Talk:Beats per minute

Some examples?
Some examples would be nice, one well known for each (at least the mentioned) genre. I just stumbled upon "Master of Puppets (song)" described as "The song was one of the fastest of the time, clocking in at over 220 BPM." but more is needed to start a listing. highlunder 09:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * An example of something going at 1000 BPM would be appreciated, considering that a piccolo trill in a Sousa march alternates pitch at a rate of only about 720 a minute. 1000 BPM is fairly meaningless as a dance tempo, it would seem. 70.17.135.67 22:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * As far as underlying bass tempos go, I know songs that go at 240, 260, 300, and 600. The fastest I seen so far, with just any specific sound, was clocked in at 3,440 BPM. This sond was derived from a combo of a bass kick and dirty snare hit, one giant mixed messy sound, but it doubles 4 times over at the end when the bass line was already steady at 215 BPM. --Dark Ragnarok 02:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * A claimed bpm of anything more than 720 is really stretching the meaning of "beat", as humans hear anything faster than 12 pulses per second as a continuous buzz or tone rather than separate beats. Once you reach 1200 you have passed the threshold of pitch perception, so not only is is a tone it has perceiveable tonal attributes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.164.41 (talk) 05:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep. Venetian snares (A 'glitch' breakcore artist) utilizes this phenomena quite a bit where he starts ramping up the snare rates to such a high speed it becomes tonal, and he then starts tuning it into melodies. Its very impressive. But regardless the Master of Puppets claim is nonsensical. Electronic and Speed metal both regularly get into these extremist sorts of BPM rates. 121.44.253.166 (talk) 11:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Percent change from one BPM to another
If I were to want to change a sample from, say, 80 BPM to 85 BPM, what percentage faster would that be? Surely there must be some kind of formula for calculating that?
 * Yes, but since it is not specific to BPM, you're more likely to find it under percentage --Taejo|대조 23:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

80 Beats/Minute or 60 seconds in one minute so 80/60=1.33333333 meaning each beat is 1.3333333 seoncds long same with 85 Beats / Minute

85/60=1.416666666

subtract the differences

1.416666666666-1.33333333333 =0.083333333333333333 of a second difference.

the formula is in the name Beats/Minute —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.13.52.247 (talk) 15:09, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Error?
Wouldn't one BPM be 1 Hz? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.160.187.231 (talk) 16:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

80 beats a minute, a speed where one can predict with confidence that the piece of music is emoting harsh loneliness (N=15,000 in meanspeed music's database), has 750 milliseconds per beat. The math above is a pleasant try, but not correct. Elemental cross algebra yields:

80 beats/one minute=1 beat/0.75 seconds.

Best to all, Ian Schneider

http://meanspeed.com/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.68.40.68 (talk) 20:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The percentage change in speed is 5/85=17%

Speed is NOT relative, however. Speed is a constant. Einstein said over and over and over again: "[My theory has been mistranslated so that people infer a 'relativity' to all things exactly the opposite of the CONSTANTS, especially the speed of light and Newton's Laws]." See, Ian Ayers, SUPERCRUNCHERS, © 2007.

In other words, a typically lonely miserable song at 80 beats per minute is "I Wanna Know What Love Is" by the Anglo-American band called Foreigner, a truly excellent contemporary music band for 3 decades. Playing 10 songs at 250 beats per minute will *not* change the emotive quality of the song. This is an area of science led by some huge minds such as Dan Levitin's THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC, and much of the language with which we describe tempo must be streamlined.

One might want to be careful in regard to anything Don Brusca asserts on the matter, as prison does allow internet service now.

Ian Schneider http://meanspeed.com/ January 4, 2008

1hz = 1/s = 1 per second = 60 per 60 seconds = 360 per minute. so one beat per minute = 1/60 beat per second. 194.97.122.148 (talk) 02:38, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Bpm/Tempo merge
I think that the articles should be merged. The two topics are closely related and the articles share some of the same information. if the articles were to be put together as one, I belive that it might make each topic more understandable--luvinlife42971.75.125.173 (talk) 21:03, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, or it's because some abbreviations like bpm should have own article. And well, it's knd of funny that this bpm thing has listed different kind of tempos like in dance music, and it's more technical, whereas Tempo article talks about classical music markings

Dynamic Progressive Turbulence Creator (talk) 11:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

