Tap tempo

Two taps produce a reading, four or more produce a usable one. The calculator averages up to the eight most recent intervals, so the estimate settles as you keep going and stops drifting once you have tapped through a bar or two of the track.

Because tapping every second beat, or adding the offbeats, is arithmetically consistent with a different tempo. A track at 140 BPM tapped on alternate beats reads 70, and both are correct as ratios. Hit Reset and tap the pulse you would clap to, then check the result against the 90 to 140 range where most music sits.

Yes. Enter and Space both register a tap once the pad has focus, which is usually steadier than clicking because your hand stays in one place. Touch works the same way on a phone or tablet.

It reports the tempo of the passage you tapped, which is exactly what you want for music played by people rather than to a click. Tap a bar in the section you care about, note the number, then reset and tap a later section to see how far the performance has moved.

Take it to the delay time calculator, which turns the tempo into straight, dotted and triplet note lengths in milliseconds, or to the reverb timing calculator for pre-delay and decay spans on the same grid. A tempo on its own is rarely the end of the job.