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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 2:16 pm
by JeffyCupcake
You can now "tap" with the left mouse button. The right mouse button will reset the counters. The middle button (if you have one) will toggle the metronome sound on/off.
http://www.tapbpm.com

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:57 pm
by fredo
so yeah... I was actually using this Tap BPM for a while. It was a simple little tool, but useful. Then my hard drive crashed and now its gone. Apparently the website for it is gone as well. oh well.

Any other BPM counting free-ware out there that people recommend? Something simple and relatively accurate, and not necessarily attached to a larger software.

thanks

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 9:28 pm
by JeffyCupcake
I'll upload it to my website tomorrow or the next day for you. If I forget to post it here by then send me a PM or an e-mail.

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 8:52 am
by dancin_hanson
fredo wrote:
Any other BPM counting free-ware out there that people recommend?

thanks
I use ArBPM. Free, simple, accurate.

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:12 pm
by dancin_hanson
fredo wrote:
Any other BPM counting free-ware out there that people recommend?

thanks
I use ArBPM. Free, simple, accurate.

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:09 am
by Haydn
dancin_hanson wrote:
fredo wrote:
Any other BPM counting free-ware out there that people recommend?

thanks
I use ArBPM. Free, simple, accurate.
Seems to be Windows only (not Mac)

Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:51 pm
by Jonas
Any recommedations for a freeware manual BPM counter for Mac OS that lets you tap every 2 bars or something like that?

I've found automatic BPM counters, but don't really trust them, I need to be more in control :)

I've also found manual BPM counters, but those I've tried demand that you tap every beat, which is a little hectic when checking a song in "Harlem Congo" tempo, and they also just save the last result.

On my Windows system I have this simple program that lets me tap every 8 beats, and gives me a history of all previous results, which lets me easily assess some kind of average. I like that and would like something similar for the Mac.

/Jonas

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:28 pm
by OneTrueDabe
Jonas wrote:Any recommedations for a freeware manual BPM counter for Mac OS that lets you tap every 2 bars or something like that?
I whipped up the following Quick-and-Dirty shell script that lets me hit 'Enter' at the end of every 8-bar Phrase (32 beats, four sets of eight, whatever...)

It does it four times (one full chorus) then gives me the average (which I sometimes round up or down, depending on how much variance my four readings gave me...)

Save it to, e.g. "bpm" in your home directory, open up the Terminal (sorry, I'm a Unix/Linux geek) and make it "executable" by typing:

chmod 755 bpm [And hit Enter]

Then when you want to run it, again, from the Terminal do:

./bpm [Enter]

It'll wait for you to hit 'Enter' one the first "ONE" then again at the beginning of each 32 beats. If you want to adjust the number of beats, simply change the "1920" halfway through the script. Half as many beats = halve the value; four bars = 960; two bars = 480; etc.

Anyway, here's the script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

echo "BPM: Hit Enter, Count for 32 Beats (4 x 8); Hit Enter Again"
echo "Repeat for Four Iterations.  BPM will Average the results."
echo ""

sum=0
echo -n "Hit [ENTER] to start timer ('CTRL+C' to quit) ... "
read k

for i in 1 2 3 4; do

        echo -n "Hit [ENTER] to mark end of phrase... "

        sec="`(time read k >/dev/null) 2>&1 | perl -ne 'print "$1\n" if /real.*m(.*?)s/'`"
        bpm="`echo 1920 / $sec | bc -l`"

        echo "   $sec seconds"
        echo "   $bpm bpm"

        sum="`echo $sum + $bpm | bc -l`"

done

average="`echo $sum / 4 | bc -l`"

echo "AVERAGE BPM: $average"
Crude but effective...

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:03 am
by Lawrence
Jonas wrote:Any recommedations for a freeware manual BPM counter for Mac OS that lets you tap every 2 bars or something like that?

I've found automatic BPM counters, but don't really trust them, I need to be more in control :)

I've also found manual BPM counters, but those I've tried demand that you tap every beat, which is a little hectic when checking a song in "Harlem Congo" tempo, and they also just save the last result.

