extracting tempo information on the mac

[Mr. Tunes]

my friend who's an amateur samplist using garageband is wondering how to find out the tempo of a loop from songs he samples so can set his song tempo to it. are there any free-low cost tools that can do this on the mac? i'm thinking this is really a wave editor issue. Ableton Live would be good for him but it's expensive. I guess so would ReCycle. The ideal scenario would be something like Audacity to accomplish this task. Any help would be great. Thanks

[Col.G]

You said any help.
http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm
and this
http://www.mmartins.com/mmartins/bpmdet ... ection.asp
or am I on the wrong track?

[Mr. Tunes]

thanks. i wonder if beatunes is any good?

[JumpingJackFlash]

The ideal scenario would be something like Audacity to accomplish this task. Any help would be great. Thanks

Well, Audacity is available for OS X!

[Ashley_K]

my friend who's an amateur samplist using garageband is wondering how to find out the tempo of a loop from songs he samples so can set his song tempo to it. are there any free-low cost tools that can do this on the mac? i'm thinking this is really a wave editor issue. Ableton Live would be good for him but it's expensive. I guess so would ReCycle. The ideal scenario would be something like Audacity to accomplish this task. Any help would be great. Thanks

You could try the following options in no particular order:

Try this nice beat counting plugin Mac AU or Windows VST
http://www.teragon.org/products/BeatCounter/

Or you could just use Ableton Live in demo mode to work out the bpm, but you would really be better off ditching Garage Band and moving to Ableton Live.

Or you could work out the bpm with the free apple loops utility, you can at the same time make the loop an apple loop. You can download the Apple Loops Utility from the Apple Website:
ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Developme ... _1.3.1.dmg

Info on Apple Loops Utility
The Apple Loops Utility allows you to create your own Apple Loops from a simple audio file. You can add data to specify the attributes of the file, which will make it easy to find in the Loop Browser. The Apple Loops Utility also allows the addition of tags that describe the rhythmic elements of the audio file. This is achieved through analysis and transient detection of the audio file, resulting in a set of markers. You can also manually add markers or move existing markers to new locations.

Or you could go all old fashioned and just play the loop in an audio editor like Audacity and count the beats DJ style.

[JumpingJackFlash]

you could just use Ableton Live in demo mode to work out the bpm, but you would really be better off ditching Garage Band and moving to Ableton Live.

Well, on a Mac, you could also get Logic, which comes with a Beat Counter. (7.1 and above)

Or you could work out the bpm with the free apple loops utility, you can at the same time make the loop an apple loop. You can download the Apple Loops Utility from the Apple Website: ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Developme ... _1.3.1.dmg

True, this usually comes bundled with Macs anyway (in Applications/Utilities/Soundtrack Loop Utility )
Although, I don't find it particularly accurate or reliable.

I've had the best results from using tap-tempo software; you hit the space bar (or something) in time to the audio, and it tells you the tempo. - Although it doesn't sound accurate, I find, if you do it long enough, it often gives a more accurate reading of a tempo than the special tools (which often react weirdly to transients). - Especially with loops and such where you know they're likely to be 120bmp, 130bmp or some other nice round number.

There are many of these tap-tempo applications around, there is one cool-looking Widget available free for OS X.4 called Big Blue Lounge.