Beatmapping

Interface of Logic Pro, a software with built-in Beatmapping.

Beatmapping is the detection of a beat or tempo in music using software. Beatmapping visually lays out/displays the tempo (speed) of music throughout the entirety or portion of a song or music piece. This "mapping" is done with software specifically designed for beatmapping.

Beatmapping software is often a component of music editing and mixing software like Apple's Logic Pro 9 or Sony's Acid Music Studio. A benefit of beatmapping when mixing music is that it keeps the project in time with the metronome tempo which is the steady underlying base beat of the music. Beatmapping software is also often used to help develop a beat to use underlying with a live music performance and "objects" are added to the map of beats that set a change in tempo matching changes in music during the live performance. Beatmapping software usually requires some measure of input from the user, including the tempo, track or instrument that keeps time, information it can then use to analyse the audio and produce an estimated "tick", and even stretch or squash tracks wandering off-beat to fit the correct tempo. Typically, this is done by finding "transients" - short peaks in the audio waveform at regular intervals, with said intervals being sometimes affected by the requisite note values, as indicated by the user before the analysis takes place.

Beatmapping is also software built-in to rhythm games, to mitigate for imperfect human rhythm, and is designed in such a way that notes played off-beat in a way indistinguishable to the human ear (albeit distinguishable for computers) qualify as "correct". Different forms of analysis can be used for procedurally generated beatmaps for a given level, and recent approaches have employed machine learning for this beatmap generation, in order to make on-the-fly estimates for player accuracy.