the side of a row of hurdles with
either straight or bent legs; however, some ath-
letes lack the all-important rhythm that the drill
requires. In an attempt to counter this timing
issue, I sometimes hum the chirpy tune of the

can-can out loud, which immediately reminds the
athletes that they need to keep the beat as they
kick up to clear the edge of each hurdle.
Outside of track and field, I am a big fan of dres-
sage. One of my favorite exponents of this sport
is the British 2012 Olympic champion Charlotte
Foreword ix
Dujardin. It is simply amazing how she gets her
horse Valegro to move in perfect time with the
music. I only wish that I could get my athletes to
exhibit a similar degree of rhythmic skill!
John Blackie
 PREFACE
Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.
T his Confucian quote aptly illustrates the
long-running love affair that humankind has
with music. In many guises, music touches almost
every aspect of our lives, providing an auditory
backdrop for the most formal public occasions
as well as our most intimate moments. In recent
decades, music has become a central part of peo-
ple’s experiences in exercise and sport—as partic-
ipants and as spectators. This book will appeal to
anyone who might use music in a physical activity
context, be that for a jog in the park, to accompany
a fitness class, or to prepare a professional sport
team for a big game. Although the book will hold
particular appeal for professionals in the realm
of exercise and sport, I have striven to make the
content equally relevant to exercisers and athletes
who want to use music to enrich their experiences
or enhance their performances. This book is also
relevant to students and practitioners with an
interest in sport psychology, music psychology,
or both.
With the advent of new digital technologies,
we now have the freedom to formulate our own
playlists at the touch of a button. This was wholly
unimaginable during my teenage years when
vinyl was still very much de rigueur. Thousands
of tracks can be stored in a device weighing just
3 ounces (85 g), and virtually everyone in West-
ern society below the age of 50 owns a personal
music player. The popularity of such audio tools
coupled with online streaming and platforms such
as YouTube provides the opportunity to listen to
precisely what we want, whenever we want. This
unlimited choice often leads me to consider how
to optimize the use of music and maximize the
benefits we derive from it.
My expertise lies in the scientific application
of music in the domain of exercise and sport. I
have a background in sport and music, both as
a performer and as a researcher and practitioner.
—Confucius
People often ask what I do or even view it with
skepticism. Certainly, no one is born a psycho-
musicologist specializing in exercise and sport;
therefore, I’d like to share a little of my back-
ground to illustrate how I came to forge a career
in this field. This might help you to understand
why I consider music such a potentially powerful
tool for exercise and sport participants. My early
life experiences had a profound influence on the
direction my career would take—although I didn’t
know what exactly I would do, and my immediate
environment was not awash with opportunity.
I grew up in the center of Brixton, a poor but
culturally vibrant enclave of South London. Fol-
lowing a period of mass immigration to the United
Kingdom from the British Commonwealth in the
1950s and 1960s, Brixton became one of the most
multicultural and multi-ethnic parts of London. I
was born in the final throes of the swinging six-
ties, and most of the people I knew while growing
up were first-generation immigrants to the UK.
These people brought musical traditions from
their motherlands that I found both fascinating
and enticing.
During my childhood years, the flat I shared
with my parents and extended family was in
the very heart of Brixton, above a store that sold
second-hand vinyl records and audio equipment.
Each morning, rather than waking to the sweet
sound of birdsong as the sun broke gently through
the net curtains, I was jolted out of bed by the
boom of a gigantic subwoofer. My father often
rushed down to complain to the store’s proprietor,
but the reggae beat of Bob Marley and Desmond
Decker would drown out his protestations, and
the music continued unabated. As I opened
my sleepy eyes and looked out of my bedroom
window at the busy street below, I noticed how
the music influenced the facial expressions and
movement patterns of passersby; pedestrians
xi
xii Preface
certainly appeared happier and more animated as
they came within earshot of the music.
Although the shuddering floorboards were
undeniably a perpetual nuisance, the music
played by the lovable rogue downstairs became
firmly lodged in my subconscious; it would linger
in my mind like an unwanted voice that could
not be silenced. Sometimes I would find myself
singing short phrases even though I didn’t really
understand the meaning of the patois (Jamaican
Creole dialect) used in the lyrics: “Hey, fatty bum
bum, a sweet sugar dumpling. Hey, fatty bum bum,
let me tell you something.” It was unsurprising,
then, that I grew up musically able as well as
deeply interested in how music influenced and
was influenced by the human condition.
In the first decade of the 21st century, tech-
nological advances in personal listening devices
sparked an explosion in the use of music by indi-
vidual exercisers and athletes. Consequently, the
effect of music on the human psyche is an area of
interest to many people. Although myriad books
have been written about the application of music
in everyday living situations and therapeutic envi-
ronments (see the Further Reading section), none
has sought to address specifically the domain of
exercise and sport. I have spent almost every day
of my academic career investigating and writing
about the influence of music on exercisers and
athletes. I have also had the privilege of working
with many Olympic and world championship
athletes from a wide range of sports and coun-
tries as a consultant psychologist. Such work has
afforded me an opportunity to put my ideas and
experimental findings into practice in the highest
echelons of sport.
Moreover, I have worked as a consultant for
major national and international organizations
such as Nike, Red Bull, England RFU, IMG,
Spotify, and Universal Music on sport- and exer-
cise-related music projects; these engagements
have enabled me to monitor the impact of music
on various sections of the population. For exam-
ple, most recently I have been examining the
influence of music on enjoyment and physical
exertion levels among participants in O2 Touch, a
new form of physical activity that combines touch
rugby with high-energy music. Such experiences
have also taught me about the intricacies related to
harnessing the power of music to improve people’s
mental states, increase their work output, sharpen
their mental focus, and even enhance their lives.
In this book I share my findings and applied
experiences as well as the insights of many
scientist-­practitioners who work in this emerg-
ing field. I have aimed to write in an accessible,
nonscientific style to ensure that the material
is fully relevant to practitioners and students
with an interest in application and psychological
interventions. I have also tried to keep the use of
in-text citations to a minimum to avoid breaking
up the flow of the narrative.
The citations reappear as full references at the
end of the book. For those who wish to delve
deeper into the scientific premises of the text, a
section titled Further Reading includes a broader
range of sources split into two sections: second-
ary sources under the heading Books and Book
Chapters and primary sources under the heading
Journal Articles. For those with an academic
interest in this field, the further reading provides
details of scholarly works that I have harvested
over 25 years. This section does not include any
of the sources presented in the references.
My purpose in writing this book is to share
contemporary research and applied knowledge
so that exercisers and athletes derive the greatest
benefit from music and that they and those who
guide them can select music based on scientific
principles. It details the circumstances under
which exercise participants and athletes are likely
to derive the largest gains from music, as well as
those in which music use is best avoided. It also
provides the skills necessary for devising playlists
for both groups and individuals, implementing a
wide variety of music-related interventions, and
comprehensively assessing the effects of music
in the field.
I have drawn on the work of scholars in psy-
chomusicology, psychobiology, psychoacoustics,
and neuroscience to supplement research and
applied material from the field of sport and exer-
cise sciences. My guiding principle is to adopt a
balanced approach to help people reach reasoned
and well-informed decisions about the use of
music in the domain of exercise and sport. Wise
choices lead to greater enjoyment and, ultimately,
better outcomes for exercisers and athletes and
those who train and coach them. There are many
examples of music tracks in the book and each of

these can be located on YouTube—simply type in
the name of an artist and the track title.
The book is organized in three parts, each
with a distinct theme. Part I addresses the when,
how, and why of music use in exercise and sport
to provide a thorough grounding in the subject.
Chapter 1 is a general introduction to the topic
that includes explanations of key concepts and
several examples to illustrate how music can
influence people’s behavior and feelings. A short
section at the end of chapter 1 covers legal con-
siderations for the use of music in exercise and
sport environments. Chapter 2 delves into the
scientific premise of the applications that follow
in chapters 4 through 9 to enable practitioners to
engage in evidence-based practice and fully under-
stand the theoretical premise of music-related
interventions. Chapter 3 provides a broad range
of assessment methods that exercise and sport
professionals can use to inform their selections
of music. These methods are useful for measuring
how effective music interventions are both with
individuals and groups or teams.
Part II focuses on music applications in the
exercise domain, although many of the princi-
ples will resonate with sport professionals who
use musical accompaniment in their training
programs. Chapter 4 addresses music use in
individual exercise and workout sessions with
reference to a range of training modalities that
include strength, flexibility, and cardiorespiratory.
Preface xiii
Chapter 5 takes a similar approach for group-
based exercise and workouts and covers interna-
tionally popular classes such as spinning, dance
aerobics, and circuit training. Chapter 6 provides
case studies for individual and group-based exer-
cise along with sample playlists to illustrate the
principles outlined in chapters 4 and 5. The vivid
examples are meant to inspire trainers and exer-
cise leaders to consider how to incorporate music
into the exercise routines of those in their charge.
Exercisers can just as easily apply the principles
to their own training programs.
Part III covers the use of music to enhance the
training and performance of competitive athletes
and teams. This part may also be of interest to
exercise professionals who work with highly
committed and performance-oriented exercis-
ers whose regimens approximate those of elite
athletes. Chapter 7 contains specific training
and performance-related music applications for
those participating in individual sports such as
track and field, tennis, golf, cycling, and martial
arts. Chapter 8 takes a parallel approach for
team sports such as soccer, netball, basketball,
rugby, and American football. Finally, chapter 9
provides two case studies—one for an individual
and one for a team—as
well as carefully crafted
playlists that bring the
principles of chapters 7
and 8 to life.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. David-Lee Priest for
the research assistance he has provided since
the inception of this project in the spring of 2011.
