#464: Pace-sweater

It’s often very annoying that I can be doing my best impression of exercise when the music on my MP3 device starts playing at completely the wrong beat.

Today’s invention is therefore a mechanism on a portable music player which will allow selection of a particular beat and play only tunes with that rhythm (or one close to it).

This could also be interfaced to a rowing machine or treadmill so as to select tunes that corresponded to the current stroke rate or pace. Ideally this would be set to choose a beat which was slightly faster than the current exercise frequency in order to keep up one’s work rate.

I’m not sure exactly how sensitive to rhythm variations we are, but it might also be possible to play any given piece of music at a slightly elevated rate, in order to better match the target level of effort.