A fabulous tap counter

This is a fabulous tap counter (“tap counter” meaning it does not analyze the music to figure out the BPM but you tap a key in sync with the music and it counts the tap rate).

Why fabulous? It works great and can be fully controlled with keystrokes. While listening to the track in iTunes, you tap to the beat with the . key and enter the measured BPM rate into iTunes with the ; key.

You can reset the beat counter with the Return key (or the Reset button), Play/Pause with the space key; jump forward or back 10 seconds with the ] and [ keys; skip to the next track with the ‘ key; turn the volume up or down with CMD-UpArrow and CMD-DnArrow; set the star rating with the 1 to 5 keys and remove the rating with the ` key; and all these keystroke commands can be set to whatever keys you want with the Preferences. Finally, you can set a Preference that will launch iTunes when ljtBPM is launched.

You can even take advantage of the iTunes Scripts menu so you can launch ljtBPM from within iTunes. To set that up, launch AppleScript Editor from your Applications > Utilities folder; then in the Finder, open your Applications folder so you can see ljtBPM. Back in AppleScript Editor, click the Record button, then double-click ljtBPM in the Finder; back in AppleScript Editor, click the Stop button. Then File > Save and navigate the Save dialog box to the top level of your disk (click on the folder drop-down and slide down to the name of your disk (the next-to-last choice)), then to Library, to iTunes, and to Scripts (if there is not a Scripts folder there, create it), and Save. The next time you launch iTunes, there will be a menu bar icon of a Script between the Window and Help menus, and you can launch ljtBPM from there.

David Fink about ltjBPM