MagicBPM: Tempo & Metronome

MagicBPM

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this app

MagicBPM listens through your microphone and works out the tempo of whatever is playing, several times a second. Point it at a speaker, a rehearsal room or a record player and watch the number settle.

LIVE TEMPO DETECTION

Hold up your phone and MagicBPM tracks the beat in real time. The readout says when it has locked on and how confident it is, so a settled answer never looks like a guess.

HALF OR DOUBLE, YOUR CALL

Some music is honestly ambiguous, and a tempo heard at half or double speed is still the same groove. Tap Half or Double to correct the reading instead of arguing with the detector. The reading changes; the detector keeps tracking what it actually hears.

SEE THE BEAT

Watch a live spectrum, where every candidate tempo gets a bar and the strongest one bounces tallest. Or switch to a scrolling tempogram and see how the tempo has moved over the last minute.

KNOW WHAT IS PLAYING

Tap Identify and MagicBPM names the track through music recognition, then shows it beside the tempo it just measured. Every song it names is saved on your phone with that tempo, so the question "what was that, and how fast was it" has an answer later. Identification needs an internet connection.

A METRONOME THAT COUNTS PROPERLY

Set any tempo from 30 to 300 BPM, choose a time signature and play. Subdivisions cover eighths, triplets and sixteenths. Compound meters group the way they should: 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 count in threes rather than pretending to be simple time, and 7/8 lets you pick how it splits. Accent the downbeat, or turn the accent off.

TAP IT IN

Know how the tempo feels but not what it is called? Tap the pad in time and MagicBPM takes the tempo from your hand, from the fourth tap onward, refining it as you keep going.

CHOOSE YOUR CLICK

Acoustic is free. MagicBPM Pro adds twelve more: woodblock, claves, rim, xylophone, cowbell, bass guitar, hi-hat, sidestick, tambourine, shaker, triangle and beep. Pick one that sits in the mix instead of fighting it.

TUNED FOR REAL ROOMS

Limit the tempo range when detection keeps locking onto half or double the real speed. Turn on Steady tempo for slow or half-time songs where a live reading tends to drift upward. Both are one switch in Settings.

MAGICBPM PRO

One purchase, no subscription. Songs get named automatically while you listen, so you stop tapping Identify. Your Detected Songs list opens up, every track with the tempo it was playing at. Twelve more metronome sounds. And no ads anywhere in the app.

Songs are saved whether or not you buy. Pro is what opens the list, and you can clear it either way.

PRIVACY

Tempo detection runs entirely on your device. Microphone audio is turned into a tempo estimate and discarded as it arrives. It is never recorded, saved or uploaded.

Song identification is the one part that leaves your phone, and only when it runs: it sends a short acoustic fingerprint, never the audio itself, to Apple's Shazam service and gets a match back. Free users trigger it by tapping Identify; with Pro it can run continuously while you listen, and you can turn that off.

MagicBPM is free and supported by ads, which do connect to the internet.

What’s new

MagicBPM is now on Android.

Point your phone at whatever is playing and read the tempo in real time. Tap Identify to name the track. Then practice against a metronome that counts compound time properly, with subdivisions and tap tempo.

Found a bug or want something added? [e-mail]. We read everything.