Author Topic: How to organize songs by Tempo/Beat/Rhythm?  (Read 12267 times)

Stamimail

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 73
Tempo/Beat/Rhythm - I do not know exactly what the right term is, but I mean the speed of the song.
Let's say I have a folder/directory with hundreds of songs (mp3 files). Mixture of songs. All without tags at all.
I want to sort the songs into folders, according to their tempo.
Normally, Songs with faster tempo, are with a lot of noise. The songs with the slower tempo are quieter.
I'm not sure that the genre is what I'm looking for. I think the genre is not important. The point is to keep the same rhythm of songs, while listening to that Folder/Playlist.
I'm looking for a program that can scan the "Sound Waves" of the audio files, and can determine what type of this audio file is: Fast and Noisy, or Slow and Quiet.
What program can help me?
Thanks.

frankz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3834
The basic assumption of your question is incorrect.  Fast isn't always loud.  Slow isn't always soft.  Not in any way or pattern that you can reliably sort your files by.

If you're looking for speed / tempo information, there are BPM (beats per minute) analyzers and databases on the web. They're not perfectly accurate.  

If you're looking for volume information, scanning your files with Volume Analysis will give you an idea of the relative volume of your tracks and albums.  If the volume analysis comes back as adjusting something -12db from the reference volume, that track would be louder overall than a track that is reduced by -7db from the reference volume.  You could then sort by these values.

Stamimail

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 73
Thank you very much for your answer.
You mentioned, BPM analysis, and volume analysis.
Are there more types of sorting that can be done, by sound wave analysis?

frankz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3834
If it's a value you can write to a tag, it's a value you can sort by.  If it's not a default tag, you can create a custom tag for it.  It's just a matter of finding a tool that will do the analysis and write the tag to the file.

Stamimail

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 73
It's just a matter of finding a tool that will do the analysis and write the tag to the file.
I didn't think about to write the results to the files tags, but maybe it's a good idea.
Can you name some examples of such programs, which generate tags according to the analysis of sound waves (for songs you can't find them in any database)?

frankz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3834
Sorry, no.  I don't know of anything. I meant it's a matter of you (i.e. each user) finding programs that analyze files a the way you'd like them analyzed and then writing the results to a tag.  I don't know that anything exists.

Quote
If it's a value you can write to a tag, it's a value you can sort by.

phred

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9303
Both MixMeister BPM Analyzer and BPM Counter will write to the BPM tag. Both are free. Both are not spot-on - sometimes not coming up with the same BPM on the same track. I've had some slow tempo songs show a higher BPM than a fast tempo. You get what you pay for.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

alec.tron

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 752
Also, Digital DJ programs such as Serato & Traktor have a OK ish bpm & key analysis algorithms ( http://djtechtools.com/2015/11/16/key-detection-software-comparison-2015-edition/ ) do write this data to file.
Rekordbox does too, but keeps most its' data in internal databases to lock people into their ecosystem... which I do think is a bad approach and not support worthy.
c.


psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
Hi, welcome to the forum!

How can I check the BPM of a song ?

There are some decent free bpm analysis programs, I bet you can find them pretty easily with Google.


[Lol, engine to the forum... Thanks auto correct]
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

EAS10

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 2
While Google may help you find these tools, word of mouth is much more powerful. On that note (no pun intended) I highly suggest you check out GetSongbpm (https://getsongbpm.com) it's got a range of tools that help you find tempo for any lesson or session.
Do you think that the result will be accurate ?

brndnr

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
Not going to comment on some of the musicality elements of this thread but thought I'd pipe in with a workaround I found with Rekordbox. As others have stated, it's a little frustrating that Rekordbox doesn't write the BPM info to the tag like it does the key. You can access these BPM values from a Rekordbox library (File --> Export Collection in XML). Note this is not a flat file but you can parse this information in a database tool or similar. Probably the easiest way is to use Power Query in Excel to and transforming this information till you get to the level that has track info, full path and BPM. Once you get this, you can easily manipulate to just extract a full filepath and BPM (and any other attributes you want). Save this as a CSV or TXT file

A number of Tag tools will allow you to import tags from a Text File (Tagscanner, MP3tag), even Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools in Musicbee has functionality for this. But most lack a reliable preview tool. If you're applying this to a large library, I would be very careful, so a preview is important. Given that, I found MP3tag to be the most effective. Navigate to folder with all the music files in it and then I would export a CSV from this tool to get familiar with how the data looks. From there, match filepaths from the export to your edited rekordbox libary CSV and use this page to help with syntax. Go to Convert --> Text File - Tag and then change to the appropriate format string and delimiters of your CSV (perhaps using this page as a guide). Now click preview and see if everything looks like it should, perhaps even testing with a smaller list first. Once you're happy press ok and you're done.

Hope this helps others as it took me a while to find a solution that aligned with Rekordbox (understand there are other third party tools as mentioned in the thread).