Methods and systems for detecting a fundamental beat frequency in a predetermined time interval of a music signal are disclosed. The frequency may be detected by processing a music signal with the discrete wavelet transform to obtain a set of coefficients. A subset of the coefficients may be processed to obtain a plurality of candidate beat frequencies contained in the corresponding portion of the music signal. Harmonic relationships between the candidate beat frequencies may be determined, and the fundamental beat frequency may then be determined based upon the determined harmonic relationships.