Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread David W. Fenton
On 27 Sep 2009 at 2:55, Christopher Smith wrote:

> http://handyprograms.blogspot.com/2008/08/metronome.html

For some reason, it's not compatible with my Java installation and 
won't run. I think it's likely not the fault of the app -- my Java 
installation has been broken through several different versions of 
the JRE. I keep uninstalling and re-installing, but nothing seems to 
fix the problem.

No great loss -- I don't believe Java has any place client-side in 
the first place, and find Java apps to be hopelessly slow and nearly 
unusable.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread David W. Fenton
On 27 Sep 2009 at 10:21, Christopher Smith wrote:

> I imagine (perhaps wrongly!)  
> that the tempo might stay fairly solid for each section, but change  
> from variation to variation, maybe with a connection to what kinds of  
> subdivisions are in the top parts. David F., I hope you will point us  
> to a link with your findings once you have worked it all out.

I'm not very far into to the project yet, and have mostly listened 
carefully only to the earlier recordings (1960s, 1970s). I had 
thought that the idea of Baroque style was fairly inflexible back 
then, but what I'm finding is that this is just not true. The 
earliest recording I've analyzed, by Baumgartner (the second 
recording of the piece ever, and the one that probably brought the 
piece to the attention of those who made the recording that ended up 
as a breakout hit, c. 1970) is actually quite "interesting" from the 
standpoint of tempo. And I mean "interesting" in the sense of the old 
Chinese curse!

It's average tempo is SLOW AS MOLASSES. Even with cuts of 10 bars, it 
is still the longest recording of any in the collection I'm looking 
at (I've currently collected 20 of the 21 I'm sure I'm going to 
evaluate, and am working on a 22nd; this is not by any means *all* of 
the recordings of the original, and I'm mostly ignoring arrangements, 
though not entirely). The average BPM is 36 (the fastest I've 
calculated, without listening yet, is 72), and it's just awful, 
awful, awful.

The famous recording that launched the Pachelbel juggernaught was the 
EMI recording by Paillard that was released in the US by Musical 
Heritage Society, and that recording has an almost equally slow 
average tempo (37BPM), but without any of the wheezing and swaying 
found in the Baumgartner. Indeed, the overall sound conception and 
approach is a rather modern and clean, unfussy one -- dare I say it, 
but French?

Anyway, it's been fascinating. I've made five posts on the subject so 
far, one an overview, and then four posts on the first four 
recordings I've listened to.

I hope you enjoy reading. I'd certainly like feedback -- though my 
blog has no comments, you can email me via the link on the blog (or 
via this email address).

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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RE: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread David W. Fenton
On 27 Sep 2009 at 12:14, Peter Taylor wrote:

> << From: David W. Fenton
> 
> My play project for the weekend is to analyze the tempos of various 
> recordings of the Pachelbel Canon >>
> 
> 8-\  Sad or what?

It's a great piece of music, so it's not sad at all.

And I've been quite surprised that it's quite easy to get interested 
in the recordings, because there are a lot more interesting things 
going on in them than you might expect.

I'm blogging the experience, in fact, at my blog:

  http://dfenton.com/NoComment/

So far, I've evaluated the earliest recordings I've been able to get 
my hands on (the earliest is not available for MP3 download, and the 
CD won't arrive until next week). I now have before me to analyze a 
string of recordings from the 70s and 80s that have been widely 
anthologized, and I'm anticipating this will be the low point, before 
I then get to the 80s and the Early Music recordings.

I've actually been quite surprised at the things I've learned, and 
couldn't wait to get back to it today when I got my "real" work done!

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread Christopher Smith


On Sun Sep 27, at SundaySep 27 7:36 AM, dhbailey wrote:

 tempo analysis is very important to help figure out what one feels  
is the proper interpretation. Listening to works which have been  
widely recorded can be very helpful in that regard.  Some  
recordings of any work seem to succeed better than others, and  
quite often it's the difference in tempo which makes all the  
difference.


Actually, this sounds fascinating to me. I imagine (perhaps wrongly!)  
that the tempo might stay fairly solid for each section, but change  
from variation to variation, maybe with a connection to what kinds of  
subdivisions are in the top parts. David F., I hope you will point us  
to a link with your findings once you have worked it all out.


