4 ms·

The moment I saw on the front page that Adele's "Easy On Me" was listed at 142 BPM, I was flabbergasted. You only have to play the song while looking at a time

The moment I saw on the front page that Adele's "Easy On Me" was listed at 142 BPM, I was flabbergasted. You only have to play the song while looking at a timer for about 15 seconds to see the BPM is far less than half that number.

PopAlongKid 5y ago
To clarify, I'm coming at BPM strictly from a perspective of segueing from one danceable tune to another. If you go directly from a 140 BPM song to "Easy On Me", you are guaranteed to clear the dance floor, except for maybe a few slow-dancing couples.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elefantastisch 5y ago
It seems they just don't understand time signatures. Andy Williams "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is listed as 202 bpm. In some sense, this is correct. The song is in 6/8 time and if you count each of the six beats separately, there are 202 bpm, but this isn't how 6/8 works. Typically you would set the bpm based on a dotted quarter (= 3/8ths) instead of a quarter. From a listener's perspective, 6/8 basically just means each beat is divided into 3 parts instead of 2. So in a "normal" 4/4 song, you'll hear a down-up, down-up repetition like KICK-up-SNARE-up-KICK-up-SNARE-up, with kick drums on downbeats of 1 and 3 and snare on downbeats of 2 and 4 with one upbeat after each. With 6/8, you'll hear KICK-up-up-SNARE-up-up basically. (Note that this is distinct from 3/4 [waltz], where you'll hear KICK-up-SNARE-up-SNARE-up, but 3/4 is exceeding rare in popular modern music.)
- vr46 5y ago
  BPM reduces songs to something that only makes sense in a limited context, like beatmixing (ex-DJ here) - are there other situations where BPM is helpful?
  - elefantastisch 5y ago
    The stated purpose from the site is to be able to match songs on a playlist, so like keep a consistent bpm across an entire playlist. If that was your goal, you'd presumably want the dotted-quarter bpm for 6/8 instead of the eighth. For a listener, the feel of the song is going to be based on when the kicks and snares come, not how things are divided up within those beats. That's what I was trying to get at, but man it's hard to put a description of time signature into plain text.
- mountain_peak 5y ago
  > but 3/4 is exceeding rare in popular modern music. So true, which is a shame, since 3/4 songs such as "Suspended in Gaffa" by Kate Bush or "All in All (This One Last Wild Waltz)" by Dexy's Midnight Runners are great to listen to and stick with you. Not to mention "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers - although that one is apparently in 12/8 and 13/8 for the riff [0]. My favourite modern waltz would have to be "Paristocrats" by Gonzales [1]. [0] https://www.goldradiouk.com/news/music/stranglers-golden-brown-lyrics-meaning-waltz/ https://www.goldradiouk.com/news/music/stranglers-golden-bro... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNVzS3p8KKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNVzS3p8KKU
alin23 5y ago
The Audio Analysis API also reports a tempo_confidence and there’s a 43.2% confidence on that Adele song. { "meta": { "analyzer_version": "4.0.0", "platform": "Linux", "detailed_status": "OK", "status_code": 0, "timestamp": 1633650625, "analysis_time": 7.80526, "input_process": "libvorbisfile L+R 44100->22050" }, "track": { "num_samples": 4954520, "duration": 224.69478, "sample_md5": "", "offset_seconds": 0, "window_seconds": 0, "analysis_sample_rate": 22050, "analysis_channels": 1, "end_of_fade_in": 0.26807, "start_of_fade_out": 209.58913, "loudness": -7.519, "tempo": 141.981, "tempo_confidence": 0.432, "time_signature": 4, "time_signature_confidence": 1, "key": 5, "key_confidence": 0.545, "mode": 1, "mode_confidence": 0.58, ... } [1] https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-audio-analysis-track/?id=0gplL1WMoJ6iYaPgMCL0gX https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-audio-analysis-tra...
alastairp 5y ago
This is actually still a difficult task and still under active research. The name of the phenomenon is "tempo octave error". Typically an algorithm looks for evenly-spaced strong pulses of energy, and infers the BPM from that. If there is a strong beat at multiple of the actual BPM (half, double, 4x, etc) then it could be mistakenly identified as the BPM. As alin23 points out in a sibling comment it seems like the Spotify algorithm at least has a confidence level here. There is some more information about BPM computation and octave errors at https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/FMP/C6/C6S2_TempoBeat.html https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/FMP/C6/C6S2_...

