Forums » General Questions » BPM Analizer

I'm looking for a good program to detect BPM. I try downloading MixMeister but flooded with viruses and trojans. Can anyone help me find a safer one?
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I use Audacity to find the bpm of a song like this:

1. Switch to spectrogram view. This makes it easier to see where the beats are than waveform mode does. (at least for me, especially on songs with many instruments)

2. Zoom in so that ~4 seconds of the song is visible in the window.
3. Add a new audio track with Ctrl+Shift+N.
4. Place the selection start in the new audio track, at the same point in time as the first beat.
5. Use Generate->Click Track to generate a new click track. Guess the bpm. Use the length of the song for the duration.

6. If the beats on the click track don't line up with the beats in the song, hit undo and guess again.
7. When the beats line up in the small section you can see, hit play to play through the song and watch closely to see if they drift off later on.

8. After you've found the bpm, switch back to wave form and zoom in far to find the exact millisecond of the first beat. This times -1 is your offset. So if the first beat occurs at 385ms, your offset if -0.385.

When guessing bpms, you can find the answer in fewer guesses if you use the binary search algorithm. Here is how to do that:
1. Find a number that is too high. This is your high point.
2. Find a number that is too low. This is your low point.
3. Test the number that is half way between them. If the test shows that it is too high, it is your new high point. If the test shows that it is too low, it is your new low point.
4. Repeat step 3 until you find the correct number.

Most songs use integer or whole number bpms. Finding a song that is actually 134.875 bpm is rare, so you want to use integers when guessing the bpm until you've narrowed it down to 1 bpm between your high point and low point.
< cybik> til Kyzentun fixes bugs for breakfast
--
< maxvg1> shakesoda: then why do i still play lol
<@shakesoda> because you're an ITG player. And thus, a masochist
--
<@shakesoda> Kyzentun: I think you might need to put down the meshes for a bit
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That's a lot to rememer. I am not very good at this. Sorry if i am being a sour puss :-(
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You'll pick it up and have it memorized quick enough. Just keep this thread open and refer back to it as you do each step. If there's a part you don't understand, ask a question about it.
< cybik> til Kyzentun fixes bugs for breakfast
--
< maxvg1> shakesoda: then why do i still play lol
<@shakesoda> because you're an ITG player. And thus, a masochist
--
<@shakesoda> Kyzentun: I think you might need to put down the meshes for a bit
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Wow Kyzentun that's an elaborate and clever way to deduce the BPM, considering I already use Audacity when setting up the offset. Never imagined I could figure out the BPM like that using the same program haha.

Anyhows Paranation11, if you're looking for something easy yet powerful, I've always used VirtualDJ myself. It calculates the BPM for you and gives you visual feedback as well, so you can confirm whether the calculated BPM is correct or not. If your song has constant BPM and a clear rhythm, it will get it right about 95% of the time. For faster songs (think 170+ BPM) it might sometimes claim a BPM half of the actual BPM, but that's something you can't really avoid with these algorithms. I use it since I create mixes as well, don't know if it seems like a bit of a bulky program for you if you're just going to use it for BPM detection? It's a very solid tool in any case so even if you're going to use it solely for BPMs, I'd still recommend it.

I'd personally recommend version 7.x, don't carelessly click your way through the installer if you don't want any additional dodgy junk installed ;)
http://www.virtualdj.com/download/index.html

Last edited: 26 May 2015 3:21pm

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If you want, you can use MixMeister BPM Analyzer, but be sure to doublecheck it by using a BPM tapper.

EDIT: I tl;dr'ed the first post, oops.

Last edited: 27 May 2015 3:07pm


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What do i download exactly? I'm new at this and not very smart at this kind of thing :-(
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If you want, you can use MixMeister BPM Analyzer, but be sure to doublecheck it by using a BPM tapper.
i downloaded MixMeister and i got flooded with viruses.
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