BPM and Genres

BPM and Genres: From Hip Hop to Break-Beat, Techno to Trip Hop

The BPM of a song is not only relevant to beat mixing, it's also strongly related to music genre. For example, if a DJ raises the beats per minute or BPM (i.e., the drum beats) of a hip hop song to approximately 135 BPM, the song's beats become "break-beat." Alternatively, if a DJ lowers the BPM of a techno or hard house track to 90 BPM, the song becomes "trip hop."

"Trip hop," for example, is characterized as being downtempo jazz, funk,and soul-inflected break-beats that includes experimental psychotropic atmospherics (i.e, the "trip" part). Even though trip hop is not downtempo "techno" and "hard house" tracks per se, a DJ is able to create -- in a live performance setting -- a trip hop-like track by simply slowing down the BPM.

A rough guide showing the relationship between BPM and genre is provided below:

GENRE	BPM RANGE
Hip Hop/Rap/Trip-Hop	60-110 BPM
Acid Jazz	80-126 BPM
Tribal House	120-128 BPM
House/Garage/Euro-Dance/Disco- House	120-135 BPM
Trance/Hard House/Techno	130-155 BPM
Breakbeat	130-150 BPM
Jungle/Drum-n-Bass/Happy Hardcore	160-190 BPM
Hardcore Gabba	180+ BPM

As the chart above shows, music genres are generally confined to a specific BPM range. For example, a house track would not be considered "house" (in the traditional sense) if it had a tempo of 70 BPM. Likewise, a hip hop track would not be considered "hip hop" (again, in the traditional sense) if its BPM was pitched up to 140 BPM.

If you're a DJ that is specialized in a specific genre such as "only tribal house," it's very unlikely that you'll have to spend time determining and labeling BPM for the tracks in your music library. This is because these tracks are already near each other in terms of BPM range. On the other hand, some genres -- such as hip hop -- have a wider BPM range and may require a little time calculating and sorting songs by BPM.