How to Count Beats With Vinyl
Hip-hop DJs revolutionized popular music when they started mixing records together. Since then, record mixing, scratching and sampling have become essential to a range of musical genres. Beat-matching -- or matching the tempos of two different tracks -- is essential to mixing tracks together seamlessly. In order to successfully beat-match two tracks, you must first determine their beats per minute, or BPM. You can count the beats of a vinyl record with the right equipment and some simple calculations.
- Vinyl record
- Turntable
- Stopwatch
Show More
Instructions
-
-
1
Place a vinyl record on a turntable and place the needle on the desired track.
-
2
Count along with the downbeat or bass-drum beat of the song, counting "1, 2, 3, 4."
-
-
3
Start a stopwatch on any "1" count.
-
4
Count for 40 beats and stop the stopwatch.
-
5
Divide 2,400 by the number of seconds displayed on the stopwatch. (This would be the same as dividing 40 by the number of seconds displayed on the stopwatch and then multiplying the result by 60.) The result is the track's BPM to the hundredth of a second. For example, 40 beats counted in 15.23 seconds equals 157.58 BPM.