Chris

I'm not a DJ. I'm just a guy who wants to find a way to add BPM to the
10K songs in my music library. I'm running MusicMatch & iTunes (just
downloaded it and I *like* it). I'd love to run a single batch
program that scans all mp3 files, and then enters the BPM into the tag
so it's automatically picked up by MusicMatch and iTunes. Does this
creature exist? If not, can anyone give me a suggestion on how to
accomplish this efficiently? I've spent lots of time getting these
track into my PC, so I'm motivated! Thanks!
-Chris in Raleigh, NC USA

Jimekus

Chris wrote:
> I'm not a DJ. I'm just a guy who wants to find a way to add BPM to the
> 10K songs in my music library. I'm running MusicMatch & iTunes (just
> downloaded it and I *like* it). I'd love to run a single batch
> program that scans all mp3 files, and then enters the BPM into the tag
> so it's automatically picked up by MusicMatch and iTunes. Does this
> creature exist? If not, can anyone give me a suggestion on how to
> accomplish this efficiently? I've spent lots of time getting these
> track into my PC, so I'm motivated! Thanks!
> -Chris in Raleigh, NC USA

Hi Chris,

I develop an application program called
"Hey, Ingrid D.J." and it shouldn't be
too hard to code the BPM into the
correct tag for the programs you mention.

The Ingrid program has a better than 95%
success rate for getting the right BPM
for a track. It also has plenty of tools
to fix those remaining. The comment tag
was used because that's what the DJ
Helper plugin uses. Ingrid samples this
Winamp plugin every 30 seconds into a
list for an untagged track and stores
the median value from this list.

Therefore the Ingrid program is not
strictly a batch processor of BPM tags
because it assimilates this information
as the tracks are played.

After all your BPM is saved then you'll
be wanting certain genres to play at
certain times in winamp. All the data
structures are materialized as follows :

Firstly, there is the basic part of my
Ingrid software which sorts all my MP3s
by tempo and plays focussed graphics
according to profiles. One such profile
of a playlist is a matrix of genre by
tempo. That matrix is now a system file
in order to say that all Classical Music
was to be skipped, for example.

Because all grids have the same file
format I can, as author, be working in
code via any number of indexed system
grids in their non-derived state and
using a linked variable be also viewing
it in the foreground.

So I recently created the system grid
called "mp3play.ing", where .ing is the
suffix I give to Ingrid derivative
files. This system file must be for 150
genres by a 120 bpm range and be called
"Winamp Playlist". SortPlaylist then
fills it using the default playlist
called "winamp.m3u" and it does this
while keeping the "learned XML" intact
from its previous contents. The learned
data is the beat-based Grooves and Bands
selection and drum enfoldments,
controlled by the rotating hamiltonian
of the derived grid and by the user. It
does this for each new genre encountered
by Winamp or during any other track.

For every item in an Ingrid file there
is a GUI to store an XML action code; a
bit like Dreamweaver and next to here I
put the boolean to deselect a genre;
later to be summarized for a diary
event. For the Diary, in a later
release, I will construct another Ingrid
file called "schedule.ing". This matrix
will be filled from a popup MonthView
control of 6 weeks or 42 days by 24
hours and will be part of a larger multi
grid with month-end overlapping forming
the forth Ingrid dimension.



Secondly, The MP3 "genre" constants are
already stored in my program in the form
of a list box so all I needed to do was
to change its style to a checkbox and
make it visible when needed by clicking
"Status:". When my program needs to, it
looks for a file called "mp3play.ing"
and sets the genre checkboxes from
there. For the time being I manually set
this checkbox and code pushes that
change back into "mp3play.ing". As, I
already use a talking head routine to
announce the songs, all that routine
must now do is check the genre and
decide whether to skip the next song or
not. Controlling the manual advance for
Winamp has been a challenge but I now
have the ability to stop playing if the
next track is from an unclassified genre
and show this by deselecting the current
Groove and Band.

Multiple instances of Ingrid's tempo
multipliers greatly enhance the
accompaniment.


On ending a track, "Hey, Ingrid D.J."
will at times select randomly from
within a tight range of beat constraints
what the next song should be and is also
combined with the "online manager" to
decide how and when to shut down your
computer. Winamp's playlist is used by
Ingrid for helping with bulk editing of
BPM in the ID3v1 "comment" tag, but in a
consolidated environment the XML based
playlists are used to drive the AutoDJ
component. These standard Winamp play
lists are later used by Ingrid to update
the"genre" tag in the MP3 files to pass
on to other systems without those
systems having to go through the time
consuming Tempo massaging process.
Ingrid tags and queues even large MP3
catalogues by Beats Per Minute and is
what I think every MP3 DJ needs. Because
of the built in drumkit, segments,
grooves and motifs that accompany the
MP3 that is playing in Winamp, the
realtime sountrack continues in between
tracks without missing a beat; even as
the genre changes.

