Even if you don't DJ, knowing the tempo of your music collection opens creative doors. For example, slide shows come alive when you synchronize the slide durations to the tempo of the background music. (See my tempo sync tutorial.) And playlists seem to flow better when you group songs by tempo.
I'd been eyeballing the BPM field in iTunes for a while, but never got around to calculating the song tempos and filling them in. Then I found a nifty Mac freebie called iTunes-BPM.
This companion program presents a tiny window with a big button. You simply start playing a song and tap the button in time with the music. After your tapping speed settles down, the window's BPM reading will turn blue. A graphic on the button and two tiny lights change at the detected tempo so you can confirm your guess. Click "Set" and the BPM reading will be embedded in the song's ID tag. I found I could improve my accuracy by tapping the index finger of my non-mouse hand on eighth- or 16th-notes.
I created the following AppleScript and saved it in iTunes' Scripts folder so I could launch the program from iTunes itself:
tell application "iTunes-BPM"
activate
end tell
tell application "iTunes"
activate
end tellUnfortunately, iTunes-BPM doesn't work on the Windows version of iTunes, but I did find some tap-tempo freebies for Winamp.
Marcelino Martins has also compiled a handy list of BPM detection software for both platforms. I've long been a fan of the offerings from MixMeister. Its BPM Analyzer (Win) detects the tempos of all songs in a list. The free utility is a spinoff of MixMeister's advanced programs that also create intelligent crossfades, turning a plain bucket of songs into a smooth DJ mix you can burn to CD.
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I'm using the new version of winamp and, in my opinion, it has some new good features: remote music, video playback and Sharing, fully integrated Web browser and customizable links and access to almost 20,000 SHOUTcast Radio Stations.
Alex: Good point; thanks. By the way, my Tempo Sync article includes a more detailed version of the All8 bpm detector. It shows you the tempo of the most recent click as well as the average over all clicks.
According to my experience, automatic detectors like MixMeister do a fine work dealing with disco music, rock and similar. Unfortunately they're not accurate with swing/jazz/boogie music (I'm a dance teacher so bpm are important for my work) and one must end up using a "tapping" software like BPM Checker or the web tool in www.all8.com
Cool app. Works fine with iTunes 7.0.2
Hm... seems like a great idea, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work with a MacBook Pro running iTunes 7. The script install is easy, and the window comes up with no problem, but tapping the button doesn't produce any result, even if you tap for several minutes. The documentation calls for iTunes 4, though, so maybe it just doesn't work with later versions of iTunes.
Mr. Battino: Thank you very much for mentioning my page on BPM detection in your post of 6/5/06. If you ever have any extra information on software related with tempo or BPM, my page is open for you.
Unfortunately, Erica Sadun tested a fairly early beta version. Since then we published version 1.0, which is quite a bit faster. That said, to determine the BPM you will always have to decode the compressed audio first (assuming that you are using some compressed audio format like mp3 or aac). Decompressing alone takes some time. On top of that we run the analysis.
Thanks, Hendrick. I’ll check it out. I’d been thinking about trying BeaTunes since Erica Sadun mentioned it on her blog.
I am affiliated with the makers of beaTunes, so this is shameless advertising.
That said, you might also want to try beaTunes for Mac. Regarding BPM it features an automatic BPM detector, manual BPM entry and tapping. Additionally it has an iTunes Library Inspector, rule based music matching ability and integrates with Amazon.
http://www.beatunes.com/