David is a former doctoral student of mine (1998-
2004), who has long since become a close friend
and confidant. He often comes across to others
as a rather modest and unassuming individual,
although this outward persona belies a broad
array of talents: David is a polymath, a polyglot,
a multi-instrumentalist, a superb raconteur, and
as he himself would testify, an aspiring racke-
teer! His meticulous fact finding, encyclopedic
knowledge of musical subcultures, and critical
commentary on numerous drafts of this opus have
assisted me greatly in its production. David is an
inspiration to all who know him.
I would also like to thank Dr. Leighton Jones
for the research assistance he provided during
the spring and summer of 2014. Another former
doctoral student of mine (2010-2014), Leighton
has been publishing with me for over a decade,
throughout the course of his bachelor’s and mas-
ter’s degrees. During his doctoral studies, Leigh-
ton blossomed into an independent researcher
with notable recent successes that have included
papers in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psy-
chology and Annals of Behavioral Medicine. I am
particularly proud of the fact that Leighton was
awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Doctoral
Research at his graduation in July 2014.
Numerous work placement students from
a range of UK institutions provided me with
research assistance during the course of the
project. Foremost among these were John Bird
(BSc psychology, University of Bath), Nicole Cara
(BSc psychology, Brunel University London),
Jasmine During (BSc psychology, Brunel Uni-
versity London), and Daniel Payne (BSc sport
and exercise science, Leeds Beckett University).
While addressing the comments of peer reviewers
during 2015, I was ably assisted by my current
postgraduate students, Jonathan Bird (PhD exer-
cise psychology) and Joel Shopland (MSc sport,
health, and exercise sciences). I thank all of the
aforementioned students for their unflinching
commitment, enthusiasm, perspicacity, and supe-
rior (to mine!) IT skills.
I am grateful to my employer, Brunel Univer-
sity London, who granted a six-month period of
research leave that afforded me the time to fully
immerse myself in this project during the spring
and summer of 2014. Our long-serving former
head of school, Professor Susan Capel, is deserv-
ing of a special mention for the constant support
and encouragement she gave throughout the for-
mative years of my academic career.
Ted Miller (vice president of special acquisi-
tions, USA) and Chris Wright (acquisitions editor,
Europe) at Human Kinetics have been closely
involved with this project since I pitched the
idea to Ted during his visit to the London 2012
Olympic Games. Both have provided me with a
clear sense of direction from the outset, copious
feedback on drafts of each chapter, and colorful
examples from the world of sport that duly found
their way into part III of the book. It has been a
distinct privilege and a pleasure to work with Ted
and Chris over the last five years.
Finally, I would like to thank my caring wife,
Tina, and our two teenage daughters, Anastasia
and Lucia, who each appear to have grown taller
by several inches during the course of this proj-
ect—I have only just noticed. My family’s endur-
ing tolerance of the obsessive and unsociable
behaviors that life in the academic realm demands
can only be described as truly remarkable.
xv
 What Do You Know About Music
in Exercise and Sport?
B efore you delve into the heart of this book,
tackle the following 15 multiple-choice and 10
short-answer questions. This will help you gauge
how much you presently know about the applica-
tion of music in exercise and sport environments.
Once you’ve answered all 25, go to the Answers
to Quizzes section and give yourself one point for
each correct answer.
Add the points of your correct answers and
multiply this number by 4 to turn it into a percent-
age (e.g., if you get 10 correct answers, 10 × 4 = 40,
which makes your score 40 percent). Answering
these questions will reveal your strengths in the
subject matter, and also where you have blind
spots. Quiz 2 at the end of the book provides an
additional 25 questions—at the same difficulty
level as the ones presented here—that can help
you gauge the degree to which your knowledge
of the subject matter has improved.
MULTIPLE-CHOICE
QUESTIONS
1. Three important constituents of music that
exercise and sport practitioners should
always take into consideration when con-
structing a playlist are
a. the lyrical content, gender of the artist,
and quality of the sound system
b. whether the track is instrumental or
has a vocal element, whether the track
slows down or speeds up, and whether
the track made it into the top 10 of the
billboard charts
c. the lyrical content, tempo, and rhyth-
mic qualities
d. the beat, the familiarity of the artist(s),
and any subliminal messages con-
tained in the lyrics
2. What role does music play before, during,
and after physical activity?
a. Enables participants to experience
positive imagery before they start; lock
into the rhythm of the music during
their activity; and feel better about
themselves after the activity.
b. Mentally prepares participants pre-
task; provides a rhythmic stimulus
in-task; and distracts attention from
aching muscles post-task.
c. Encourages participants to forget about
the pain they are going to encounter
before they start; distracts attention
from fatigue-related sensations and
raises mood during the activity; and
helps prevent muscle soreness post-­
activity.
d. Assists participants in the pre-task
phase by priming them for the task at
hand; provides an in-task stimulus that
lifts mood, distracts attention from
fatigue-related sensations, and facili-
tates moving to the beat; and enhances
post-task recovery.
3. Exercising or training at a high intensity
while listening to very loud music poses a
particular health risk because
a. the person is more likely to fall off the
treadmill and get injured as a result of
the distraction
b. the blood flows away from the inner
ear (the cochlea) toward the working
muscles, making the inner ear far more
susceptible to damage from the sound
vibrations
c. the hair cells in the inner ear are
forced to vibrate at a high frequency,
and the combination of this with the
xvii
xviii Quiz 1
exercise or training activity can induce
migraines over time
d. the inner ear is made to vibrate by the
activity, and the additional vibration
caused by the music causes the audi-
tory system to swell, which leaves it
susceptible to permanent damage
4. As a broad generalization, Madonna’s music
is superior to that of Rihanna for middle-­aged
white women in exercise classes because
a. women in this demographic don’t tend
to listen to chart music and so would
not be very familiar with the music of
Rihanna
b. it generally has a better beat for women
in this demographic
c. Rihanna’s music has a Barbadian dance
hall sound that they find difficult to
relate to
d. these women are likely to have grown
up listening to Madonna’s music, and
thus, it holds a particularly special
meaning for them
5. To prime a male athlete with an outgoing
personality for a highly explosive task such
as weightlifting or shot putting, the optimal
music is likely to be
a. of a relatively high tempo, of loud
intensity, and rather evocative
b. of a moderate tempo, with crashing
guitars, and a thumping bass line
c. evocative, loud, and nonlyrical
d. either gangsta rap or heavy rock with
an aggressive lyric
6. Male adult exercisers and athletes tend to
prefer music with stronger bass frequencies
than their female counterparts do because
a. they associate this with high bass fre-
quencies resonating from their cars,
which implies social status
b. males generally have larger frames
than females and so are better able to
absorb low-frequency sound
c. at school, boys are more drawn to play­
ing instruments that produce low-
frequency sounds (e.g., tenor saxophone­,
bass guitar, timpani), whereas the con-
verse holds for girls (e.g., violin, treble
recorder, oboe); this creates differences
in how people respond to high and low
frequencies during adulthood
d. the male voice is generally an octave
lower than the female voice, and this
difference may account for gender dif-
ferences in how sound frequencies are
processed by the brain
7. Music has been shown to enhance the flow
state during exercise- and sport-related
tasks. This state can be described as
a. complete immersion in an activity to
the point at which nothing else seems
to matter
b. a state in which movements flow to
such a degree that they feel technically
superior to the movements of others
nearby
c. being absorbed in a task to the point
of becoming wholly unaware of other
people nearby
d. a mental and physical state similar
to a Zen-like state of awareness that
borders on meditation
8. Which three key attributes should a piece of
music have to be used as part of a pre-match
routine for a sport team?
a. It should rouse the crowd, put the
coach in a positive mood, and calm
the players.
b. It should be quite aggressive, have
a high tempo, and build up to a cre-
scendo or climax.
c. It should lift the mood of the players,
create a sense of team identity, and
use predominantly major (happy)
harmonies.
d. It should conjure the type of imag-
ery desired by the team for the task
at hand, instill a sense of unity and
cohesion, and include strong lyrical
affirmations.
9. How does music enhance the efficiency of
repetitive movements such as running and
cycling?

a. People believe that they’re working less
hard with music.
b. Music reduces inefficiencies in the
movement chain when applied syn-
chronously.
c. Synchronous music is akin to exer-
cising with a metronome; a tick-tock
pulsation is constantly in the mind as
a significant distraction.
d. Because humans have a natural pre-
disposition to respond to the rhythmic
qualities of music, it makes the activity
seem easier.
