Friday 13 January 2012

6 Free Running Songs for Jan 2012

Before I give you this months list of 6 legally free running songs I wanted to mention some other places to find BPM info to help you build your perfect playlist.  There are a few websites with info about BPM

The first two, I have been using for a long time, but don't have quite enough music that you can really stuff your playlist full, and the songs can be quite old.  The third, jog.fm has so much that on first glance it made me question whether I shouldn't just quit writing this blog!  

I started this blog because I was spending so much time figuring out good music to run with I thought I may as well put my results out there for anyone else in the same position to benefit from. Even though job.fm is really good, I think that my little blog still has a reason to exist, beyond the fact that it is fun for me to write it.  After looking a little more closely on jog.fm I saw that only about half of the songs I have recommended so far are on jog.fm, and that they too are kind of weak on very new, or off the mainstream, music.  Another point is that although I didn't check too many songs, I found a fair number of songs where the BPM was wrong.  Anyone can upload BPM info, so accuracy is only as good as the people uploading.  My advice it to double check with a tap for BPM tool before buying any song you find there. Even though the tap for BPM sounds less accurate than getting the mp3 and running it through MixMeister, it is actually a good measure since it is how you are feeling the tempo and how you will move to the music.


UPDATE (27-01-2012) : Sorry I have to update what I wrote about jog.fm. I hadn't tested the upload feature of the site at the time of writing this post. In fact it is not the user that enters the BPM info.  On jog.fm you add a song by entering in enough info for them to search for the song on iTunes. If they find it and you click on the song, it automatically add this song to the job.fm database.  This means any song available on iTunes can be added to jog.fm.  I am not sure why they can't just import all iTunes songs, why the user has to do the uploading (but probably Apple is not exposing the API to do this programmatically).  Exactly how jog.fm figures out the BPM isn't available but maybe they are using the 30 second sample to calculate the BPM and this might be why I found songs with inaccurate BPM.  But you can also flag songs that you think have the wrong BPM.   So I go from a 4 star to 5 star rating of this site!  It rocks!


So now here's my list of the 6 free songs for January 2012.  These songs are all available on Epitonic for free and legal download.  To download the song, click on the name of the song.  The band name links to wikipedia or another site about the band.  They all are close to 90BPM so work for a 180SPM (strides per minute) run.


1. Eyes Be Closed by Washed Out  89BPM
Beautiful song for running, electronic but melodic, according to Wikipedia the style is Chillwave. It feels very summertime but its so good I couldn't wait to the summer to post this song.  Here are the lyrics to the first verse...
Inside your voice resounds, 
Your thoughts realign
Your words recall to mind
Your short sweet life
Perfect running lyrics, no?

2. Super Duper Rescue Heads by Deerhoof   88BPM
Electro pop again, from San Fancisan's Deerhoof.  


3. Hearts by I Break Horses  90BPM
Swedish indie pop/rock. You can almost hear the heart beating.


4. Gobbledigook by Sigur Rós  88BPM
Icelandic giants.  I love the name of this song and I love that these guys are massive, but still sing in Icelandic.  Fuck English domination!  


5. Hole by KRAPP 89BPM
Frenchie electronic/pop music. I think they sound super like CocoRosie.  Listen to this track and then compare it to CocoRosie R.I.P Burn Face that was on last months 6 Free Running Songs.

6. The Delicate by Shipping News  88BPM
OK enough electronic, happy music, here's a something a little harder, with a track from post-punk/post-hardcore, Shipping News, if you like that sort of thing...



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