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~income/ingridx/

Ron & Wendy Michaels

Hello Jimekus

I read (or at least tried to read) your post and had a look at your
website, but I must confess that I don't understand it at all. No
disrespect intended, in fact the exact opposite. My hat is off to you.
You obviously know a great deal about something that I know absolutley
nothing about. But, my question is, can your program be used by someone
like myself who has no understanding of how it works? In other words is
it user friendly for someone like myself, who is simply a DJ trying to
work with a computer, as opposed to a computer tech who is trying to DJ?
Just like the original poster, I would like to be able to find the BPM's
of the songs on my system, but don't have the technical training or
background to understand that stuff you wrote about.
Thanks kindly.

Ron

Jimekus wrote:
>
> Chris wrote:
> > I'm not a DJ. I'm just a guy who wants to find a way to add BPM to the
> > 10K songs in my music library. I'm running MusicMatch & iTunes (just
> > downloaded it and I *like* it). I'd love to run a single batch
> > program that scans all mp3 files, and then enters the BPM into the tag
> > so it's automatically picked up by MusicMatch and iTunes. Does this
> > creature exist? If not, can anyone give me a suggestion on how to
> > accomplish this efficiently? I've spent lots of time getting these
> > track into my PC, so I'm motivated! Thanks!
> > -Chris in Raleigh, NC USA
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> I develop an application program called
> "Hey, Ingrid D.J." and it shouldn't be
> too hard to code the BPM into the
> correct tag for the programs you mention.
>
> The Ingrid program has a better than 95%
> success rate for getting the right BPM
> for a track. It also has plenty of tools
> to fix those remaining. The comment tag
> was used because that's what the DJ
> Helper plugin uses. Ingrid samples this
> Winamp plugin every 30 seconds into a
> list for an untagged track and stores
> the median value from this list.
>
> Therefore the Ingrid program is not
> strictly a batch processor of BPM tags
> because it assimilates this information
> as the tracks are played.
>
> After all your BPM is saved then you'll
> be wanting certain genres to play at
> certain times in winamp. All the data
> structures are materialized as follows :
>
> Firstly, there is the basic part of my
> Ingrid software which sorts all my MP3s
> by tempo and plays focussed graphics
> according to profiles. One such profile
> of a playlist is a matrix of genre by
> tempo. That matrix is now a system file
> in order to say that all Classical Music
> was to be skipped, for example.
>
> Because all grids have the same file
> format I can, as author, be working in
> code via any number of indexed system
> grids in their non-derived state and
> using a linked variable be also viewing
> it in the foreground.
>
> So I recently created the system grid
> called "mp3play.ing", where .ing is the
> suffix I give to Ingrid derivative
> files. This system file must be for 150
> genres by a 120 bpm range and be called
> "Winamp Playlist". SortPlaylist then
> fills it using the default playlist
> called "winamp.m3u" and it does this
> while keeping the "learned XML" intact
> from its previous contents. The learned
> data is the beat-based Grooves and Bands
> selection and drum enfoldments,
> controlled by the rotating hamiltonian
> of the derived grid and by the user. It
> does this for each new genre encountered
> by Winamp or during any other track.
>
> For every item in an Ingrid file there
> is a GUI to store an XML action code; a
> bit like Dreamweaver and next to here I
> put the boolean to deselect a genre;
> later to be summarized for a diary
> event. For the Diary, in a later
> release, I will construct another Ingrid
> file called "schedule.ing". This matrix
> will be filled from a popup MonthView
> control of 6 weeks or 42 days by 24
> hours and will be part of a larger multi
> grid with month-end overlapping forming
> the forth Ingrid dimension.
>
> Secondly, The MP3 "genre" constants are
> already stored in my program in the form
> of a list box so all I needed to do was
> to change its style to a checkbox and
> make it visible when needed by clicking
> "Status:". When my program needs to, it
> looks for a file called "mp3play.ing"
> and sets the genre checkboxes from
> there. For the time being I manually set
> this checkbox and code pushes that
> change back into "mp3play.ing". As, I
> already use a talking head routine to
> announce the songs, all that routine
> must now do is check the genre and
> decide whether to skip the next song or
> not. Controlling the manual advance for
> Winamp has been a challenge but I now
> have the ability to stop playing if the
> next track is from an unclassified genre
> and show this by deselecting the current
> Groove and Band.
>
> Multiple instances of Ingrid's tempo
> multipliers greatly enhance the
> accompaniment.
>
> On ending a track, "Hey, Ingrid D.J."
> will at times select randomly from
> within a tight range of beat constraints
> what the next song should be and is also
> combined with the "online manager" to
> decide how and when to shut down your
> computer. Winamp's playlist is used by
> Ingrid for helping with bulk editing of
> BPM in the ID3v1 "comment" tag, but in a
> consolidated environment the XML based
> playlists are used to drive the AutoDJ
> component. These standard Winamp play
> lists are later used by Ingrid to update
> the"genre" tag in the MP3 files to pass
> on to other systems without those
> systems having to go through the time
> consuming Tempo massaging process.
> Ingrid tags and queues even large MP3
> catalogues by Beats Per Minute and is
> what I think every MP3 DJ needs. Because
> of the built in drumkit, segments,
> grooves and motifs that accompany the
> MP3 that is playing in Winamp, the
> realtime sountrack continues in between
> tracks without missing a beat; even as
> the genre changes.
>
> http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~income/ingridx/

