The Zen of Beats Per Minute

What is the sound of one beat wogging?

There’s a good reason why the BPM field in songs on iTunes is usually blank, even on songs you download: this is not an easy number to quantify. Saying that a song has a BPM of 120 doesn’t describe how the song’s rhythm varies. Is it rock steady from start to finish? Drum-machine precise? Does the song gradually speed up or slow down? Does it have a few brief interludes with different rhythms, or no rhythms at all?

My approach requires judgment on my part. If a song’s rhythm varies only slightly, I sample as much of the song as I can, and find an average BPM value. If the song has a short section with a different rhythm but the main rhythm otherwise predominates, I stick with the main rhythm. If there are a number of different distinct rhythms in several sections, I may average them, but indicate in the song’s comment field that the song is inconsistent, and give a low PC (Pace Consistency) rating; if the rhythms are too inconsistent or incompatible, the song gets a PC of 1 and never makes it into a woglist (BTW, don’t look for PC in iTunes—this is my own rating).

All this is why software that analyzes a song’s beat is often not enough to determine a song’s BPM. And why only Podwogging.com gives you artisan, hand-crafted BPMs for your wogging pleasure.