One of my colleagues did his master's thesis in analysing the swing  
feel of some jazz recordings. His focus was submetric (rather than  
tempo, so not exactly the same thing) but he related the variations  
in swing feel to tempo as well. It certainly didn't take him a  
weekend! I can't help but think that modern digital audio tools would  
have helped him in speed and accuracy, though.


Christopher


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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread dhbailey

Peter Taylor wrote:

<< From: David W. Fenton

My play project for the weekend is to analyze the tempos of various 
recordings of the Pachelbel Canon >>


8-\  Sad or what?



I don't think so -- tempo analysis is very important to help 
figure out what one feels is the proper interpretation. 
Listening to works which have been widely recorded can be 
very helpful in that regard.  Some recordings of any work 
seem to succeed better than others, and quite often it's the 
difference in tempo which makes all the difference.


--
David H. Bailey
dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com
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RE: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread Peter Taylor
<< From: David W. Fenton

My play project for the weekend is to analyze the tempos of various 
recordings of the Pachelbel Canon >>

8-\  Sad or what?

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-27 Thread Christopher Smith

David,

It might not be as bad as you think. Try this free online metronome  
(and a standalone applet that runs in your browser) where you can tap  
along with a tune and have the tempo of ANY two beats displayed. If  
you are not steady enough for two beats, you can take an average over  
the duration of a passage. You can also note different tempos in  
different sections.


http://handyprograms.blogspot.com/2008/08/metronome.html

Christopher



On Sat Sep 26, at SaturdaySep 26 6:37 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:


On 26 Sep 2009 at 16:44, John Blane wrote:


Don't know Audacity well enough but Pro Tools can do what you're
looking for. If you want to tap along to determine tempo there is a
plug-in for itunes available.


But this really wouldn't solve much of the problem at all. Sure
tapping is a *little* easier than using a stopwatch, but not by much.

I'm not interested in investing in ProTools -- I wouldn't use it
often enough for it to be justifiable.


But that facility is already built into Finale. Look in the
Hyperscribe tool and choose Playback or Click from the beat source  
menu


Er, with MP3 files? Why, exactly, would I have 16 different versions
of the same piece in Finale, differing only in tempo? I think you
quite obviously missed the context of my question.

--
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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RE: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread Angela Turner
Dear David, 

I do a lot of performance and tempo analysis.  It's not going to work so
well with the beat-finder plugin in Audacity, as you've discovered.  

In terms of free computerised tools, you could have a look at this site:

http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/analysing/p9_0_1.html  and download Sonic
Visualiser. 

Another option, very similar but far more basic is available from
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~musicbox/charm5.html. It's a simple command line
utility which measures the space between taps, and there's also a related
excel spreadsheet which will graph the tempo fluctuations.  It has detailed
instructions, though it's not difficult to work out.  

One could also download the trial of Acid Music Studio or Acid Music Pro
(Sony website), which will run fairly reasonable beat detection (even though
it's designed for popular musics), and allow you to make finer adjustments
to the detection of onset events visually and aurally by dragging/nudging.

I've also used a metronome with a tempo tap feature. It gives a very good
overall opinion quickly.

Cheers, 
Angela



Angela Turner
FinePrint, Music Printing & Typesetting
Website: www.fine-print.com.au
Email: ang...@fine-print.com.au
Mobile: 0402 84 85 31

-Original Message-
From: finale-boun...@shsu.edu [mailto:finale-boun...@shsu.edu] On Behalf Of
David W. Fenton
Sent: Sunday, 27 September 2009 6:11 AM
To: Finale@shsu.edu
Subject: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

My play project for the weekend is to analyze the tempos of various 
recordings of the Pachelbel Canon, and I figured I'd be able to do it 
with a plugin for Audacity. I'm finding, however, that there are very 
few beat detection plugins that are useful. I want one that will 
analyze a selection of the waveform, but I can't find anything like 
that. All the standalone apps for this autodetect from the first few 
seconds and if there's too much silence at the beginning (as there is 
for many of MP3s involved here), the detect nothing at all. And even 
for the ones that "work" the numbers are just wrong.