Jimekus

There is no HTMLHelp yet for "Hey,
Ingrid D.J." and the help files only
cover the historical users of my Ingrid
3D engine.

That said, the rocks that you will meet
swinging in this stream, like any other,
will bruise you, until you learn your
way around them.

The little smooth rocks I don't like
swimming around for too long are
repetitive mouse clicks. I try to remove
them by programming my life into this
project of mine. For example, I would
hate to use DJ Helper on its own for
thousands of tracks.

There are lots of big ones though. The
biggest rock I hit in the last year was
fulfilling a life long ambition to put
music around a 3D shape.

Nobody liked it. It was discordant and
had terrible memory leaks, around 28
megs per hour. It distracted from the
background music and I lost a few
friends. The music machine I used was
the closest to my technology; the
DirectMusic Midi like samples from
Microsoft. I couldn't manually set the
tempo fast enough on changing tracks to
stop people from becoming uncomfortable.
Search Google Groups for "Jimekus" to
see how I taught my software to get
around this problem. Amazingly, I still
haven't heard from the "software
friendly" beta testers.

To tap into Ingrid you would need faith,
which as my own user I don't need having
installed it on a half dozen late model
Windows XP P4 laptops and attended to
all the problems encountered bar one.
Learning Ingrid is like learning to trot
a horse.

I can answer any question to help your
process, like what was my choice of tag
editor to create DJ Helper "comment"
space in the MP3 files. That and how to
ensure that all the Read Only flags are
turned off. If Google could tell me what
editor best establishes the actual BPM
tag then the original poster will be
able to run his iTunes.

If you install a Text-To-Speech reader
you can listen to the Ingrid source code
effortlessly in the background; picking
up a certain fraction of its logic each
time around.

