What Is This Thing Called Love?

138 independent analyses of this recording were submitted to AcousticBrainz. All but a handful of them — 96% — put it in A minor, a key signature of no sharps and no flats. The tempo printed above is the median of the 138 readings; 5% of them land within 2% of it, and the middle eight tenths of them run from 118 to 154.5 BPM. That is a recording the detector cannot settle on — the readings are spread far enough that the median is a summary of a disagreement rather than a measurement anybody should trust to the decimal.

At 123 BPM one beat lasts 487.8 milliseconds, so a sixteenth note is 122 ms and a dotted eighth 365.9 ms — the delay times for this recording. Counted half as fast it is 61.5 BPM, counted twice as fast 246. A score would mark that Allegro, by the ranges this site uses.

The analyses put the reference pitch of the recording at 442.5 Hz, which is 10 cents above concert A at 440 Hz — the sort of drift a tape machine or a slightly different mastering leaves behind. That is a fact about this transfer of the music, not about how it was played.

The dynamic complexity of the recording measures 4.72 dB: that is how far the level wanders from its own average, so a small number means a loud, flat master and a large one means a recording that still breathes. Its average loudness is 0.366 on Essentia's 0-to-1 scale, which is not decibels and is not comparable to a streaming service's number.

10 other recordings here are in A minor; the ones listed below are the closest in tempo.