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eclipse525

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 5, 2003
850
0
USA, New York
Does anyone know if iTunes can tell the BPM(beats per minute) of a song? OR is there an applescript for iTunes that can do this? Thanks.

~e
 

johnnyjibbs

macrumors 68030
Sep 18, 2003
2,964
122
London, UK
I don't think that would be possible unless a piece of software estimated it from trying to recognise the beat in music. I'm unaware of any such feature in iTunes but any software that could do this would likely be fairly unpredictable except for the simplest songs. I've noticed that the iTunes visualiser isn't particularly good at recognising the speed/tambre of the music (nice effects though).

If it were MIDI format, it would be easy, as the tempo is recorded in the file format, but this is not the case with waveform audio formats such as MP3, AAC, AIFF, WMA, WAV, etc.

I'd like there to be an update to iTunes so that it would just offer options such as "Slow", "Medium" or "Fast", or a simliar such system, instead of BMP. As it stands I don't use the BMP feature because I don't know the BMP for any of my songs either!
 

krimson

macrumors 65816
stopwatch, and just count beats for 15 seconds (x4=rounded BPM) :)

(personally, i would route the output thru to my djm-600, which has a beat counter, but that's me)

im curious why you would need to know the BPM of a song...


edit: you might wanna poke around with Sound Studio, there may be a setting somewhere...
 

eclipse525

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 5, 2003
850
0
USA, New York
Originally posted by krimson
stopwatch, and just count beats for 15 seconds (x4=rounded BPM) :)

(personally, i would route the output thru to my djm-600, which has a beat counter, but that's me)

im curious why you would need to know the BPM of a song...


edit: you might wanna poke around with Sound Studio, there may be a setting somewhere...


I've used the stopwatch many of times when I was trying to get the BPM's on my vinyl. The reason I would like to know the BPM's is that I compile many compilations for my DJ gigs and when I make my CD inserts with the song list, I like to include the BPM's. Call me crazy but that's just me. Kinda anal that way. I am however getting a new CD Player and it does tell you the BPM's of as it's playing. That will help but I still think it would be nice to include it in iTunes as a optional column or display window.

Do you guys think that Apple should develop a version of iTunes for the pro DJ? Kinda like Traktor, MegSeg, PCDJ, Etc.

~e
 
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