These articles seem to be sufficiently different to warrant separate entries. Spellbook (talk) 21:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Underlying Tempos?
What the hell is the part about beatmatching underlying tempos about? That's nonsense. The reason a 240 BPM beat will mix flawlessly with a 120 BPM beat is because it is exactly half the speed. There's no such thing as underlying tempos. I think someone's trying to be over technical here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.179.236.217 (talk) 07:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, this "comment" reeks of the naive. "Special:Contributions/58.179.236.217|58.179.236.217]] ([[User talk:58.179.236.217|talk]" speaks in curses and accusations, and admits that he or she knows nothing. Anyone who does not know what an underlying beat is has no knowledge of African, Latin or Western music to the level where such person's comments are to be taken seriously.  In fact, academics have established that Americans have an extremely difficult task in discerning the underlying beat.  The reasons for this difficulty lie in the ubiquitous nature of music, which is found everywhere from elevators to cancer drug commercials.  Such ubiquity confuses that of the unsigned person above - he or she is not alone.  Rather than learn about real tempo and make a change, Unsigned asks questions that are both rhetorical and real.  yet, Unsigned answers in a manner that indicates a severe lack of willingness to offer proof of the assertion: "There's no such thing as underlying tempos" after asking "What the hell is the part about beatmatching underlying tempos about?"

I respectfully ask 58.179.236.217 to Google or "tempo" and revise, extend or delete his or her "talk."

Thank you.

Ian Schneider meanspeed music meanspeed@gmail.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.217.200.222 (talk) 18:55, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Addition: BPM shouldn't be merged with Tempo. One is specifically about music, the other refers to both tempo and heartbeats. A very interesting correlation.

BPM Formula
I have calculated a formula that will calculate the BPM of a bar using the space between sounds in a 4/4 fashion. Here is the equation for a BPM of 180: 4 ÷ 1.333... = 3 x 60 = 180. The '4' is how many beats there are in a bar, the '1.333...' is the the length of a bar, the 3 is the number of beats that fit into the bar after the division and the '60' is the number of seconds in a minute. So: (4/t) x 60 = BPM. Also, if you need to calculate this based on the space between beats, find that (by starting from the beginning of a kick sound and end at the beginning of another) and times it by 4 to get a bar. Perhaps this should be included in the article, albiet better expressed, to help people find their BPM in the music they want? --77.100.53.29 (talk) 22:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

"BPM" or "bpm"?
What's the correct term for "Beats per minute": "BPM" or "bpm". It's all mixed up throughout Wikipedia, e.g. in this article or in tempo. I think lower case is appropriate. --Scriberius (talk) 00:19, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

-- No Lower case isn't appropriate. BPM is an acronym, which means under the rules of english, its upper case. Thats a pretty standard rule of language which denotes it isn't a word but an acronym. You don't pronounce it 'bipem', its 'bee pee em'. 121.44.253.166 (talk) 11:47, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Counting
"BPM can be calculated manually by counting the number of bass drums per 60 seconds, or per 15 seconds and multiply by 4 (method cannot function with breakbeat-style genres such as drum n bass, dubstep, or hip hop, and can only work with electronic styles with four-to-the-floor beats such as House, UK Garage, and Trance)"

This is just not true. Songs that use broken beats, like in Drum & Bass for example, can still have their BPM counted easily by remembering their time signature still is 4/4. Just counting as if the track had a straight House Beat works, and it's not even very hard to do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.65.136.47 (talk) 17:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Beatmatching
Beat matching isn't always achieved by peak counting. It can be done using granular synthesis. This is how the main and 'complex' modes of Abelton live do it. Its basically taking really tiny sample windows ,like a few nanoseconds, then sort of mushing them together or looping them in 'grains' to stretch or shrink samples. Theres a bit more to it than that, especially around zero-cross matching (essential for getting rid of clicking) but thats roughly the core of it. 121.44.253.166 (talk) 11:45, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Wrong Topic
Isn't beatmatching and what DJs do, that is, all of the article after "Dance Music" a different topic?

BPM applies to all musical composition and performance. Orchestra conductors must have the musical BPM range hard-wired into their brains so when the music calls for 120 bpm, for example, they can move the baton precisely 2X per second - Dangnad (talk) 01:49, 22 November 2009 (UTC)