DJing for Dummies: BPM
, by Byron - DJKIT®, 3 min reading time
Three little letters follow a DJ everywhere: BPM. It stands for beats per minute, and it is simply a count of how many beats a track has in one minute. A slow, moody track might sit around 90 BPM, while a fast, driving one could run to 150 or beyond. Get comfortable with this one number and a lot of DJing suddenly makes sense.
Why it matters.
When you blend one track into another, the two need to be running at a similar speed for their beats to line up. If one is at 124 BPM and the other at 128, they will slowly drift out of time. Matching the tempo is the first step to a smooth transition, which is why the BPM figure sits front and centre on almost every controller and media player screen.
Genres have their own tempo ranges.
Tempo is a big part of how a style feels. House tends to sit around 120 to 128 BPM, drum and bass lives up near 170, hip hop often sits in the 80 to 100 region, and disco hovers in the 110s. Knowing roughly where a genre lives helps you group tracks that will sit together comfortably in a set.
How to find a track's BPM.
The easy way is to let your software read it: once a track is analysed, the BPM is displayed for you. If you are ever working it out by ear, you can count the beats for fifteen seconds and multiply by four, or tap along on a tap-tempo button until it settles on a number. Trust your ears as a sanity check, because analysis occasionally reads a tricky track wrong.
The number is a guide, not the whole story.
Two tracks can share a BPM and still feel completely different, because energy comes from the drums, the bassline and the arrangement as much as the tempo. It is also worth knowing about half-time and double-time: a 140 BPM track can happily mix with a 70 BPM one, because 70 is simply half of 140 and the beats still align.
Once BPM makes sense, the next step is putting it to use by lining two tracks up beat for beat, known as beatmatching. If you are choosing gear to practise on, our DJ controllers and CDJs and media players display BPM clearly, and there are more beginner guides on the DJ advice blog.