Sampling and Beats Per Minute

I am wondering what you guys use (Software, Techniques) to calculate the beats per minute in the songs you sample for your music? I use cool Edit pro but it will not give me the correct tempo.

I bought a Pioneer EFX500 ages ago and find the BPM counter on it to be pretty good, its better than the one on the MPC IMHO. Although pretty darn expensive to use solely as a BPM counter, prior to that I think I used some shareware program where you tap the spacebar to the beat, but can't remember what it was called, I think theres a few of em out there...

i do all my stretching/bpm detection on the mp, i appreciate the pros of using software but i jus don't have the time for it and in some sense cud make you lazy and start to rely on the pc. as far as beat creation goes i would much rather work with just the mp.

each to there own of course!!

I use a stopwatch and a tic-counter. This is the most acurate procedure.

I'm not into bpm and stuff. I chop up everything, and the way I lay down my stuff doesn't require me to sync the tempo's. I just sync them roughly by ear. I only sync the bpm's when I loop stuff. Then I use the taptempo, program the loop and adjust the mp's bpm in realtime.

get into patched phrasing mate

I suggest you try to learn how to do this on the Mp. The fewer things you need the better, in my opinion. One way is to set the sample in a sequence, then loop the sequence. Then just adjust the tempo until the sample loops smoothly. Whatever tempo your left with is what your looking for. This is a very primitive way of working, but it may be all you need. If your just using a small section of a bar of music, then just sample more than you would need, so that you can use this method. Once you find your tempo, you can truncate the unneeded portion. Good luck...

I agree with wudsiba with the addition that you can get a close approximation of the tempo by playing your sample and hitting the TAP TEMPO button along with the rhythm