10. Music can reduce ratings of perceived exer-
tion during exercise or training of moderate-­
to-low intensity by approximately what
percentage?
a. 4 to 8 percent
b. 6 to 10 percent
c. 8 to 12 percent
d. 10 to 14 percent
11. Young adult males find rap music particu-
larly beneficial when they run because
a. the relatively slow tempo is almost per-
fect for taking a stride cycle to each beat
b. most harbor an inner desire to appear
in rap videos and be surrounded by
attractive females
c. they get drawn into the rapid-fire lyrics
and thus completely forget about the
pain associated with the run
d. it creates brain wave patterns that are
perfectly suited to running
12. The combination of music and video in an
exercise environment can be more beneficial
than music alone because
a. people are less likely to fixate on the
appearance of others in the gym and
negatively compare them with them-
selves
b. the visual distraction greatly increases
the effects of auditory distraction,
making all workouts considerably
easier
c. the combination of sound and vision
is what people are most accustomed
Quiz 1 xix
to in their own homes, so they tend to
perform better when MTV is showing
in the gym
d. using auditory and visual stimuli in
combination facilitates greater dis-
traction than using either auditory or
visual stimuli alone
13. It is long established that the use of music
during exercise and training activities pro-
motes dissociation, which means that
a. attention is focused on things unre-
lated to the task, such as problem
solving, daydreaming, or music
b. the mind drifts, heightening the influ-
ence of sensory information from the
body (e.g., a pounding heart or acidosis
in the muscles)
c. external stimuli such as music or video
block messages from the musculature
to the central nervous system and
cause a kind of out-of-body experience
d. people daydream and are able to tol-
erate the full gamut of exercise inten-
sities with relatively little pain and
self-reported perceived exertion
14. A good way to enhance the intrinsic moti-
vation of people in an exercise class is by
a. playing music that the class prefers
only if they achieve agreed-on perfor-
mance targets
b. getting members of the class to com-
pare the suitability of their personal
music collections with each other and
then integrating the collections of one
or two members into the class
c. using really unusual tunes that few
people have heard to pique their inter-
est during the class
d. canvassing class members and high-
lighting when a track suggested by a
particular person is used
15. Music can enhance task-specific imagery in
exercise and sport because
a. people associate music with exercise
and sport so strongly that virtually any
well-known piece of music promotes
imagery
xx Quiz 1
b. it conjures images that have become
associated with the music through
prior life experiences, TV, film, radio,
or the Internet (e.g., striving for Olym-
pic glory and Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire
theme from the movie of the same
name)
c. the rhythmic qualities of music directly
stimulate the occipital lobe, a part of
the brain near the back of the head that
is responsible for imagery
d. the lyrical content of the music acti-
vates visual images as people process
its meaning
SHORT-ANSWER
QUESTIONS
16. Which unit is commonly used to measure
music tempo?
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
17. Briefly describe what musical meter is.
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
18. What are three documented ways well-­
selected music can enhance a person’s
psychological state during an exercise or
training session?
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
19. What are the main influences on people’s
music preferences in an exercise or training
context?
______________________________________
Answers on page 215.
______________________________________
______________________________________
20. Briefly describe the relationship between
exercise or training heart rate and preference
for music tempo (i.e., how should music
tempo be selected in response to expected
changes in heart rate?).
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
21. What is the optimal range for music volume
during exercise or training?
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
22. What are three advantages of exercisers or
athletes using their own music devices when
working out?
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
23. Why are music-related interventions partic-
ularly effective when working with young
people in exercise and sport contexts?
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
24. Briefly describe the application of synchro-
nous music.
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
25. When should music use be avoided during
exercise and sport instruction?
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
 PART I
How Music Can Help
Exercisers and Athletes
I n part I, the first three chapters of this book set
the scene for what’s to come in part II and part
III, and also provide a thorough grounding in
the subject matter. Chapter 1 begins with a brief
overview of the historical and cultural signifi-
cance of music, touching on its ubiquity and its
antiquity, a notion popularized by the Canadian
scientist Daniel Levitin. It goes on to examine
the music and exercise revolution of the 1980s,
for which Hollywood actress Jane Fonda stood at
the helm. The close relationship between music
and the Olympic movement is touched on, and
the components of a musical composition (e.g.,
melody, harmony, rhythm) are then explained
and placed into context. The application of music
in exercise and sport is introduced, and the main
effects associated with music use for exercisers and
athletes are highlighted. Chapter 1 ends with the
important but patchily understood issue of how
to use music legally in the domain of exercise
and sport.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of the scientific
study of music in exercise and sport. It considers
some of the key questions addressed by research-
ers, delves into how the brain responds to music,
embraces the findings of landmark studies, and
presents a new theoretical model to guide practi-
tioners and researchers. Chapter 2 also addresses
the matter of when music is used relative to per-
formance—that is, pre-task, in-task, and post-task.
Chapter 3 deals with the sometimes thorny issue
of selecting music and how to do so in a systematic
manner for both individuals and groups or teams. It
also presents a series of psychometric instruments,
accompanied by detailed instructions, which
enable practitioners to measure people’s responses
to music (e.g., the Music Mood-Regulation Scale,
Feeling Scale, and Felt Arousal Scale).
1

Music in
Exercise and Sport
Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below
and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), politician, orator, and lecturer
I n one form or another, music has formed part
of every human society since the dawn of civ-
ilization. It is almost as though music is part of
humanity’s genetic blueprint—a constant through
the millennia that people of all ages and cultures
engage in spontaneously. Music permeates many
aspects of our lives and plays a variety of roles
throughout the life span. Infants are sent to sleep
by their mothers’ gentle lullabies, and senior
citizens appear spritely and rejuvenated during
weekly sing-alongs in nursing homes. Adolescents
define themselves in terms of the musical subcul-
ture they embrace, and their parents are all too
willing to release their inhibitions and take to the
dance floor when a familiar old song is played at
a family wedding. It is quite a challenge to think
of family occasions that do not revolve around the
use of music in some form, be it a congratulatory
chant at an anniversary party or a somber and
reflective piece at a funeral.
The well-respected neuropsychologist Daniel
Levitin maintains that music is unusual among
all human activities for both its ubiquity and
its antiquity (Levitin, 2007). In its earliest
forms, music was produced using drums cre-
ated by stretching animal skins over hollowed
sections of tree trunks. Such drums were used
1
for communication, ceremonial purposes, and
entertainment; similar activity is evident today
among remote tribes in Africa and Australasia.
For instance, the Yamatji aboriginal people from
the Murchison, Gascoyne, and Pilbara regions of
Western Australia use distinctive mud drums for
religious rites. Anthropologists have speculated
that the music made by primitive people on the
sub-­Saharan plains represented an attempt to
imitate the heartbeat.
Available evidence indicates that the human
species likely engaged in music making long
before speaking. Archeological digs in Slovenia
have revealed bone flutes made from the femur
(thigh bone) of a now-extinct European bear.
This prehistoric instrument is believed to be some
50,000 years old. One wonders whether the bear
was driven to extinction as a consequence of our
primitive ancestors’ desire to make music!
The history of human conflict tells us much
about the seminal role of music in rallying soldiers
before entering the fray. Going back to ancient
Greece, the only type of music known by the
Spartans, the most feared fighting force of the
ancient world, was war songs. An integral part of
their military strategy was to march into battle to
the sound of flute players accompanied by lyrists
3
4 Applying Music in Exercise and Sport
and harpists. This enabled the troops to advance
evenly, step in time, and not break their order (a
common failing of large armies at the moment of
engagement).
In the American Civil War (1861-1865) between
the southern Confederate states and northern
Union states, music played a big part on both
sides. On occasion, the opposing forces would
engage in a type of battle of the bands on the
night before the real battle ensued. At the Battle
of Williamsburg in May 1862, it was famously said
that the music was the equivalent of a thousand
men. More recently, U.S. military personnel have
had heavy metal music piped into their tanks as
they enter battle to raise their testosterone levels
and possibly numb their senses.
One of the key roles of music in a military
context has been to accompany and pace the
advance of marching soldiers. Marching troops
have different levels of motivation, tolerance, fit-
ness, and mental endurance. The military’s use of
marching bands such as the Royal Artillery Band
and the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines in
Great Britain created a common framework for
all the men in time and space. Thus, it served to
instill discipline, enhance esprit de corps, and
even numb the pain of the march. All such ben-
efits can be translated to the realm of physical
exercise. Although the context is much different,
many of the motivational challenges and deeply
held inhibitions are remarkably similar.
MUSIC AND EXERCISE
REVOLUTION
Many people who are not habitual exercisers
experience difficulties beyond their initial
attempts to engage in an exercise routine.
In addition to a general lack of motivation,
well-documented barriers to regular partici-
pation include work and family commitments
taking precedence; gym memberships perceived
to be prohibitively expensive (despite the recent
budget gym revolution); a lack of safe outdoor
spaces in large towns and cities; boredom and
lack of enjoyment; the absence of companionship
and social support; and the fact that exercising
makes people feel sweaty, breathless, and phys-
ically uncomfortable (Biddle, Mutrie, & Gorely,
2015).
Exercise professionals such as Hollywood
actress-turned-fitness guru Jane Fonda realized
in the late 1970s that if exercise for the masses
could be coordinated with music, people would
be far more likely to enjoy it and thus maintain a
daily routine. During the 1980s and early 1990s,
Fonda released some 22 exercise videos that sold
in excess of 17 million copies worldwide. She was
clearly onto something. The baby boomers, who
were seeing the first signs of middle-age spread
at that point, idolized Fonda and everything she
stood for. An exponential rise in the number of
exercise-to-music classes occurred during the
1980s, and the decades since have seen many
permutations of the original dance-based classes:
aqua aerobics, step aerobics, spinning, Boxercise,
Zumba, BodyPump, and so on (see chapter 5).
Modern technologies have done much to pro-
mote the use of music in both exercise and sport
settings. For example, the popularity of Fonda’s
exercise videos compelled many people to buy
VHS video players in the 1980s. In terms of activ-
ities at the individual level, the Sony Walkman
made walking and jogging to music a popular
form of physical recreation during the same
decade. Stadium staff have taken advantage of
music editing technologies such as Audacity and
Cubase to create soundtracks for sporting events
to inspire the athletes and engage the fans. From
an individual perspective, the essential personal
music accessory of the 21st century—the iPod—
has enabled exercise participants and athletes
to create their own listening bubble. One conse-
quence of this is that music listening and appre-
ciation has become more of a lone pursuit than
the social pursuit it was for previous generations.
