Was Daft Punk Having a Laugh When They Chose the Tempo of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?
Google "harder better faster stronger bpm" and Google’s “AI Overview” will tell you:
Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” generally sits around 123 BPM (Beats Per Minute), though some analyses find it slightly higher (like 123.48 BPM) or list different BPMs in remixes/workouts, with exact figures varying slightly by source and version.
Spotify’s metadata database, SongBPM, and most other online BPM databases list it at exactly 123.
But I think our helmet-clad robot friends might have been making a little joke that we’ve apparently all missed. The BPM of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is actually 123.45.
How do I know this? It so happens that for over 10 years I’ve written an app called Tempi that shows the music BPM in real time, so I know a little bit about the science and algorithms behind music tempo detection.
Most tempo detection software works basically the same way:
A specialized algorithm called the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) collects overlapping energy levels at different frequency bands.
Those levels are refined into well-defined peaks that represent rhythmic events in the track.
Another algorithm (autocorrelation) looks for patterns, or more accurately periodicity, in those peaks.
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