Ron & Wendy Michaels wrote:
> Hello Jimekus
>
> I read (or at least tried to read) your post and had a look at your
> website, but I must confess that I don't understand it at all. No
> disrespect intended, in fact the exact opposite. My hat is off to you.
> You obviously know a great deal about something that I know absolutley
> nothing about. But, my question is, can your program be used by someone
> like myself who has no understanding of how it works? In other words is
> it user friendly for someone like myself, who is simply a DJ trying to
> work with a computer, as opposed to a computer tech who is trying to DJ?
> Just like the original poster, I would like to be able to find the BPM's
> of the songs on my system, but don't have the technical training or
> background to understand that stuff you wrote about.
> Thanks kindly.
>
> Ron
>
> Jimekus wrote:
>
>>Chris wrote:
>>
>>>I'm not a DJ. I'm just a guy who wants to find a way to add BPM to the
>>>10K songs in my music library. I'm running MusicMatch & iTunes (just
>>>downloaded it and I *like* it). I'd love to run a single batch
>>>program that scans all mp3 files, and then enters the BPM into the tag
>>>so it's automatically picked up by MusicMatch and iTunes. Does this
>>>creature exist? If not, can anyone give me a suggestion on how to
>>>accomplish this efficiently? I've spent lots of time getting these
>>>track into my PC, so I'm motivated! Thanks!
>>>-Chris in Raleigh, NC USA
>>
>>Hi Chris,
>>
>>I develop an application program called
>>"Hey, Ingrid D.J." and it shouldn't be
>>too hard to code the BPM into the
>>correct tag for the programs you mention.
>>
>>The Ingrid program has a better than 95%
>>success rate for getting the right BPM
>>for a track. It also has plenty of tools
>>to fix those remaining. The comment tag
>>was used because that's what the DJ
>>Helper plugin uses. Ingrid samples this
>>Winamp plugin every 30 seconds into a
>>list for an untagged track and stores
>>the median value from this list.
>>
>>Therefore the Ingrid program is not
>>strictly a batch processor of BPM tags
>>because it assimilates this information
>>as the tracks are played.
>>
>>After all your BPM is saved then you'll
>>be wanting certain genres to play at
>>certain times in winamp. All the data
>>structures are materialized as follows :
>>
>>Firstly, there is the basic part of my
>>Ingrid software which sorts all my MP3s
>>by tempo and plays focussed graphics
>>according to profiles. One such profile
>>of a playlist is a matrix of genre by
>>tempo. That matrix is now a system file
>>in order to say that all Classical Music
>>was to be skipped, for example.
>>
>>Because all grids have the same file
>>format I can, as author, be working in
>>code via any number of indexed system
>>grids in their non-derived state and
>>using a linked variable be also viewing
>>it in the foreground.
>>
>>So I recently created the system grid
>>called "mp3play.ing", where .ing is the
>>suffix I give to Ingrid derivative
>>files. This system file must be for 150
>>genres by a 120 bpm range and be called
>>"Winamp Playlist". SortPlaylist then
>>fills it using the default playlist
>>called "winamp.m3u" and it does this
>>while keeping the "learned XML" intact
>>from its previous contents. The learned
>>data is the beat-based Grooves and Bands
>>selection and drum enfoldments,
>>controlled by the rotating hamiltonian
>>of the derived grid and by the user. It
>>does this for each new genre encountered
>>by Winamp or during any other track.
>>
>>For every item in an Ingrid file there
>>is a GUI to store an XML action code; a
>>bit like Dreamweaver and next to here I
>>put the boolean to deselect a genre;
>>later to be summarized for a diary
>>event. For the Diary, in a later
>>release, I will construct another Ingrid
>>file called "schedule.ing". This matrix
>>will be filled from a popup MonthView
>>control of 6 weeks or 42 days by 24
>>hours and will be part of a larger multi
>>grid with month-end overlapping forming
>>the forth Ingrid dimension.
>>
>>Secondly, The MP3 "genre" constants are
>>already stored in my program in the form
>>of a list box so all I needed to do was
>>to change its style to a checkbox and
>>make it visible when needed by clicking
>>"Status:". When my program needs to, it
>>looks for a file called "mp3play.ing"
>>and sets the genre checkboxes from
>>there. For the time being I manually set
>>this checkbox and code pushes that
>>change back into "mp3play.ing". As, I
>>already use a talking head routine to
>>announce the songs, all that routine
>>must now do is check the genre and
>>decide whether to skip the next song or
>>not. Controlling the manual advance for
>>Winamp has been a challenge but I now
>>have the ability to stop playing if the
>>next track is from an unclassified genre
>>and show this by deselecting the current
>>Groove and Band.
>>
>>Multiple instances of Ingrid's tempo
>>multipliers greatly enhance the
>>accompaniment.
>>
>>On ending a track, "Hey, Ingrid D.J."
>>will at times select randomly from
>>within a tight range of beat constraints
>>what the next song should be and is also
>>combined with the "online manager" to
>>decide how and when to shut down your
>>computer. Winamp's playlist is used by
>>Ingrid for helping with bulk editing of
>>BPM in the ID3v1 "comment" tag, but in a
>>consolidated environment the XML based
>>playlists are used to drive the AutoDJ
>>component. These standard Winamp play
>>lists are later used by Ingrid to update
>>the"genre" tag in the MP3 files to pass
>>on to other systems without those
>>systems having to go through the time
>>consuming Tempo massaging process.
>>Ingrid tags and queues even large MP3
>>catalogues by Beats Per Minute and is
>>what I think every MP3 DJ needs. Because
>>of the built in drumkit, segments,
>>grooves and motifs that accompany the
>>MP3 that is playing in Winamp, the
>>realtime sountrack continues in between
>>tracks without missing a beat; even as
>>the genre changes.
>>
>>http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~income/ingridx/