The relative merits of lone and group listening are
explored in later chapters.
MUSIC AND THE
OLYMPIC GAMES
Music’s place at the pinnacle of human culture is
shown to stunning effect every two years in the
celebration of the winter and summer olympiads.
This illustrious link was originally forged in the

ancient Olympic Games in Greece, where rhyth-
mic clapping and drumming accompanied several
events, including running races. The modern
Olympic Games have continued to strengthen
the association between music and sporting
endeavors.
Music is integral to Olympic events such as
figure skating and the floor exercise component
of artistic gymnastics; it is also a prominent fea-
ture of the opening and closing ceremonies. One
of the most spectacular examples of this came
during the closing ceremony of the London 2012
Olympic Games—billed as A Symphony of Brit-
ish Music—where the late Freddie Mercury was
projected onto large screens to perform a stirring
call-and-response routine with the 80,000-strong
crowd and athletes on the infield. Kim Gavin’s
orchestration cleverly fused Freddie’s vintage
1986 Wembley performance with a modern-day
celebration of sport. The screen ghost of the rock
idol gave me the chills before the remaining mem-
bers of Queen took center stage with songstress
Jessie J to continue the homage to stadium rock. It
was a truly mesmerizing way to close the Games
and has remained etched in the memories of many
who attended and the estimated 750 million TV
viewers worldwide.
To watch the rousing performance by
Queen and Jessie J at the closing cer-
emony of the London 2012 Olympics,
search “Jessie J and Queen London
2012 Performance” on YouTube.
This chapter addresses the nature of music as
well as its key constituents. This will facilitate
the selection processes that flow throughout
parts I and II. Any terms that appear frequently
throughout the book are explained in detail and
accompanied by examples (you can also refer to
the glossary). I examine the historical context
of music in exercise and sport and present some
of the more robust scientific findings reported
by contemporary researchers. I draw on music-­
related anecdotes from sport and other spheres
of popular culture to set the scene for what is to
follow. The essential purpose of this introductory
chapter is to provide a plate to put your dinner on.
Music in Exercise and Sport 5
WHAT IS MUSIC?
The fundamental question “what is music?” needs
to be addressed for the content of this book to be
fully appreciated and the impact of music appli-
cations to be maximized. In many societies, the
cultural pursuit of music has been elevated to an
almost mystical level. Its best-known performers
are perceived as enigmatic characters who are
both revered and celebrated by the masses. We
have all encountered artists and composers who
appear to speak to us or can represent the human
condition through their music in a form that we
relate to.
In a physical activity context, whether jogging
in a park or warming up for a judo contest, music
can seem like a relatively simple stimulus that is
effortlessly absorbed and appreciated. A piece of
music, however, requires the careful organiza-
tion of a number of elements: melody, harmony,
rhythm, tempo, meter, timbre, and dynamics.
In the case of a song or a piece of vocal music,
lyrics can be added to this list. Let’s explore these
elements one by one and then consider how they
function in unison to create the musical whole
that might inspire optimal performance. A basic
understanding of these musical building blocks,
even if you have very little knowledge of music
theory, will enable you to fully absorb and imple-
ment the music applications that feature in parts
II and III of this book.
Melody
Melody is often the highest-pitched part, or tune,
of a piece of music. Most likely, you have caught
yourself singing, humming, or whistling along
to the melody. The melody line is distinctive
and memorable; people can often name a piece
of music after hearing just the first three or four
notes of the melody. For example, if I were to play
you the first three notes of the main motif of one of
my favorite sporting compositions—“Gonna Fly
Now (Theme From Rocky)” by Bill Conti—you
may be able to hum the remainder of the uplifting
tune without even thinking. Melodies are con-
structed using a scale or combination of scales.
A scale is an arrangement of notes in a specific
order of whole and half steps. A large part of the
6 Applying Music in Exercise and Sport
e­ motional tone of the music can be transmitted by
the melody. The Rocky theme, for example, signifies
a sense of optimism in the battle against adversity,
as well as striving toward personal achievement.
Harmony
Harmony is created when notes or melodies sound
simultaneously, such as the rich sonic blend pro-
duced when members of a barbershop quartet sing
in unison. This meshing of notes acts, in part, to
shape the mood of the music to make people feel
happy, sad, surprised, anxious, or calm. Harmony
is what gives music its distinctive flavor, from the
simplicity of bubblegum pop to the sophisticated
blend of sonic ingredients in a Beethoven sym-
phony. Complex harmony can challenge a listener
emotionally and entails waves of aural tension
and pleasantness—an array of dissonance and
consonance. A good example from rock music
is Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which has a
particularly complex harmonic structure for a pop
song. A concept that is closely related to harmony
is the key of a piece of music. This represents the
tonal center of a piece that can be shifted up or
down to create color and challenge the listener’s
expectations. In simple terms, the tonal center
is a related series of pitches that serve as a fixed
reference point to the ear—a kind of aural home
base, to use a sporting analogy.
To watch a video of Queen’s “Bohe-
mian Rhapsody,” search “Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody” on YouTube.
Composers of film scores are particularly adept
at manipulating the feelings of moviegoers during
each scene through their masterful use of har-
mony and key changes; they may move a piece out
of its initial tonal center—the home base—and
sometimes return to it to give the listener a sense
of resolution or satisfaction. A much-loved sport
film such as the classic Hoosiers is rendered every
bit as gripping and evocative by its well-crafted
soundtrack as it is by the imagery and storyline
of a small-town Indiana high school team that
overcomes considerable odds to win the state
basketball championship. As well as evoking
primary emotions such as sadness and happiness,
composers create subtler shades of feeling such
as suspense, anticipation, joy, and tranquility just
by changing the way they blend notes. Of course,
those who make commercials are just as clever in
their use of harmony. The next time you watch
TV, compare the music used to sell an everyday
product such as baked beans with that used to
sell luxury items such as sports cars.
Rhythm
Rhythm concerns the way notes are distributed
over time and accented. Putting it more simply,
rhythm concerns how the energy of the music is
transmitted. When completing any sort of physi-
cal task in time with music, rhythm is a primary
consideration. When I go swimming, for example,
I often play famous waltzes in my mind because
the three beats in a bar, with the emphasis on
the first, coincide with a strong kick to every
arm stroke, which is followed by two softer kicks
(one two three, one two three). Similarly, when I
perform my conditioning circuit early most morn-
ings, I like to play energetic disco classics, which
have a strong four-beats-to-the-bar rhythm. Not
only does the music lift me out of my slumber,
but its rhythmic regularity directs my push-ups
and abdominal crunches in a way that makes the
workout seem a little more bearable for my aging
body. So, Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz for
the front crawl and “Disco Inferno” by The Tram-
mps for circuits!
Syncopation
Another aspect of musical rhythm that is relevant
to the exercise sphere (see chapter 4) is known
as syncopation. This occurs when rhythmic
emphasis is placed off the main beat to create
an unexpected rhythmic feel that many people
equate with the notion of groove (e.g., That track
has an infectious groove—it really makes me want
to move!). In the case of common time, which has
four quarter-note beats to the bar, the strongest
beat is the first in the bar, and the second strongest
is the third in the bar. Popular styles of music such
as swing and reggae that place strong emphasis
on the second and fourth beats of the bar (what
musicians call the backbeat) are based on the
principle of syncopation.
Most forms of popular music use syncopation
to great effect, particularly when the music is used
for dancing (e.g., funk, hip-hop, dubstep). Some
 Music in Exercise and Sport 7

forms of music are based on a highly syncopated
rhythmic feel; Latin music is particularly well
known for its use of syncopation (e.g., samba
and salsa styles). This means that keeping in time
with the rhythms used in classes such as Zumba
may require greater information processing and
coordination than those used in classes such as
step or aqua aerobics. Of course, if you have grown
up in Havana, Cuba, syncopated salsa rhythms
will be the norm for you and will not necessarily
require greater mental effort for you to translate
the music into movement!
Although virtually all forms of popular music
employ syncopation to a degree, as an illustra-
tion of the concept, and to assist you in your
own selection processes, table 1.1 provides some
classic examples of highly syncopated tracks that
might be used in the exercise and sport domain
(column 2) along with examples of tracks that
have straighter rhythms or are relatively unsyn-
copated (column 1).
A musical technique that is closely related to
syncopation is that of the breakbeat. This is when
the music cuts out for a syncopated percussive
break (typically a drum solo), or even a series of
breaks. These breakbeats often introduce a new
rhythm into the piece that is busier and more
complex than the elementary rhythmic structure.
The technique was popularized in early hip-hop
music, which used samples from funk recordings
of the late 1960s and early 1970s. To complicate
matters, this sampled beat (examples of which
appear in table 1.2) is sometimes referred to as a
breakbeat in its own right, regardless of how it is

Table 1.1 Tracks Predicated on Relatively Unsyncopated (Straight) Rhythms (Column 1)

and Highly Syncopated Rhythms (Column 2)
Tracks with relatively unsyncopated rhythms Tracks with highly syncopated rhythms
Title Artist Year Title Artist Year
Keep On Running Spencer Davis Group 1966 Mas Que Nada Jorge Ben 1963
When Will I See You Get On The Good
Three Degrees 1974 James Brown 1972
Again Foot
Mamma Mia ABBA 1975 Superstition Stevie Wonder 1972
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? Rod Stewart 1978 Jive Talkin’ Bee Gees 1975
Scarface (Push It To Don’t Stop ’Til You
Paul Engemman 1983 Michael Jackson 1979
The Limit) Get Enough
Teddy Picker Arctic Monkeys 2007 Summer Of ’69 Bryan Adams 1985
I Kissed A Girl Katy Perry 2008 Bamboléo Gypsy Kings 1987
Florence and the Santana feat. Rob
You’ve Got The Love 2009 Smooth 1999
Machine Thomas
Firework Katy Perry 2010 Livin’ La Vida Loca Ricky Martin 1999
Snoop Dogg vs. David They Don’t Want Black Eyed Peas feat.