PopAlongKid 5y ago

To clarify, I'm coming at BPM strictly from a perspective of segueing from one danceable tune to another. If you go directly from a 140 BPM song to "Easy On Me", you are guaranteed to clear the dance floor, except for maybe a few slow-dancing couples.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

elefantastisch 5y ago

It seems they just don't understand time signatures. Andy Williams "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is listed as 202 bpm. In some sense, this is correct. The song is in 6/8 time and if you count each of the six beats separately, there are 202 bpm, but this isn't how 6/8 works. Typically you would set the bpm based on a dotted quarter (= 3/8ths) instead of a quarter. From a listener's perspective, 6/8 basically just means each beat is divided into 3 parts instead of 2. So in a "normal" 4/4 song, you'll hear a down-up, down-up repetition like KICK-up-SNARE-up-KICK-up-SNARE-up, with kick drums on downbeats of 1 and 3 and snare on downbeats of 2 and 4 with one upbeat after each. With 6/8, you'll hear KICK-up-up-SNARE-up-up basically. (Note that this is distinct from 3/4 [waltz], where you'll hear KICK-up-SNARE-up-SNARE-up, but 3/4 is exceeding rare in popular modern music.)

vr46 5y ago
BPM reduces songs to something that only makes sense in a limited context, like beatmixing (ex-DJ here) - are there other situations where BPM is helpful?
- elefantastisch 5y ago
  The stated purpose from the site is to be able to match songs on a playlist, so like keep a consistent bpm across an entire playlist. If that was your goal, you'd presumably want the dotted-quarter bpm for 6/8 instead of the eighth. For a listener, the feel of the song is going to be based on when the kicks and snares come, not how things are divided up within those beats. That's what I was trying to get at, but man it's hard to put a description of time signature into plain text.
mountain_peak 5y ago
> but 3/4 is exceeding rare in popular modern music. So true, which is a shame, since 3/4 songs such as "Suspended in Gaffa" by Kate Bush or "All in All (This One Last Wild Waltz)" by Dexy's Midnight Runners are great to listen to and stick with you. Not to mention "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers - although that one is apparently in 12/8 and 13/8 for the riff [0]. My favourite modern waltz would have to be "Paristocrats" by Gonzales [1]. [0] https://www.goldradiouk.com/news/music/stranglers-golden-brown-lyrics-meaning-waltz/ https://www.goldradiouk.com/news/music/stranglers-golden-bro... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNVzS3p8KKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNVzS3p8KKU

alin23 5y ago

The Audio Analysis API also reports a tempo_confidence and there’s a 43.2% confidence on that Adele song. { "meta": { "analyzer_version": "4.0.0", "platform": "Linux", "detailed_status": "OK", "status_code": 0, "timestamp": 1633650625, "analysis_time": 7.80526, "input_process": "libvorbisfile L+R 44100->22050" }, "track": { "num_samples": 4954520, "duration": 224.69478, "sample_md5": "", "offset_seconds": 0, "window_seconds": 0, "analysis_sample_rate": 22050, "analysis_channels": 1, "end_of_fade_in": 0.26807, "start_of_fade_out": 209.58913, "loudness": -7.519, "tempo": 141.981, "tempo_confidence": 0.432, "time_signature": 4, "time_signature_confidence": 1, "key": 5, "key_confidence": 0.545, "mode": 1, "mode_confidence": 0.58, ... } [1] https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-audio-analysis-track/?id=0gplL1WMoJ6iYaPgMCL0gX https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-audio-analysis-tra...

alastairp 5y ago

This is actually still a difficult task and still under active research. The name of the phenomenon is "tempo octave error". Typically an algorithm looks for evenly-spaced strong pulses of energy, and infers the BPM from that. If there is a strong beat at multiple of the actual BPM (half, double, 4x, etc) then it could be mistakenly identified as the BPM. As alin23 points out in a sibling comment it seems like the Spotify algorithm at least has a confidence level here. There is some more information about BPM computation and octave errors at https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/FMP/C6/C6S2_TempoBeat.html https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/FMP/C6/C6S2_...