In preparation for having our team playing more regularly with click tracks, I’ve been checking out various programs that get the BPM for songs for you. Metronome operates as advertised, as does BPM Widget. They’re pretty standard metronomes, you can click along with a song. Two even more helpful programs have been BeaTunes and Tangerine, which go through your whole itunes library and figure out the beats per minute for you. I opened the demo of both, and had BeaTunes run my whole library. There’s debates on sites about how accurate they both are, but it seems like BeaTunes did pretty well.
If you regularly play with a click track, I’d love to hear what setup (computer/metronome/in-ear) you use.
thanks Ken for the suggestions. I’ve used the bpm widget for a while and find that it’s pretty accurate but takes a while to lock in.
in a live set up, I like to use Ableton Live and the Boss Dr. Beat db 88.
dr. beat’s tap function is really accurate in about 3 or 4 clicks as is the tap function in Live.
forgot the in-ear part…
i currently use shure E5 through the Aviom in ear system. we use that at our church and when Shelly and I travel…
(the only catch is making the sure that FOH console has pre-fade direct outs!…we’ve been burned by this several times…)
hope it helps!
mp