Sweat 2011 2005
Guetta Music James Brown
For The First Time The Script 2010 Grace Kelly Mika 2007
Pitbull feat. NeYo,
Give Me Everything 2011 Gangnam Style PSY 2012
Afrojack, and Nayer
Pitbull feat. Christina
Of The Night Bastille 2013 Feel This Moment 2013
Aguilera
DJ Fresh vs. Jay Fay
Dibby Dibby Sound 2014
Come And Get It John Newman 2015 feat. Ms Dynamite
Adventure Of A Life-
Coldplay 2015 Hold Up Beyoncé 2016
time
Note: All of these tracks can be located on YouTube.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 THE BREECHES BISHOP
In that age of gallantry, the reign of Charles the Second, it
was customary when a gentleman drank a lady’s health to
throw some part of his dress into the flames, in order to do her
still greater honour. This was well enough for a lover, but the
folly did not stop here, for his companions were obliged to
follow him in this proof of his veneration by consuming a
similar article, whatever it might be.

About the latter part of the seventeenth century, there was living at
Aldersferry, in the Soke of Godsport in Hampshire, a worthy
clergyman of the name of Barnabas Winthrop. The little living of St.
Ascham’s—a perpetual curacy in the Archdeaconry of Winchester—
supplied the moral and material needs of this amiable man; his
granddaughter, Miss Joan Seabird, kept house for him; and never
were cream and ripe fruit happier in contact than were these two
playful and reasonable intellects in their relations of child and sage.
A hysteromaniac, however, is Fortune, who, charmed for a while
with the simplicity of these her protégés, soon began to construe
their contentment into self-sufficiency, and to devise some means to
correct their supposed presumption on her favour, by putting it into
the head of the artless divine how silence on questions which one
felt called loudly for reform might be comfortable, but was shameful
and an evasion of one’s duty. In short, Dr. Winthrop, entertaining
original views on sanitation and the prevention of epidemics, was
wickedly persuaded by her to expound them, and so to invite into his
harmless Eden the snake which was to demoralize it. In one day he
became a pamphleteer.
Now the Plague, in that year of 1682, was not so remote a
memory but that people lived in a constant terror of its
recrudescence. Pandects, treatises, expositions, containing
diagnoses, palladiums and schemes of quarantine, all based on the
most orthodox superstitions, did not cease to pour from the press, to
the eternal confusion of an age which was yet far from realizing the
pious schism of the aide-toi. What, then, as might be supposed, was
the effect on it, when a clergyman of the Establishment was seen to
enter the arena as a declared dissenter from the fata obstant of
popular bigotry?
For a time Godsport, startled and scandalized, watched aloof the
paper warfare; and it was not until after the appearance of the
Doctor’s tract, “De omni re Scibili”—wherein he sought, boldly and
definitely, and withal with a characteristic humour, to lay the
responsibility for pestilence, not upon the Almighty’s shoulders, but,
literally, at the doors of men, at their face-to-face proximity, and at
“the Castynge of Noisome filth in their neare neighbourhood”—that it
brought down its official hand with a weight and suddenness which
shook St. Ascham’s to its roots. In brief, there was flung at the
delinquent one morning his formal citation to the Sessions Court,
there to answer upon certain charges of having “in divers Tracts,
Opuscules and Levrets, sought insidiously to ingrafte the minds of
his Majesty’s liege subjects with such impudent heresies as that it is
in the power of man to limit the visitations of God—a very pestilent
doctrine, and one arrogating to His servants the Almighty’s high and
beneficent prerogatives; inasmuch as Plague and Fire and other His
scourges, being sacriligeously wrested from His graspe, the world
would waxe blown with overlife, till it crawled upon the face of the
heavens like a gross putrid cheese.”
Under this bolt from the blue the liberal minds of grandsire and
child sank amazed for the moment, only to rally to a consciousness
of the necessity for immediate action.
“Up, wench!” cried the Doctor, “and saddle our Pinwire. I will go lay
my case instanter before the Bishop.”
“Alas, dearest!” answered the weeping girl, “you forget; he is this
long while bedridden.”
Her imagination, which had been wont secretly to fondle the idea
of her grandfather’s enlightened piety rewarded with a bishopric,
pictured it in a moment turned to his confusion, and himself,
perhaps, through the misrepresentations of a blockhead Corporation,
disgraced and beggared in his old age. But, though she knew the
Churchman, she had not calculated the rousing effects of criticism
on the author.
“Then,” roared he, “I will seek the fount itself of reason and justice.
It was a good treatise, a well-argued treatise; and the King shall
decide upon the practical merits of his own English.”
“The King!” she cried, clasping her hands.
“The King,” he answered. “Know you not that he moves daily
between Southampton, where he lies, and Winchester, where he
builds? We will go to Winchester. Nay, we, child; blubber not; for who
knows but that, the shepherd being withdrawn, the wolves might
think to practise on the lamb.”
He checked himself, and hung his head.
“The Lord pardon and justify me indignation,” he muttered. “I was
a priest before an author.”
It was fine, but a loaded sky, when they set forth upon their
journey of twenty or so miles, Joan riding pillion behind her
grandfather on the sober red nag. After much cross work over
villainous tracks, they were got at last into the Southampton turnpike,
when they were joined by a single horseman, riding a handsome
barb, who, with a very favourable face for Joan, pulled alongside of
them, as they jogged on, and fell into easy talk.
“Dost ride to overtake a bishopric, master clergyman,” says he,
“that you carry with you such a sweet bribe for preferment?”
Joan looked up, softly panting. Could he somehow have got wind
already of their mission, and have taken them by the way to forestall
it? But her eyes fell again before the besieging gaze of the cavalier.
He was a swart man of fifty or so, with a rather sooty expression,
and his under-lip stuck out. His eyes, bagging a little in the lower lids,
smouldered half-shut, between lust and weariness, under the
blackest brows; and, for the rest, he was dressed as black as the
devil, with a sparkle of diamonds here and there in his bosom. Joan
looked down breathless.
“I seek no preferment, sir, but a reasonable justice,” said the
curate; and, in a little, between this and that, had ingenuously,
though with a certain twinkling eye for the humour of it all, confessed
his whole case to the stranger. But Joan uttered not a word.
 The cavalier laughed, then frowned mightily for a while. “We will
indict these petty rogues of office on a quo warranto,” he growled.
“What! does not ‘cleanness of body proceed from a due reverence of
God’? Go on, sir, and I will promise you the King’s consideration.”
Then he forgot his indignation, leering at the girl again.
“And what is your business with Charles, pretty flower?” said he.
But, before she could answer, whish! went Pinwires’s girth out of
its buckle, and parson and girl tumbled into the road.
The cavalier laughed out, and, while the Doctor was ruefully
readjusting his straps, offered his hand to the girl.
“Come, sweetheart,” said he. “Since we go a common road, shalt
mount behind me, and equal the odds between your jade and my
greater beast.”
Joan appealed in silence to her grandfather.
“Verily, sir,” he said nodding and smiling, “it would be a gracious
and kindly act.”
In a moment she was mounted, with her white arms belted about
the stranger’s waist; the next, he had put quick spurs to his horse,
and was away with a rush and clatter.
For an instant the Doctor failed to realize the nature of the
abduction; and then of a sudden he was dancing and bawling in a
sheer frenzy.
“Dog! Ravisher! Halt! Stop him! Detain him!”
He saw the flight disappear round a bend in the road. It was
minutes before his shaking hands could negotiate strap and buckle,
and enable him to follow in pursuit. But he carried no spurs, and
Pinwire, already over-ridden, floundered in his steps. Distraught,
dumbfounded, the old man was crying to himself, when he came
upon Joan sitting by the roadside. He tumbled off, she jumped up,
and they fell upon one another’s neck.
“O, a fine King, forsooth!” she cried, sobbing and fondling him. “O,
a fine King!”
“Who? What?” said he.
“Why, it was the King himself!”
“The King!”
“The King.”
“How?” he gasped. “You have never seen him?”
 “Trust a woman,” quoth she.
“A woman!” he cried. “You are but half a one yet.”
“It was the King, nevertheless.”
“Joan, let us turn back.”
“He had a wooing voice, grandfather.”
“Retro Satanas! How did you give him the slip?”
“We were stayed by a cow, the dear thing, and like an eel I slid
off.”
“Dear Joan!”
“He commanded me to mount again, laughing all the while, and
vowing he’d carry me back to you. But I held away, and he said such
things of my beauty.”
“That proves him false.”
“Does it? But of course it does, since you say so. And while he
was a-wheedling in that voice, I just whipt this from my hair on a
thought, and gave his beast a vicious peck with it.”
She showed a silver pin like a skewer.
“Admirable!” exclaimed her grandfather.
“It was putting fire to powder,” she said. “It just gave a bound and
was gone. If its rider pulls up this side of Christmas, I’ll give him——”
“What, woman?”
“Lud! I’ve come of age, in a minute. And it’s beginning to pour,
grandfather; and where are we?”
He looked about him in the dolefullest way.
