liveBPM - Beat Detector

Daniel Bach

About this app

Sharpen your sense of time! liveBPM is the tempo monitoring tool for drummers, bands and DJs. It detects music and beats via the microphone and continuously displays the current tempo in beats per minute (BPM). It is easy to use and delivers high-quality results while being energy efficient.


★★★ Detailed Description ★★★

This is a tool designed for professional use:
- Well-tested beat detection engine guarantees trustworthiness
- Can handle most genres. Produces the best results under the following conditions:
-- The tempo is constant or almost constant
-- Strong impulses are defining the beat (drums, accentuated rhythm instruments like bass/guitar, etc.)
-- Time signature is 4/4, 3/4 or a multiple of either of these
- If the music meets these conditions liveBPM will produce results accurate to within 0.1 BPM


Further features:
- Tempo curve shows the development of tempo over time
- Multiple zoom modes to show last 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes
- Advanced audio spectrum analysis via FFT
- More accessible and usually more accurate than BPM counters that function through tapping
- Relatively low battery drain thanks to high performance code and efficient algorithms


Using it as a musician:
- Use it as an objective tempo reference like a metronome
- It actually has several advantages over a metronome:
-- You are not tied to a click, giving you more flexibility
-- Helps you use tempo changes to enhance your musical expression
-- With blind tests, it can massively improve your timing confidence, which is especially important if you are in a tempo leading role (e.g. drummer)
- Discover how/whether your favorite artists use tempo changes
- Measure and improve your time-keeping skills
- Identify slowdowns and speedups while practicing your instrument
- Always be in control of the tempo during your live gigs and rehearsals


Controls:
- Power Button: For freezing the tempo curve and minimizing battery drain
- Clear Button: Clears the tempo curve
- Slider: Adjusts the target tempo, ranging from 60 to 200 BPM
- Zoom Buttons: Switch between zoom modes for the tempo curve. (2-30 minutes)


Note: In cases where the music is characterized by soft impulses, you may improve the detection by clapping loud to the beat. Also, results can be improved by plugging in a suitable external microphone pointing to the beat-defining elements of your band setup.

Ratings and reviews

This app is an excellent, must-have app for all musicians! Well worth the price. I've been using it for years at practice and at all gigs. The graph is a great feature. One request for additional capability is I'd like to be able to save the graphs. Sometimes I'm told my drumming was too fast/slow at certain parts and a saved graph could settle any arguments! One more thing- the developer is a fantastic, responsive person. I had an issue once and he replied immediately to help me. Great app!!

Great..even though needing an update. It's much easier to manage the tempo than using a metronome when playing with a band and it is easy slow down or speed up when you are only a few bpm off . At first I was disappointed because it only displays in landscape view. However I worked around it by using the splitscreen mode on my Samsung s20

My music teacher told me to work on my timing. I thought my timing was fine. LiveBPM gives me an objective way to measure my tempo while practicing. Played a few measures for 3 minutes and the graph was far from the flat line that would have showed perfect timing. My music teacher was right. But now I have a tool to correct the problem; being able to measure and graph my honest playing tempo. Even though this hasn't been updated recently, it works beautifully on Android 11 One-UI 3.1.

What's new

- Android 13 support
- some small improvements