It's quite clear to me that the available tools I found are not 
designed to deal with Classical music.

Does anyone have any ideas what to do here?

I have a Beat Finder plugin in the ANALYZE menu, but when I run it, I 
get a track at the bottom showing tempo change boundaries, but I 
can't seem to get any information about the actual beats or their 
BPMs, or anything else.

Is there a plugin that will do what I want, i.e., analyze a passage 
and give me an average BPM?

Or am I stuck doing this manually (ugh!)?

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread John Blane
Ok, David, I won't take your bait and I'll let you have the last word  
- you always do.


Simply this: I understood what you were asking about. Unaware that an  
Audacity plug-in exists that would accomplish what you needed, I was  
trying to be helpful by offering you some other options that perhaps  
would suit your needs. Instead of realizing my intention to help,  
whether it did or not, you choose to be your notoriously mean- 
spirited and unnecessarily antagonistic self. This is how you choose  
to respond to someone trying to help you? Isn't this list a community  
of musicians and Finale users and aren't we here to learn from each  
other and help when we can? I'm content to just letting you keep your  
head up your ass.


For years, I've always wished that you would get married so you would  
have someone you could constantly berate and argue with and spare us  
the bandwidth. Another wish unfulfilled. sigh



On Sep 26, 2009, at 6:16 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:


On 26 Sep 2009 at 17:49, John Blane wrote:


Um, I think you quite obviously missed the context of my trying to
assist you.


The context was the thread launched by my post, so that's the context
I was using. You appear to have been using a different context. The
fact that I didn't detect that is lamentable, but hardly my fault,
given how little of what you say you intended was not explicitly
stated in your response.

On the other hand, I was pretty explicit about what I was looking
for, a plugin for Audacity, or a standalone piece of software that
would do the job.


I never suggested anything about inputting them into Finale at all.
You can determine the tempo with Finale while you use any other
source for playback. Get it?


Well, I've been doing that already, in fact. If your words had been
clear that this was what you were suggesting, I'm pretty sure I would
have caught it, given that I've already been doing it.

Doing it that way is actually pretty unwieldy, as a matter of fact,
as well as highly inaccurate, except for the average tempo of the
whole piece. It's certainly easy enough to calculate the timing for,
say, 6 measures of the Pachelbel in Finale, but selecting those same
6 measures in the waveform of a recording is going to be highly
inaccurate. And once I know the timing on those 6 measures, why would
I then need to use Finale? I already know how many beats it is, and I
know how long it took, so I can use simple arithmetic to figure out
what the average BPM in the passage is.

And, of course, even nicer would be the ability to see the *range* of
tempos within a passage, and short of doing that measure-by-measure,
I don't see any worthwhile way to do that via manual methods. That's
why a tool that calculates the BPM from a waveform selection would be
so useful.


And I wasn't suggesting that you invest
in Pro Tools to achieve what you're looking for only to point out
that you are not the first person that needs to determine this type
of information.


That, too, was not clear from what you wrote. You said this:


Don't know Audacity well enough but Pro Tools can do what
you're looking for.


That seems to me like a recommendation of a piece of software that
can do what I want, not so much as an indication that other people
need this, too (though it *is* that implicitly). Had you said:


You're actually not the only one who needs this, since Pro
Tools can already do what you're looking for.


And, of course, it would remain to be seen whether or not ProTools
could actually detect BPM accurately enough from classical music
textures to be useful for what I'm investigating.


Apparently, you think it should be free or you'll
complain about it.


???

I asked for an Audacity plugin. That pretty much implies I'm looking
for something free or inexpensive, don't you think? I'm certainly not
looking to acquire a completely different application that does way
more than the simple task I'm asking about. Indeed, I didn't ask for
free or pay, I asked for a plugin. Now, a $25 plugin might be worth
it, while a $250 piece of software that I don't really need seems
like overkill to me.

In the end, I think your message was pretty elliptical in regard to
what you say you were intending to convey. I don't know how I
possibly could have interpreted it the way you had in mind -- all I
had to go on was your words, and they didn't explicitly convey major
parts of what you say you intended.