“If I knew!” he sighed. “We must e’en seek the shelter of an inn till
this storm is by, and then return home. Better any bankruptcy than
that of honour, Joan.”
They remounted and jogged on in the rain, which by now was
falling heavily. The tired little horse, feeling the weight of his own
soaked head, began to hang it and cough. Presently they
dismounted at a wayside byre, and, eating the simple luncheon
which their providence had provided, dwelt on a little in hopes of the
weather clearing. But it grew steadily worse.
“I have lost my bearings,” said the clergyman in a sudden
amazement. “We must push on.”
About four o’clock, being seven miles or so short of Winchester,
they came down upon a little stream which bubbled across the road.
The groaning horse splashed into it and stood still. Dr. Winthrop,
wakened by the pause from a brown reverie, whipped his right leg
over the beast’s withers, landed, slipped on a stone, and sat down in
two feet of water. Uttering a startled ejaculation, he scrambled up, a
sop to the very waist of his homespun breeches. Their points—old
disused laces, fragrant from Joan’s bodice—clung weeping to his
calves. He waded out, cherishing above water-mark the sodden
skirts of his coat, his best, of ‘Colchester bayze.’ The horse, sensibly
lightened, followed.
“O, O!” cried Joan. “Wasn’t you sopped enough already, but you
must fill your pockets with water?”
“Joan!” he cried disconcerted. “I am drowned!”
Luckily, in that pass, looking up the slope of the hill, they espied
near the top a toll-booth, and, beyond, the first houses of a village.
Making a little glad haste, they were soon at the bar.
The woman who came to take their money looked hard at the tired
girl. She was of a sober cast, and her close-fitting coif showed her of
the non-conforming order.
“For Winchester, master?” said she.
“Nay,” answered the clergyman; “for the first hostelry. We are beat,
dame.”
“The first and the last is ‘The Five Alls,’ ” said she. “But I wouldn’t
carry the maiden there, by your leave. There be great and wild
company in the house, that recks nothing of anything in its cups.
Canst hear ’em, if thou wilt.” And, indeed, with her words, a muffled
roar of merriment reached them from the inn a little beyond.
“One riding for Winchester, and the rest from,” she said, “they met
here, and here have forgathered roistering this hour. Dare them so
you dare. I have spoken.”
“Nunc Deus avertat!” cried the desperate minister. “The Fates fight
against us. At all costs we must go by.”
“Nay,” said the good woman; “but, an you will, seek you your own
shelter there, and leave this poor lamb with me. I have two already
by the fire—decent ladies and proper, and no quarry for licence. I
know the company; ’twill be moving soon; and then canst come and
claim thine own.”
 He accepted gladly, and, leaving Joan in her charge, rode on to
the inn, where, dismounting, he betook himself to the stable, which
was full of horses, and, after, to the kitchen.
The landlord, cooking a pan of rashers alone over a great fire,
turned his head, focussed the new-comer with one red eye, and
asked his business.
“A seat by the hearth, a clothes-rack for my breeches, a rug for my
loins while they dry, and a mug of ale with a sop in it,” answered the
traveller, with a smile for his own waggish epitome. And then he
related of his mishap.
The landlord grunted, returned to his task, blew on an ignited
rasher, presently took the skillet off the coals, forked the fizzing mess
into a dish, and disappeared with it. All the while an ineffable racket
thundered on the floor above.
“Peradventure they will respect my cloth,” thought the clergyman.
“The Lord fend me! I am among the Philistines.”
The landlord returned in a moment with a horn of ale in one hand,
and a rug in the other, which he threw down.
“Dod, man!” he cried; “peel, peel! This is the country of continence!
Hast no reason to fear for thy modesty.” And he went out between
chuckling and grumbling.
Very decently the curate doffed his small-clothes, hung them over
a trestle before the fire, wrapped and knotted the rug about his loins,
and sat down vastly content to his sup. In ten minutes—what with
weariness, warmth, and stingo—he was asleep.
He woke with a little shriek, and staggered to his feet. Something
had pricked him—the point of a rapier. The flushed, grinning face of
the man who had wielded it stood away from him. The kitchen was
full of rich company, which broke suddenly into a babble of
merriment at the sight of his astounded visage. In the midst, a swart
gentleman, who had been lolling at a table, advanced, and taking
him by the shoulders, swung him gently to and fro till his eyes
goggled.
“Well followed, parson!” said he, chuckling, and lurching a little in
his speech. “What! is the cuif not to be spoiled of his bishopric
because of a saucy baggage?”
 He laughed, checked himself suddenly, and, still holding on,
assumed a majestic air, with his wig a little on one side, and said
with great dignity: “But, before I grant termsir, you shall bring the slut
to canvass of herself what termsir. Godsmylife! to hold her King at a
bodkin’s point! It merits no pardon, I say, unless the merit of the
pardon of the termsir—no, the pardon of the merit of the termsir.
Therefore I say, whither hast brought her, I say? Out with it, man!”
The clergyman, recognizing Joan’s abductor, and listening
amazed, sprang back at the end with a face of horror, almost
upsetting His Majesty, who, barely recovering himself, stood shaking
his head with a glassy smile.
“Ifhicakins!” said he: “I woss a’most down!”
“Avaunt, ravisher!” roared the Doctor.
Charles stiffened with a jerk, stared, wheeled cautiously, and
tiptoed elaborately from the room. His suite, staggering at the
balance, followed with enormous solemnity; and the Doctor, still
pointing denunciatory, was left alone.
At the end of a minute, after much whispering outside, a young
cavalier re-entered, and approached him with a threatening visage,
as if up the slope of a deck.
“His Maj’ty, sir,” said he, “demands to know if you know who the
devil you was a-bawling—hic—at?”
“To my sorrow, though late, I do, sir,” answered the Doctor in a
grievous voice.
“O!” said the cavalier, and tacked from the room. He returned
again in a second, to poke the clergyman with his finger, and
suggest to him confidentially, “Betteric la’ than never—hic!” which
having uttered, he took himself off, after a vain attempt to open the
door from its hinge side. In two minutes he was back again.
“His Maj’ty wan’s know where hast hidden Mrs. Seabird. Nowhere
in house, says landlord. Ver’ well—where then?”
“Tell the King, where he shall reach her only over my body.”
The cavalier vanished, and reappeared.
“His Maj’ty doesn’t wan’ tread on your body. On contrary, wan’s
raise you up. Wan’s hear story all over again from lady’s lips.”
“I am His Majesty’s truthful minister. There is nothing to add to
what I have already reported to him.”
 The cavalier withdrew, smacking his thigh profoundly. Sooner than
usual he returned.
“His Maj’ty s’prised at you. Says if you won’t tell him where’ve laid
her by, he’ll beat up every house within miles-’n’-miles.”
“No!” said the simple clergyman, in a sudden emotion.
“Yes,” said the gentleman, not too drunk to note his advantage.
“For miles-’n’-miles. His Maj’ty ver’ s’prised her behaviour to him.
Wan’s lil word with her. Tell at once where she is, or worse for you.”
The clergyman looked about him like one at bay. His glance
lighted on the trestle before the fire, fixed itself there, and kindled.
“The Lord justify the ways of His servant!” he muttered; and drew
himself up.
“Tell His Majesty,” he said in a strong voice, “that, so be he will
honour a toast I shall call, the way he seeks shall be made clear to
him.”
The other gave a great chuckle, which was loudly echoed from the
passage.
“Why, thish is the right humour,” he said, and retired.
Within a few moments the whole company re-entered, tittering and
jogging one another, and spilling wine from the beakers they carried.
The King called a silence.
“Sir,” said the clergyman, advancing a little, “I pray your Majesty to
convince me, by proof, of a reputed custom with our gallants, which
is that, being to drink a lady’s health, the one that calleth shall cast
into the flames some article of his attire, there to be consumed to her
honour, and so shall demand of his company, by toasters’ law, that
they do likewise.”
“Dod!” said the King, chuckling; “woss he speiring at? Drink man!
drink and sacrifice, and I give my royal word that all shall follow suit,
though it be with the wigs from our heads.”
The Doctor lifted his horn of ale and drained it.
“I toast Joan!” he cried.
“Joan!” they all shouted, laughing and hiccuping, and, having
drunk, threw down their beakers helter-skelter.
The clergyman took one swift step forward; snatched up his small-
clothes from the trestle; displayed them a moment; thrust them deep
into the blazing coals, and, facing about, disrugged himself, and
stood in his shirttails.
“I claim your Majesty’s word, and breeches,” said he.
A silence of absolute stupefaction befell; and then in an instant the
kitchen broke into one howl of laughter.
In the midst, Charles walked stately to the table, sat down, and
thrust out his legs.
“Parson,” said he, “if you had but claimed my hair. The honours lie
with you, sir; take ’em.”
He would have none but the Doctor handle him; and, when his
ineffable smalls were burning, he rose up in his royal shift, and
ruthlessly commandeering every other pair in the room, stood, the
speechless captain of as shameful and defenceless a crew of
buccaneers as ever lowered its flag to honesty.
Then the Doctor resumed his rug.
“Sir,” said he, trembling, “I now fulfil my bond. My granddaughter is
sheltering, with other modest ladies, in the pike-house hard by.”
But the King swore—by divine right—a pretty oath or two, while
the chill of his understandings helped to sober him.
“By my cold wit you have won! and there may she remain for me.
And now, decent man,” he cried, “I do call my company to witness
how you have made yourself to be more honoured in the breach
than the observance; and since you go wanting a frock, a bishop’s
you shall have.”
