BeatSage
BeatSage is an automatic beat tracker and tempo tapper for visual artists. A lightweight neural network trained on thousands of hours of music reads the groove in realtime — about 5 ms — and hands the tempo to Resolume, TouchDesigner, or anything else that speaks Ableton Link.
It's the small tool for one job: if you need the tempo and nothing else, this is less to set up than AudioSlice.
Requirements
macOS, an 18.9 MB download. A Windows beta is in progress — get in touch if you'd like to try it.
Quick start
- Pick an input — system audio, an interface, a virtual device like BlackHole, or the laptop's built-in microphone pointed at the room. The same considerations as AudioSlice's audio input apply.
- Turn on Ableton Link (or OSC, if you'd rather patch it yourself).
- Play music. The dial shows the detected BPM; the ring fills as it locks on.
Settings
TODO
Expand each of these with a screenshot and the exact behaviour.
- Audio input — which device it listens to.
- Clock mode — how the detected beat is published.
- Use Ableton Link — share tempo and phase with everything on the network.
- Distance from speakers to the ideal audience position — compensation, in feet or milliseconds, for the time the PA takes to reach the crowd. Set this and the beat lines up with what the room hears rather than what the desk sends.
- Metronome (default) tempo — the fallback when there's nothing to track.
- Tempo range — clamp the detectable range so it can't chase a half-time or double-time reading.
- Always on Top — keeps the window over your visuals app.
- Show status bar icon — the menu-bar readout.
Loud rooms
BeatSage was tested in exactly the conditions that break beat detection: loud, compressed, clipping front-of-house sound. It doesn't need a clean feed. If you only have a microphone and a PA, that combination works.
Buy
BeatSage in the shop — from $49.95.