In short, you brought a context in your head that was not the same as
the context in the words of the discussion that came before your
post. I'm sorry I misinterpreted your words, but taken by themselves,
they really did seem to me to be pretty non-responsive to what I'd
asked about.

--
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread David W. Fenton
On 26 Sep 2009 at 17:49, John Blane wrote:

> Um, I think you quite obviously missed the context of my trying to  
> assist you.

The context was the thread launched by my post, so that's the context 
I was using. You appear to have been using a different context. The 
fact that I didn't detect that is lamentable, but hardly my fault, 
given how little of what you say you intended was not explicitly 
stated in your response.

On the other hand, I was pretty explicit about what I was looking 
for, a plugin for Audacity, or a standalone piece of software that 
would do the job.

> I never suggested anything about inputting them into Finale at all.
> You can determine the tempo with Finale while you use any other  
> source for playback. Get it? 

Well, I've been doing that already, in fact. If your words had been 
clear that this was what you were suggesting, I'm pretty sure I would 
have caught it, given that I've already been doing it.

Doing it that way is actually pretty unwieldy, as a matter of fact, 
as well as highly inaccurate, except for the average tempo of the 
whole piece. It's certainly easy enough to calculate the timing for, 
say, 6 measures of the Pachelbel in Finale, but selecting those same 
6 measures in the waveform of a recording is going to be highly 
inaccurate. And once I know the timing on those 6 measures, why would 
I then need to use Finale? I already know how many beats it is, and I 
know how long it took, so I can use simple arithmetic to figure out 
what the average BPM in the passage is. 

And, of course, even nicer would be the ability to see the *range* of 
tempos within a passage, and short of doing that measure-by-measure, 
I don't see any worthwhile way to do that via manual methods. That's 
why a tool that calculates the BPM from a waveform selection would be 
so useful.

> And I wasn't suggesting that you invest  
> in Pro Tools to achieve what you're looking for only to point out  
> that you are not the first person that needs to determine this type  
> of information. 

That, too, was not clear from what you wrote. You said this:

   > > Don't know Audacity well enough but Pro Tools can do what 
   > > you're looking for. 

That seems to me like a recommendation of a piece of software that 
can do what I want, not so much as an indication that other people 
need this, too (though it *is* that implicitly). Had you said:

   > > You're actually not the only one who needs this, since Pro 
   > > Tools can already do what you're looking for.

And, of course, it would remain to be seen whether or not ProTools 
could actually detect BPM accurately enough from classical music 
textures to be useful for what I'm investigating.

> Apparently, you think it should be free or you'll  
> complain about it.

???

I asked for an Audacity plugin. That pretty much implies I'm looking 
for something free or inexpensive, don't you think? I'm certainly not 
looking to acquire a completely different application that does way 
more than the simple task I'm asking about. Indeed, I didn't ask for 
free or pay, I asked for a plugin. Now, a $25 plugin might be worth 
it, while a $250 piece of software that I don't really need seems 
like overkill to me.

In the end, I think your message was pretty elliptical in regard to 
what you say you were intending to convey. I don't know how I 
possibly could have interpreted it the way you had in mind -- all I 
had to go on was your words, and they didn't explicitly convey major 
parts of what you say you intended.

In short, you brought a context in your head that was not the same as 
the context in the words of the discussion that came before your 
post. I'm sorry I misinterpreted your words, but taken by themselves, 
they really did seem to me to be pretty non-responsive to what I'd 
asked about.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread John Blane
Um, I think you quite obviously missed the context of my trying to  
assist you.


I never suggested anything about inputting them into Finale at all.  
You can determine the tempo with Finale while you use any other  
source for playback. Get it? And I wasn't suggesting that you invest  
in Pro Tools to achieve what you're looking for only to point out  
that you are not the first person that needs to determine this type  
of information. Apparently, you think it should be free or you'll  
complain about it.


Good luck


On Sep 26, 2009, at 5:37 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:


Er, with MP3 files? Why, exactly, would I have 16 different versions
of the same piece in Finale, differing only in tempo? I think you
quite obviously missed the context of my question.


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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread David W. Fenton
On 26 Sep 2009 at 16:44, John Blane wrote:

> Don't know Audacity well enough but Pro Tools can do what you're  
> looking for. If you want to tap along to determine tempo there is a  
> plug-in for itunes available.