And with that he snatched the rug, and, skipping under it, sat on
the table, grinning over the quenching of his amazed fire-eaters.
And this, if you will believe deponent, is the true, if unauthorized,
version of Dr. Winthrop’s election, and of the confounding of
Godsport on a writ of quo warranto.
 THE STRENGTH OF THE ROPE
Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit.

There were notices, of varying dates, posted in prominent places

about the cliffs to warn the public not to go near them—unless,
indeed, it were to read the notices themselves, which were printed in
a very unobtrusive type. Of late, however, this Dogberrian caveat
had been supplemented by a statement in the local gazette that the
cliffs, owing to the recent rains succeeding prolonged frost, were in
so ill a constitution that to approach them at all, even to decipher the
warnings not to, was—well, to take your life out of the municipal into
your own hands.
Now, had the Regius Professor a bee in his bonnet? Absurd. He
knew the risks of foolhardiness as well as any pickpocket could have
told him. Yet, neither general nor particular caution availed to abate
his determination to examine, as soon as we had lunched, the
interior formation of a cave or two, out of those black and
innumerable, with which the undercliff was punctured like a warren.
I did not remonstrate, after having once discovered, folded down
under his nose on the table, the printed admonition, and heard the
little dry, professorial click of tongue on palate which was wont to
dismiss, declining discussion of it, any idle or superfluous
proposition. I knew my man—or automaton. He inclined to the
Providence of the unimaginative; his only fetish was science. He was
one of those who, if unfortunately buried alive, would turn what
opportunity remained to them to a study of geological deposits. My
“nerves,” when we were on a jaunt (fond word!) together, were
always a subject of sardonic amusement with him.
Now, utterly unmoved by the prospect before him, he ate an
enormous lunch (confiding it, incidentally, to an unerring digestion),
rose, brushed some crumbs out of his beard, and said, “Well, shall
we be off?”
 In twenty minutes we had reached the caves. They lay in a very
secluded little bay—just a crescent of sombre sand, littered along all
its inner edge with débris from the towering cliffs which contained it.
“Are you coming with me?” said the Regius Professor.
Judged by his anxious eyes, the question might have been an
invitation, almost a shamefaced entreaty. But the anxiety, never more
than apparent, was delusive product of the preposterous magnifying-
glasses which he wore. Did he ever remove those glasses, one was
startled to discover, in the seemingly aghast orbs which they
misinterpreted, quite mean little attic windows to an unemotional
soul.
“Not by any means,” I said. “I will sit here, and think out your
epitaph.”
He stared at me a moment with a puzzled expression, grinned
slightly, turned, strode off towards the cliffs, and disappeared, without
a moment’s hesitation, into the first accessible burrow. I was moved
on the instant to observe that it was the most sinister-looking of them
all. The tilted stratification, under which it yawned oblique, seemed
on the very poise to close down upon it.
Now I set to pacing to and fro, essaying a sort of mechanical
preoccupation in default of the philosophy I lacked. I was really in a
state of clammy anxiety about the Professor. I poked in stony pools
for little crabs, as if his life depended on my success. I made it a
point of honour with myself not to leave off until I had found one. I
tried, like a very amateur pickpocket, to abstract my mind from the
atmosphere which contained it, only to find that I had brought mind
and atmosphere away together. I bent down, with my back to the
sea, and looking between my legs sought to regard life from a new
point of view. Yet, even in that position, my eyes and ears were
conscious, only in less degree, of the spectres which were always
moving and rustling in the melancholy little bay.
Tekel upharsin. The hand never left off writing upon the rocks, nor
the dust of its scoring to fall and whisper. That came away in flakes,
or slid down in tiny avalanches—here, there, in so many places at
once, that the whole face of the cliffs seemed to crawl like a maggoty
cheese. The sound was like a vast conspiracy of voices—busy,
ominous—aloft on the seats of an amphitheatre. They were talking of
the Regius Professor, and his consideration in making them a
Roman holiday.
Here, on no warrant but that of my senses, I knew the gazette’s
warning to be something more than justified. It made no difference
that my nerves were at the stretch. One could not hear a silence thus
sown with grain of horror, and believe it barren of significance. Then,
all in a moment, as it seemed to me, the resolution was taken, the
voices hushed, and the whole bay poised on tiptoe of a suspense
which preluded something terrific.
I stood staring at the black mouth which had engulfed the Regius
Professor. I felt that a disaster was imminent; but to rush to warn him
would be to embarrass the issues of his Providence—that only. For
the instant a fierce resentment of his foolhardiness fired me—and
was as immediately gone. I turned sick and half blind. I thought I saw
the rock-face shrug and wrinkle; a blot of gall was expelled from it—
and the blot was the Professor himself issued forth, and coming
composedly towards me.
As he advanced, I turned my back on him. By the time he reached
me I had made some small success of a struggle for self-mastery.
“Well,” he said. “I left myself none too much of a margin, did I?”
With an effort I faced about again. The base of the cliff was yet
scarred with holes, many and irregular; but now some of those which
had stared at me like dilated eyes were, I could have sworn it, over-
lidded—the eyes of drowsing reptiles. And the Professor’s particular
cave was gone.
I gave quite an absurd little giggle. This man was soulless—a
monstrosity.
“Look here,” he said, conning my face with a certain concern, “it’s
no good tormenting yourself with what might have happened. Here I
am, you know. Supposing we go and sit down yonder, against that
drift, till you’re better.”
He led the way, and, dropping upon the sand, lolled easily, talking
to himself, by way of me, for some minutes. It was the kindest thing
he could have done. His confident voice made scorn of the never-
ceasing rustling and falling sounds to our rear. The gulls skated
before my eyes, drawing wide arcs and figures of freedom in the air.
Presently I topped the crisis, and drew a deep breath.
 “Tell me,” I said—“have you ever in all your life known fear?”
The Regius Professor sat to consider.
“Well,” he answered presently, rubbing his chin, “I was certainly
once near losing hold of my will, if that’s what you mean. Of course,
if I had let go——”
“But you didn’t.”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “No—luckily.”
“You’re not taking credit for it?”
“Credit!” he exclaimed, surprised. “Why should I take credit for my
freedom from a constitutional infirmity? In one way, indeed, I am only
regretful that I am debarred that side of self-analysis.”
I could laugh lovelily, for the first time.
“Well,” I said, “will you tell me the story?”
“I never considered it in the light of a story,” answered the Regius
Professor. “But, if it will amuse and distract you, I will make it one
with pleasure. My memory of it, as an only experience in that
direction, is quite vivid, I think I may say—” and he settled his
spectacles, and began:
“It was during the period of my first appointment as Science
Demonstrator to the Park Lane Polytechnic, a post which my little
pamphlet on the Reef-building Serpulæ was instrumental in
procuring me. I was a young man at the time, with a wide field of
interests, but with few friends to help me in exploring it. My holidays I
generally devoted to long, lonely tramps, knapsack on back, about
the country.
“It was on one of these occasions that you must picture me
entered into a solitary valley among the Shropshire hills. The season
was winter; it was bitterly cold, and the prospect was of the dreariest.
The interesting conformations of the land—the bone-structure, as I
might say—were blunted under a thick pelt of snow, which made
walking a labour. One never recognizes under such conditions the
extent of one’s efforts, as inequalities of ground are without the
contrast of surroundings to emphasize them, and one may be
conscious of the strain of a gradient, and not know if it is of one foot
in fifty or in five hundred.
“The scene was desolate to a degree; houseless, almost treeless
—just white wastes and leaden sky, and the eternal fusing of the two
in an indefinite horizon. I was wondering, without feeling actually
dispirited, how long it was to last, when, turning the shoulder of a hill
which had seemed to hump itself in my path, I came straight upon a
tiny hamlet scattered over a widish area. There were some cottages,
and a slated school building; and, showing above a lower hump a
quarter of a mile beyond, the roofs and tall chimney of a factory.
“It was a stark little oasis, sure enough—the most grudging of
moral respites from depression. Only from one place, it seemed,
broke a green shoot. Not a moving figure was abroad; not a face
looked from a window. Deathlily exclusive, the little stony buildings
stood apart from one another, incurious, sullen, and self-contained.
“There was, however, the green shoot; and the stock from which it
proceeded was the school building. That in itself was unlovely
enough—a bleak little stone box in an arid enclosure. It looked
hunched and grey with cold; and the sooty line of thaw at the foot of
its wall only underscored its frostiness. But as if that one green shoot
were the earnest of life lingering within, there suddenly broke
through its walls the voices of young children singing; and, in the
sound, the atmosphere of petrifaction lifted somewhat.
“Yes? What is it? Does anything amuse you? I am glad you are so
far recovered, at least. Well——
“I like, I must confess, neither children nor music. At the same
time, I am free to admit that those young voices, though they
dismissed me promptly on my way, dismissed me pleased, and to a
certain degree, as it were, reinvigorated. I passed through that little
frigid camp of outer silence, and swung down the road towards the
factory. As I advanced towards what I should have thought to be the
one busy nucleus of an isolated colony, the aspect of desolation
intensified, to my surprise, rather than diminished. But I soon saw
the reason for this. The great forge in the hills was nothing but a
wrecked and abandoned ruin, its fires long quenched, its ribs long
laid bare. Seeing which, it only appeared to me a strange thing that
any of the human part of its affairs should yet cling to its
neighbourhood; and stranger still I thought it when I came to learn,
as I did by and by, that its devastation was at that date an ancient
story.
 “What a squalid carcass it did look, to be sure; gaunt, and unclean,
and ravaged by fire from crown to basement. The great flue of it
stood up alone, a blackened monument to its black memory.
