SwingDJs

Oh wow, I just checked, and it looks like there is a new utility for iTunes 4 which lets you set BPMs with mousetaps directly in iTunes. Perfect.

iTunes-BPM Inspector 0.9.1

Installs into ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts

I will try it out and post my experiences here.


download here:
http://www.blacktree.com/scripts.html

morte100 wrote:For kicks, try measuring the BPM at the beginning of a song, during solos, and towards the end to see how much our type of music can vary without drum machines and synthesizers.

Oh, yeah! I usually find a "typical" part of the song, most often in the middle, and measure that. Instead of noting the exact BPM, I round it to the nearest five.

I use: http://www.b-boys.com/beatcounter.html.

Promised I'd post here once I had tried iTunes BPM Inspector for a while, and I have.

It's now undergone a couple of quick and useful updates, including considerably more accurate counting and the addition of key tapping as well as mouseclicks to count beats (that last feature was a suggestion of mine!).

I would recommend this iTunes plug in to any Mac user wanting to count their stuff. It's quick, and simple, and integrated perfectly into iTunes so that you can go through many songs, counting with ease. All you do is choose a menu item and start tapping to the current song. Click 'Set once you're happy with the count, and the bpm goes right into the current song's BPM field in iTunes. Couldn't be much simpler.

Download version 1.0.0 here:
http://www.blacktree.com/apps/index.html

I go with the stop watch. I keep a small one in my CD book so I can use it when/where ever I am. It's great for educating punks who try to tell me they know what, say, 190BPM sounds like.
I say that because a lot of people who think they know what tempo they dance to haven't got a clue -and it's kind of funny to see their reaction when they find out that "really fast" song is under 170 BPM.
On the other hand, one thing I learned from Andy Reid is that if you play your music right, you can get people dancing to faster music without their realizing it. I've done that in my classes and it's also fun to see the look of surprise when someone does something they didn't think they could do.

Greg Avakian wrote: I've done that in my classes and it's also fun to see the look of surprise when someone does something they didn't think they could do.

:)

heehee, I once accidentally danced to the regular version of flying home when I'd meant to put on the slower one, and I was so excited that I could lindy that fast.

I need to work on that skill, of getting people dancing to faster stuff, portland is a pretty slow moving city these days, and I think it's gonna take subtlety to get them up in tempo again rather than plain old beating over the head.

i tried a few... my favorite is the java "beatmeter." it has a thingy that blinks across the screen like a metronome. the longer you tap the stabler it is. you if you know html you can hack around and download it... http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~gremlin/beat.html

Lately I've been cataloguing all my music, counting the BPM for each song and making a note of it. I've gotten so in tune with BPMs that I can now guess the BPM of a song and usually get it within about 10 or 20. Anybody else experience something similar?

Greg Avakian wrote:I say that because a lot of people who think they know what tempo they dance to haven't got a clue -and it's kind of funny to see their reaction when they find out that "really fast" song is under 170 BPM.
On the other hand, one thing I learned from Andy Reid is that if you play your music right, you can get people dancing to faster music without their realizing it. I've done that in my classes and it's also fun to see the look of surprise when someone does something they didn't think they could do.

Exactly. There is a difference between "tempo" and "feel." Lots of Neo Swing songs "feel" a lot faster than they are: a lot faster than, say, some Nat King Cole trio songs that are a good 20-30 BPMs faster. That's also why dancers who prefer "rushed" Neo Swing rhythms tend to rush the steps and do not learn how to "sit back" in the rhythm when dancing to music with a subtler, more laid-back rhythm.

In my Lindy II "Musicality" session, we emphasize listening to the difference in rhythms so as to not automatically "rush" the steps when the tempo gets faster even though the "feel" stays soft.

yedancer wrote:Lately I've been cataloguing all my music, counting the BPM for each song and making a note of it. I've gotten so in tune with BPMs that I can now guess the BPM of a song and usually get it within about 10 or 20. Anybody else experience something similar?

Yeah, I've been fairly good about this in the past. Although, my judgement is alot better when I'm on the sidelines (or in the booth) and not on the dancefloor.

I've recently gone from a very old Windows 98 system to Windows XP.
I've notticed my old WimBPM is not making the system very happy, and it's doing funny things.
Any one got any good basic BPM programs that work well on XP.

Bob the Builder wrote:Any one got any good basic BPM programs that work well on XP.

My answer was posted earlier in this thread:

JesseMiner wrote:For the past few years I've been using a program called Delay Time 2.0 which seems to work just fine for me. It's freeware for the PC, and you can download it from their site.

This works fine on Windows XP (what I am running myself). It is a tiny (172k) executable, no install.



Try it out, and let me know what you think.

Jesse

That looks great.

Thanks Jesse!

Kalman

I concur with Jesse, I have been using Delay Time since it was mentioned in this thread way back when. Works great for me.

Nahtan

Delay Time will not download from their site. Anybody want to post it?

Since it is freeware and aparently not currently available from their website, you can download it here on SwingDJs.com.

Jesse Miner
SwingDJs Administrator