On my Windows system I have this simple program that lets me tap every 8 beats, and gives me a history of all previous results, which lets me easily assess some kind of average. I like that and would like something similar for the Mac.

/Jonas
Seems like tapping at the end of every bar, as opposed to every beat, would be time consuming as well as inaccurate: you have far fewer data points to calculate an average and weed out human error. Indeed, in three bars of music you generally get more data points by tapping each beat than you would if tapping only the end of each bar for the entire song. Ten seconds compared to the entire song: which is more efficient?

I have no problem consistently tapping out 320-360 BPM songs. Beyond 300 BPM, what's the friggin difference, anyway?

Moreover, the faster songs generally result in a low-degree-of-error calculation quite quickly. WinBPM calculates not only the average BPM on the fly, but also a variation percentile/degree of error: once it gets below 2%, I consider it more than sufficient. The more accurate your taps, the quicker it gets to a lower variation percentile.

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:20 am
by Toon Town Dave
I'm not a stickler for exact BPM however, I'm not sure having more data points would help that much.

A tapping style BPM counter relies on the timing of the tap of the keyboard/mouse/whatever. What is the precision of each tap/measurement (5ms?, 50ms?, 500ms?), how would a systemic error accumulate to skew the result?

It could be the tapper is not tapping out straight time or the tempo of the music is changing or the tapper starts tapping on the beat at the beginning and is tapping behind the beat by the end.

If the goal is simply an average tempo, then a single time measure (1 second precision) and a count of the number of measures (or 8's) (4/8 beat precision) over the entire song or sufficient duration (32 beats?)would probably yield a better result than a tapping style beat counter.

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:13 am
by OneTrueDabe
Toon Town Dave wrote:If the goal is simply an average tempo, then a single time measure (1 second precision) and a count of the number of measures (or 8's) (4/8 beat precision) over the entire song or sufficient duration (32 beats?)would probably yield a better result than a tapping style beat counter.
I agree with Dave.

Taking eight 1-beat measurements and averaging them is (theoretically) no different than timing one 8-beat section. (No matter how big your window is, though, you still need to take the average of a few measurements, just to account for any variance in how fast your finger hit the button.)

Besides, if you use iTunes for cataloging, it only allows you to enter BPM info to the nearest whole number anyway, so you're going to lose any über-precision you may have had, regardless...

(Not that having those extra three decimal places would make a difference in most cases. "No way man, this song isn't 137BPM; it's 136.896!" Human drummers -- even Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa ;) -- aren't *THAT* consistent!)

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:53 pm
by Lawrence
OneTrueDabe wrote:
Taking eight 1-beat measurements and averaging them is (theoretically) no different than timing one 8-beat section. (No matter how big your window is, though, you still need to take the average of a few measurements, just to account for any variance in how fast your finger hit the button.)
Yes, "theoretically, " but "theoretically" would include no human error in tapping the measurement points. With fewer data points, counting by bars allows a greater degree of human error such that you need to wait longer to weed it out. Granted, it won't turn a 130 BPM song into a 200 BPM reading, but it will be off considerably until after five or six bars averages out the human error.

It also takes longer to wait for the end of each bar.

It also is more complicated than just mindlessly tapping each beat.

Perhaps the difference is that I envision the tediousness of waiting for slower songs to play out (where waiting for the first chorus needlessly takes 30-40 seconds), whereas you envision the difficulty of tapping out extremely fast songs, where waiting for the first few bars takes only a few seconds.

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:53 pm
by Jonas
OneTrueDabe wrote:
Jonas wrote:Any recommedations for a freeware manual BPM counter for Mac OS that lets you tap every 2 bars or something like that?
I whipped up the following Quick-and-Dirty shell script that lets me hit 'Enter' at the end of every 8-bar Phrase (32 beats, four sets of eight, whatever...)

[...]
Thanks for the script. I'll try it out and report back. I'm in Herräng now, all my time spent towards deejaying and dancing, and I'm no computer wizz, so it might be a while :)

/Jonas