“Approaching and entering, I saw some writhed and tortured guts
of machinery, relics of its old vital organs, fallen, withered, from its
ribs. The floor, clammy to the tread, was littered with tumbled
masonry; the sheet iron of the roof was shattered in a hundred
places under the merciless bombardment of the weather; and, here
and there, a scale of this was corroded so thin that it fluttered and
buzzed in the draught like a ventilator. Bats of grimy cobweb hung
from the beams; and the dead breath of all the dead place was acrid
with cold soot.
“It was all ugly and sordid enough, in truth, and I had no reason to
be exacting in my inspection of it. Turning, in a vaulting silence, I was
about to make my way out, when my attention was drawn to the
black opening of what looked like a shed or annex to the main
factory. Something, some shaft or plant, revealing itself from the dim
obscurity of this place, attracted my curiosity. I walked thither, and,
with all due precaution because of the littered ground, entered. I was
some moments in adapting my vision to the gloom, and then I
discovered that I was in the mill well-house. It was a little dead-
locked chamber, its details only partly decipherable in the reflected
light which came in by the doorway. The well itself was sunk in the
very middle of the floor, and the projecting wall of it rose scarce
higher than my knees. The windlass, pivoted in a massive yoke,
crossed the twilight at a height a little above my own; and I could
easily understand, by the apparent diameter of its barrel, that the
well was of a considerable depth.
“Now, as my eyes grew a little accustomed to the obscurity, I could
see how a tooth of fire had cut even into this fastness. For the rope,
which was fully reeled up upon the windlass, was scorched to one
side, as though some exploded fragment of wood or brickwork had
alighted there. It was an insignificant fact in itself, but my chance
observation of it has its importance in the context; as has also the
fact that the bight of the rope (from which the bucket had been
removed) hung down a yard or so below the big drum.
 “You have always considered me a sapient, or at least a rational
creature, have you not? Well, listen to this. Bending over to plumb
with my eyes the depth of the pit (an absurdity, to begin with, in that
vortex of gloom), I caught with my left hand (wisdom number two) at
the hanging end of rope in order to steady myself. On the instant the
barrel made one swift revolution, and stuck. The movement,
however, had thrown me forward and down, so that my head and
shoulders, hanging over, and actually into, the well, pulled me,
without possibility of recovery, from my centre of gravity. With a
convulsive wrench of my body, I succeeded in bringing my right hand
to the support of my left. I was then secure of the rope; but the
violence of the act dragged my feet and knees from their last
desperate hold, and my legs came whipping helpless over the well-
rim. The weight of them in falling near jerked me from my clutch—a
bad shock, to begin with. But a worse was in store for me. For I
perceived, in the next instant, that the rusty, long-disused windlass
was beginning slowly to revolve, and was letting me down into the
abyss.
“I broke out in a sweat, I confess—a mere diaphoresis of nature; a
sort of lubricant to the jammed mechanism of the nerves. I don’t
think we are justified in attributing my first sensations to fear. I was
exalted, rather—promoted to the analysis of a very exquisite, scarce
mortal, problem. My will, as I hung by a hair over the abysm, was
called upon to vindicate itself under an utmost stress of
apprehension. I felt, ridiculous as it may appear, as if the surrounding
dark were peopled with an invisible auditory, waiting, curious, to test
the value of my philosophy.
“Here, then, were the practical problems I had to combat. The
windlass, as I have said, revolved slowly, but it revolved persistently.
If I would remain with my head above the well-rim—which, I freely
admit, I had an unphilosophic desire to do—I must swarm as
persistently up the rope. That was an eerie and airy sort of treadmill.
To climb, and climb, and always climb, paying out the cord beneath
me, that I might remain in one place! It was to repudiate gravitation,
which I spurned from beneath my feet into the depths. But when,
momentarily exhausted, I ventured to pause, some nightmare revolt
against the sense of sinking which seized me, would always send
me struggling and wriggling, like a drowning body, up to the surface
again. Fortunately, I was slightly built and active; yet I knew that wind
and muscle were bound sometime to give out in this swarming
competition against death. I measured their chances against the
length of the rope. There was a desperate coil yet unwound.
Moreover, in proportion as I grew the feebler, grew the need for my
greater activity. For there were already signs that the great groaning
windlass was casting its rust of ages, and was beginning to turn
quicker in its sockets. If it had only stuck, paused one minute in its
eternal round, I might have set myself oscillating, gradually and
cautiously, until I was able to seize with one hand, then another,
upon the brick rim, which was otherwise beyond my reach. But now,
did I cease climbing for an instant and attempt a frantic clutch at it,
down I sank like a clock weight, my fingers trailed a yard in cold
slime, and there I was at my mad swarming once more—the madder
that I must now make up for lost ground.
“At last, faint with fatigue, I was driven to face an alternative
resource, very disagreeable from the first in prospect. This was no
less than to resign temporarily my possession of the upper, and sink
to the under world; in other words, to let myself go with the rope,
and, when it was all reeled out, to climb it again. To this course there
were two objections: one, that I knew nothing of the depth of the
water beneath me, or of how soon I should come to it; the other, that
I was grown physically incapable of any further great effort in the
way of climbing. My reluctance to forgo the useless solace of the
upper twilight I dismiss as sentimental. But to drop into that sooty pit,
and then, perhaps, to find myself unable to reascend it! to feel a
gradual paralysis of heart and muscle committing me to a lingering
and quite unspeakable death—that was an unnerving thought
indeed!
“Nevertheless, I had actually resolved upon the venture, and was
on the point of ceasing all effort, and permitting myself to sink, when
—I thought of the burnt place in the rope.
“Do you grasp what that sudden thought meant to me? Death, sir,
in any case; death, if, with benumbed and aching hands and
blistered knees, I continued to work my air-mill; death, no earlier and
no later, no less and no more certainly, if I ceased of the useless
struggle and went down into the depths. So soon as the strain of my
hanging should tell direct upon that scorched strand, that strand
must part.
“Then, I think, I knew fear—fear as demoralizing, perhaps, as it
may be, short of the will-surrender. And, indeed, I’m not sure but that
the will which survives fear may not be a worse last condition than
fear itself, which, when exquisite, becomes oblivion. Consciousness
in extremis has never seemed to me the desirable thing which some
hold it.
“Still, if I suffered for retaining my will power, there is no doubt that
its loss, on the flash of that deadly reflection, would have meant an
immediate syncope of nerve and an instant downfall; whereas—well,
anyhow, here I am.
“I was fast draining of all capacity for further effort. I climbed
painfully, spasmodically; but still I climbed, half hoping I should die of
the toil of it before I fell. Ever and again I would glance faintly up at
the snarling, slowly-revolving barrel above me, and mark how death,
as figured in that scorched strand, was approaching me nearer at
every turn. It was only a few coils away, when suddenly I set to doing
what, goodness knows, I should have done earlier. I screamed—
screamed until the dead marrow must have crawled in the very
bones of the place.
“Nothing human answered—not a voice, not the sound of a
footfall. Only the echoes laughed and chattered like monkeys up in
the broken roof of the factory. For the rest, my too-late outburst had
but served to sap what little energy yet remained to me.
“The end was come. Looking up, I saw the burnt strand reeling
round, a couple of turns away, to the test; and, with a final gulp of
horror, I threw up the sponge, and sank.
“I had not descended a yard or two, when my feet touched
something.”
The Regius Professor paused dramatically.
“O, go on!” I snapped.
“That something,” he said, “yielded a little—settled—and there all
at once was I, standing as firmly as if I were in a pulpit.
“For the moment, I assure you, I was so benumbed, physically and
mentally, that I was conscious of nothing in myself but a small weak
impatience at finding the awful ecstasy of my descent checked. Then
reason returned, like blood to the veins of a person half drowned;
and I had never before realized that reason could make a man ache
so.
“With the cessation of my strain upon it, the windlass had ceased
to revolve. Now, with a sudden desperation, I was tugging at the
rope once more—pulling it down hand over hand. At the fifth haul
there came a little quick report, and I staggered and near fell. The
rope had snapped; and the upper slack of it came whipping down
upon my shoulders.
“I rose, dimly aware of what had happened. I was standing on the
piled-up fathoms of rope which I had paid out beneath me. Above,
though still beyond my effective winning, glimmered the moon-like
disk of light which was the well mouth. I dared not, uncertain of the
nature of my tenure, risk a spring for it. But, very cautiously, I found
the end of the rope that had come away, made a bend in it well clear
of the injured part, and, after many vain attempts, slung it clean over
the yoke above, coaxed down the slack, spliced it to the other, and
so made myself a fixed ladder to climb by. Up this, after a short
interval for rest, I swarmed, set myself swinging, grasped the brick
rim, first with one hand, then with both, and in another instant had
flung myself upon the ground prostrate, and for the moment quite
prostrated. Then presently I got up, struck some matches, and
investigated.”
The Regius Professor stopped, laughing a little over the memory.
“Do go on!” I said.
“Why,” he responded, chuckling, “generations of school children
had been pitching litter into that well, until it was filled up to within a
couple yards of the top—just that. The rope, heaping up under me,
did the rest. It was a testimony to the limited resources of the valley.
What the little natives of to-day do with their odd time, goodness
knows. But it was comical, wasn’t it?”
“O, most!” said I. “And particularly from the point of view of the
children’s return to you for your dislike of them.”
“Well, as to that,” said the Regius Professor, rather shamefacedly,
“I wasn’t beyond acknowledging a certain indebtedness.”
“Acknowledging? How?”