I’ll be stretching the forum category relevance here but I have a good motivation (or at least a motivation, so stay tuned for that).

As some of you might know I like to run/jog with headphones and music, even more so since I got my first MP3-player earlier this year, it’s so much easier to make playlists for that one than it was to mix suitable running music on cassettes. I’ve started to mix various lists, instead of just mixed tapes with generally good running music I try to fix separate lists for short interval, long distance pass and the occasional 5 or 10 km speed pass.

Anyway, I realise I probably have a lot of music in my collection that would work as running music but that I have never thought of as such, and the best way to spot those songs would be to find out what their central BPM is. (Elite runners in the Olympics sets down their feet approx 180 times per minute, if I was a such I would primarily seek out music with BPM very close to 60, 90 or 180 bmp. I’m not, but you get the idea, right?).

Unfortunately I’m horrible at counting bmp on my own, I just can’t do it, so now I’m wondering if anyone of you know how to find a/the hidden bmp display setting in Windows Media Player? If there is such a thing.

Oh, and the promised relevance for placing this question in this forum is that especially during long distance passes I have in the past (and I hope I will in the future too) come up with parody ideas and even written full parodies to the music I’ve been listening too. (Yes, I bring pen and paper along, I do) :-)

  //  Peter

here's a plugin for Winamp:

http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=6564

it hops around when I try it with something like Rage Against the Machine, but with dance music which is way more repetitve it might work better

Windows Media Player? ugh... I wish I could purge that awful POS from my machine...

Wow! This is great Chucky! I guess I’ll be moving back to Winamp now. Apart from it having problems with tempo shifting music of the kind you mention and music where the drums are toned done so they don’t stick out it seems to be working fine. Just the kind of thing I hoped for. And for running I prefer repetitive music with a clear pace-setting drum rhythm anyway.

I made a quick examination of some of my running favourites and the fast ones showed up to be in the 164-168 range and the slow ones in the 82-84 range (exactly half of the fast ones), so I guess I know what my leg frequency is now! Faster than I thought, but of course and on the other side I don’t have a very long stride instead.

I also checked out the old Iron Maiden song: “The loneliness of the long distance runner” (which I always thought was a bit too fast) and funnily enough it turned out to have just above 180 BPM (Olympic elite pacing, as mentioned above in the first post). Kinda makes you wonder if they knew what they were doing or if it’s just a coincidence...

  //  Peter

Wow! This is great Chucky! I guess I’ll be moving back to Winamp now. Apart from it having problems with tempo shifting music of the kind you mention and music where the drums are toned done so they don’t stick out it seems to be working fine. Just the kind of thing I hoped for. And for running I prefer repetitive music with a clear pace-setting drum rhythm anyway.

I made a quick examination of some of my running favourites and the fast ones showed up to be in the 164-168 range and the slow ones in the 82-84 range (exactly half of the fast ones), so I guess I know what my leg frequency is now! Faster than I thought, but of course and on the other side I don’t have a very long stride instead.

I also checked out the old Iron Maiden song: “The loneliness of the long distance runner” (which I always thought was a bit too fast) and funnily enough it turned out to have just above 180 BPM (Olympic elite pacing, as mentioned above in the first post). Kinda makes you wonder if they knew what they were doing or if it’s just a coincidence...

  //  Peter


I looked around the winamp site a little more, and there are a couple of other BPM meters, but they weren't working for me... it's not an exact science, but it works I guess. 

...during long distance passes I have in the past (and I hope I will in the future too) come up with parody ideas and even written full parodies to the music I’ve been listening to...


Well, parody numero uno as a result of this thread's been written. Thanx to the meter Chucky linked to I saw that I could add a couple of 80s favorites I hadn't thought about for that purpose to my runners playlist and - of course - quickly got a parody idea for one of them:

http://www.amiright.com/parody/80s/saxon1.shtml