Yes, a 180 bpm tempo fully syncs with every pedal stroke at 90 rpm cadence, right and left alike. A 90 bpm tempo is also fully synced. In both cases, a pedal stroke hits every beat.
The 180 bpm case is analogous to walking to ~120 bpm music at ~120 steps/min, with steps counted on both feet.
Exactly. Ditto with walking, where I first felt the effect at full power. Now that I have 2 safe places to ride laps with music, looking for the same effect on the bike.
Interesting. These technically have 180 bpm tempos, but I wouldn't say that any of them has a propulsive, driving groove. That by itself would keep them off the cycling playlist I'm trying to build.
No doubt about it. And I'm being very picky here. But I have 3 selection criteria for this cycling playlist, and all 3 must be met to get the strong mental and physical effect I'm after:
C1. A dominant tempo (~90 or ~180 bpm) that strongly syncs to a ~90 rpm cadence.
C2. A propulsive, driving, flowy groove — the kind that makes you want to get up and move to the beat. You know one when you hear it, regardless of your taste in music.
C3. Appeal — gotta be music I personally enjoy.
The musical taste thing really comes in only at C3. To be sure, partly generational in my case, and it's turning out to be major limiting factor in this project. But interestingly, hardly limiting at all at ~120 bpm.
As for C1, I'm OK pedaling at 80-100 rpm on the flat, but that flexibility doesn't help much in this context. For example, music at ~80 bpm is fairly common, but as before, having a hard time finding ~80 and ~160 bpm music that also meets C2 and C3.
Would love to hear a musicologist's take on all this. Here's a glimpse into that world:
psycnet.apa.org
