BPM tapper
Tap in time with the music and read the tempo.
The count
0
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The figure averages your last 8 gaps rather than everything since you started, so it follows the music instead of being held down by the first few taps.
Docs
How do you work out the tempo of a track by ear?
Tap along for about eight beats. Why the reading settles rather than jumping, what the spread figure tells you, and the halving mistake everyone makes.
Tap along with the beat for eight or ten taps and read the figure. It settles quickly and keeps following the music, so you don't need to stop and start again if the first few were shaky.
Tap on the beat you'd count aloud, not on every drum hit. That distinction is where most wrong readings come from.
Why the number is an average, and of what
The reading averages your last eight gaps rather than everything since you started.
Averaging everything sounds more accurate and isn't. The first taps are always the worst, because you're still finding the beat, and after forty taps those early mistakes are still dragging the figure. A window forgets them.
Averaging only the last two or three is the opposite problem: one late tap throws it a long way and the number never settles.
Eight gaps is roughly two bars in four-four. Long enough to smooth an unsteady hand, short enough to follow a tempo that genuinely changes.
The spread figure
That's how much your taps varied across the window, as a percentage of the average gap.
Under 3 percent means you're steady and the number is trustworthy.
Around 10 percent means it's approximately right, which is fine for most purposes.
Above that means the reading is a guess. Either the tapping is uneven, or the music genuinely isn't at a fixed tempo, which is true of a great deal of live and acoustic recording.
It's there so you can tell the difference between a confident answer and a number that merely appeared.
Half and double
The commonest mistake in tap tempo, and the reason both figures are shown.
Fast music invites tapping on every other beat, which reads half the real tempo. Slow music invites tapping on subdivisions, which reads double.
If a result looks wrong, the right answer is very often exactly half or exactly twice what you got. Drum and bass tapped at a comfortable rate gives about 87 when the track is 174. A slow ballad tapped on the eighth notes gives 140 when it's 70.
Seeing all three numbers usually settles which one you meant, because one of them will match the genre you're listening to.
Rough ranges by genre
Useful as a sanity check rather than a rule:
- Hip hop, 80 to 100
- House, 120 to 130
- Techno, 130 to 150
- Drum and bass, 170 to 180
- Most pop, 100 to 130
- Ballads, 60 to 80
If your reading is far outside the range for what you're hearing, check the half and double figures first.
What it's for
Setting a metronome to practise along with something. Matching two tracks. Working out the tempo of a piece nobody wrote down. Checking whether a recording drifts, which the spread figure will show you.
What it can't do
It can't find the tempo without you. There's no analysis of audio here, only arithmetic on your taps, so the accuracy is your accuracy.
For a file rather than a live listen, software that analyses the waveform will beat tapping, particularly on music with a clear electronic pulse. Tapping wins on anything with rubato or a live drummer, where an algorithm tends to lock onto a grid the music isn't actually following.
Nothing is recorded and nothing is sent anywhere. The taps exist only while the page is open.