But this really wouldn't solve much of the problem at all. Sure 
tapping is a *little* easier than using a stopwatch, but not by much.

I'm not interested in investing in ProTools -- I wouldn't use it 
often enough for it to be justifiable.

> But that facility is already built into Finale. Look in the  
> Hyperscribe tool and choose Playback or Click from the beat source menu

Er, with MP3 files? Why, exactly, would I have 16 different versions 
of the same piece in Finale, differing only in tempo? I think you 
quite obviously missed the context of my question.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread John Blane
Don't know Audacity well enough but Pro Tools can do what you're  
looking for. If you want to tap along to determine tempo there is a  
plug-in for itunes available.


But that facility is already built into Finale. Look in the  
Hyperscribe tool and choose Playback or Click from the beat source menu



On Sep 26, 2009, at 4:15 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:


On 26 Sep 2009 at 16:49, Aaron Sherber wrote:


On 9/26/2009 4:11 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:

Or am I stuck doing this manually (ugh!)?


I know this isn't what you were asking, but why is doing it  
manually so

tough? If you have a stopwatch and Excel, you can get the metronome
timings just by counting off a few beats and plugging the duration  
into

a formula.


Have you ever tried that? On 16 separate recordings? It's not nearly
as easy as you think, and the result depends on which part of the
piece you listen to (since tempos are not uniform from beginning to
end).

Right now as a preliminary step, I'm getting the timings of the
tracks with the silence left out, and then using that to calculate
the average tempo (since the number of beats is the same in all
performances, at least for the complete ones -- that has turned out
to be an eye-opener, as some of these light classical albums
available for MP3 download on Amazon have truncated versions, with
fade-outs at the end, even).

But since tempos vary throughout the piece, sometimes by as much as 6-
10bpm, I will still need to go back and evaluate sections. If I had
an automated way to do this, it would be *much* easier. What I
envision would be a tool that would analyze the entire piece and show
me points where the tempo has changed sufficient to be a new tempo (a
nice tool would allow me to set the sensitivity of this detection),
and would indicate somehow the average tempo in each of these
sections.

I'm beginning to suspect this is just something nobody else is
interested in doing, so no one has created a plug-in to do it, and
thus I'll be left doing it manually.

*sigh*

--
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread David W. Fenton
On 26 Sep 2009 at 16:49, Aaron Sherber wrote:

> On 9/26/2009 4:11 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
> > Or am I stuck doing this manually (ugh!)?
> 
> I know this isn't what you were asking, but why is doing it manually so 
> tough? If you have a stopwatch and Excel, you can get the metronome 
> timings just by counting off a few beats and plugging the duration into 
> a formula.

Have you ever tried that? On 16 separate recordings? It's not nearly 
as easy as you think, and the result depends on which part of the 
piece you listen to (since tempos are not uniform from beginning to 
end).

Right now as a preliminary step, I'm getting the timings of the 
tracks with the silence left out, and then using that to calculate 
the average tempo (since the number of beats is the same in all 
performances, at least for the complete ones -- that has turned out 
to be an eye-opener, as some of these light classical albums 
available for MP3 download on Amazon have truncated versions, with 
fade-outs at the end, even).

But since tempos vary throughout the piece, sometimes by as much as 6-
10bpm, I will still need to go back and evaluate sections. If I had 
an automated way to do this, it would be *much* easier. What I 
envision would be a tool that would analyze the entire piece and show 
me points where the tempo has changed sufficient to be a new tempo (a 
nice tool would allow me to set the sensitivity of this detection), 
and would indicate somehow the average tempo in each of these 
sections.

I'm beginning to suspect this is just something nobody else is 
interested in doing, so no one has created a plug-in to do it, and 
thus I'll be left doing it manually.

*sigh*

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Tempo Detection in Audacity

2009-09-26 Thread Aaron Sherber

On 9/26/2009 4:11 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:

Or am I stuck doing this manually (ugh!)?


I know this isn't what you were asking, but why is doing it manually so 
tough? If you have a stopwatch and Excel, you can get the metronome 
timings just by counting off a few beats and plugging the duration into 
a formula.


Aaron.
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