A cool widget

[katallison]

I posted this just now in meri_oddities's thread about music for running, but then thought others might find it useful. If you listen to music while you exercise, and are trying to find some way to make playlists of songs at specific tempi to pace your workout, here's something I found:

1. Go to http://www.mixmeister.com/download_freestuff.html , where by signing up for their mailing list you can get a free download of MixMeister BPM;
2. Install it;
3. Tell it to scan whatever folder you've got your music in.
4. After a while (depending on how much music you've got--it's pretty quick) it'll return a list (with song and artist) of all songs and beats per minute of each.
5. Now export as a tab-delimited text document, open in Excel, and voila! You've got a nice spreadsheet of the exact tempo of all your music.

I find that having music at just the right tempo is a godsend when I'm trying to motivate myself to keep slogging on the elliptical, so this has been most helpful.

Comments

[spike21.livejournal.com]

eeeeeeeeee! I have long wondered if such a thing as this existed and could not effectively order my thoughts for a useful search. I will try it today. Thank you so much for the info.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

I think it must be fairly new, because I searched all over for something like this about a year ago and couldn't find it. Glad to be of help!

[spike21.livejournal.com]

any idea of how to figure out what BPM you want for various activities?

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Some aerobic machines will give a readout--I've seen ellipticals that show strides per minute, and exercise bikes that display RPM. If one is just walking or jogging, I think the thing to do would be set your preferred pace, and then count steps for a minute (or for 30 seconds, and multiply). Which would also, I guess, be the recourse on machines that *don't* give a readout.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

You are SUCH a GEEK! You are a bigger geek than me!!

Eeeeee!!!!

[katallison.livejournal.com]

NOT POSSIBLE. I mean, I'm flattered and all, but -- you're the one out there playing with Flock! You're the one who knows what an SSL client *is*! I'm not even on the same geek planet as you!

(And I send best wishes for the very speedy recovery of the TiBook!)

[brynwulf]

that is so cool! And just what I've been needing. Thanks!

[anaxila.livejournal.com]

Very cool! I've always been annoyed that iTunes has a BPM field, but doesn't automatically record the inputs. :( Thanks for sharing.

[ninthdiamond.livejournal.com]

Well this is certainly better than trying to get the metronome to tell me...